Happy Independence Day to my American readers! Although it is July 4th today, we actually began our current school year back in January. However, since I never got around to typing up what I did to prep for the year, and have had several inquiries about it recently, I figured today was as good as any to show you what I did! Since my kids are getting older and are less taken by cutesy decorations, I didn't really do much in the way of posters or decorations in our homeschool space. A little negative space in the room has been nice this year! I started off by separating the president and state pages from this year's pack of Student Sheets. Since we already started the 50 states and all the presidents last year in Exploration to 1850, I simply punched the ones for this year with my spiral binder and added them to the state and president books I made for the kids last year. Now each book is a complete set! Next, I sat down with my teacher's manual and the Story of the Wor