CHRISTEPHI

Our first two weeks back to school have been slightly bumpy, but overall great! It's always tough transitioning from vacation mode back to a schedule and assigned tasks, even when you homeschool. On top of that, we had some frightfully frigid weather keeping us homebound more than is typical. We started off our year with some back-to-school pictures. E insisted on donning his Viking costume since we were learning about Leif Eriksson on day 1.  I have found that costumes are one of the best ways to get my son engaged in what he is learning. The nice ones can be pricey, but if you shop costumes on Amazon when it's not close to Halloween, or check the clearance sales just after Halloween, you can usually get some good deals on historical types of costumes.  Miss M was completely ready to begin our school year. She loves academics and appreciates the routine of our school days.  Our first two weeks were a bit of a light start with some subjects not being added...

When you use My Father's World, you really don't have to do any prepwork to get ready for your year. Things are all planned out for you and you can easily just open and go . However, I am a bit particular and like to have things just so. I find that putting in just a little effort before getting started helps eliminate small frustrations as we go along. Since I had the time and wanted to, I decided to do a few things to get ready for our year .  This post will make more sense if you read our curriculum picks first . The first thing I did was open our packs of student sheets and separate out the State Sheets and President Sheets. I used my brand new binding machine -- a Christmas gift from Hubby that delights my nerdy heart -- to bind each child's pages into a separate notebook.  Since you receive some of the sheets this year and the rest of them next year in 1850 to Modern Times, it made sense to me to separate them out so at the end of the year it's easy to se...

I always love reading about what programs other homeschool families use. Sometimes what one person likes you recognize is exactly what you don't like, or what is a disaster for one kid is exactly what another kid needs. I never get tired of that beautiful diversity! This year my little fella will be a big Third Grader. I can hardly believe he's 8 years old. I distinctly remember my third grade year and the public school in Florida that I went to for part of the year.  It's wild to think that my "baby" could have such clear memories of this time frame when he is all grown up. Miss M is having a sort of second year of 6th grade. Although she did 6th grade level work across the board last year, I am in no rush to have her start junior high (and high school right around the corner from that). She's only 11!  So this year she will be advancing in her studies, but we're still calling it 6th grade. Some of her work will be at a 6th grade level and some will b...