Our week in advance...I am sure many of you have heard of the week in review, well this is the week in advance. ;) I will go ahead and admit it - I am excited that our school year is starting. The room is ready, the lesson plans are ready, the teacher is ready - the kids - maybe not so much, but there's gotta be a hitch somewhere right? LOL

We had originally planned to start on the 19th - but our mini-vacation plans got cancelled so I figured we are here and ready we might as well begin. Not to mention boredom is really setting in these days and the kids are forever fighting with each other. More structure please! LOL

So we are starting this year with the workbox system - I look forward to it - I really think it will help keep us on track and accountable. Besides it has all those cute tags and folders and such - I love that kind of stuff!

Bug this week will start back on his Pathway readers program...he is in the second reader for the second level. I am going to have him read the story and do the worksheets on the same day this year - see how it goes anyway. I think it will do him good to pick up the pace a little. He is a great reader already. We will also be finishing up 2nd grade phonics with Saxon. My plan is to breeze through the remaining lessons and move on. He does well with this and I don't think we need to dwell on it. He is starting 3rd grade science this year. I decided to use Abeka again. I like that I can trust them to be Christian based and the readers are interesting and I can pick and choose activities and such as I feel he will be most interested. It looks like it's going to be an interesting year. For writing we will be doing some journal activities and various other activities I have found from books. I plan to start Grammar when we finish up the phonics curriculum. Bug will move on to 3rd grade Health this year - we use Abeka - same reason as Science really - it's Christian based, been around forever so it's trustworthy and laid out easily. For Math I am torn. We started Saxon Math 2 last year and progressively worked through the curriculum, but honestly it is so repetitive that Bug is really bored with it. I think what we are going to do for now is concentrate on those pesky math facts. He does pretty good with them and knows a lot of them, but I think we need to get a better hold on them before we move forward.

I am leaning toward Teaching Textbooks Math 3 - I think this may be the route we go next. Thinking...thinking...thinking...

We will be working on Bible, History and Art together again this year. I found an art book that I thought was neat and covered a lot of different artists and types/mediums of art. I admit I am not very artistic and art often falls to the wayside during the school year. I feel bad about this because Bug really enjoys art. I am determined to be better about this subject during this year! I figure if we put it in a day or two each week perhaps I will stay on track. We are starting with Franz Kline next week. I got a few books from the Dallas library so we can take a look at his art and see some of what he did. We are going to try out his "line dropping" technique - which is pretty much self explanatory. You hold a handful of black lines in your fist and open it up over white paper. Doing this several times until you get the picture you like. Then you glue the lines in place. Sounds easy enough right? We will also be using pretzels to "experiment" with this technique as well. Should be fun! We are also going to try out "foot path" which again sounds like what it is...making pathways with your feet (in paint). I also got a Draw Write Now book to use as an extra art experience. For History we will finish up History for Little Pilgrims. We have a couple of units left. After this I plan to start a Texas History Unit - I am excited about that! For Bible we are using Stick Figuring Through the Bible from Grapevine Studies. I am excited about this curriculum. It looks fun and interesting and I think the kids will get a lot out of it.

Red will be finishing up Saxon math K this year. We will also continue our lessons in Reading made easy. I am planning to work on phonics slowly using various letter activities and such. Of course we will work on handwriting and various fine motor skills. We finished up the Abeka science level K last year so I plan to start on the level one science this year - easy reading and fun activities. For health I am going to use a early childhood curriculum that uses fun activities, songs and games to teach basic life skills and such.

Well that's our week as it is planned. I suppose we will see how it goes and how much we get accomplished.

Among our activities we have swim team lessons, RA's/GA's, Meals on Wheels and gym this week. Should be fun and busy week...

Well I had better get off here and go scrub the bathrooms...fun! :p

Until next time...be good to yourself...we-