Well, it has been a while since I wrote anything…with good reason. I have been so busy! Two weeks ago, I was cleaning up and sorting through things to get ready for school and then we started back on Aug. 4, so I haven’t had much time to slow down. It has been a wonderful school year for the seven days we’ve been at it.
The first day of school, we started a unit study and lapbook on the Olympics, so we went to the library to find some information. It’s my first experience with a lapbook, but so far, so good. Colin seems to be enjoying it, except for writing in all the mini books. He wouldn’t want to admit it, but he gets a little bit of perfectionism from me and he wasn’t satisfied with his handwriting without lines to guide him. So…I started drawing lines in pencil so he could write and then I erased the lines when he was done. Colin is very artistic and crafty, so he’s been able to do a good job on this project. I’ll let you know how it turns out. We’ve also enjoyed watching the Opening Ceremony and the many sporting events on t.v. to go along with our studies.
Tuesday (Aug. 5), after we finished our lessons, we met some friends at the playground. Eamon and one of his friends found a butterfly and I got pictures of it sitting on their arms. So cute. After the playground, we went to a cousin’s birthday party at a pool. We only had four days of school last week because on Thursday, we spent the day at a nearby water park.
During the weekend, we went to I.N.K. (Interactive Neighborhood for Kids). It is a really cool place for the kids to play with things you see all the time, but they never get to touch. There are different rooms off of a hallway that all have a theme. I know I will never be able to name all of the rooms, but there’s a grocery store, diner, library, post office, beauty shop, bank, doctor’s office, school, vet’s office, etc. They even have a real police car, fire truck, and airplane for the kids to play on and push all the cool buttons.
On Monday of this week, we did most of our lessons, then met some friends at the pool for a “Not going back to school” party. We stayed for around 3 hours and the kids would have stayed longer, but we were all exhausted and needed to go home to rest.
On another note, I’ve had a strange turn of events with curriculum for this year. One of my friends (thanks, Cristy!) is letting me borrow her books for ambleside online. She had used them with some of her kids last year, but wasn’t going to be using them this year, so she asked if I wanted to use them. I have considered using ambleside before and I already lean toward a Charlotte Mason approach. I just never took that step because I always put together my own curriculum. Ambleside seemed confusing at first, but now I am SO excited about it!! I’ve looked through the books and printed out the lesson plans to tweak and add to my own. It all seems great! Planning is my favorite part of school and I’m just ecstatic! I love writing lesson plans, deciding what books we will use, setting goals for the year, visiting the library to get ideas, etc. (I know, I’m weird.)
Now that I’ve studied up on ambleside, I realize that you don’t have to purchase a lot of things. Most of the books are available to read or print from the Internet. Since it is so inexpensive, I might continue using it even after this year. I am the type of person who had rather have a book (or catalog) in hand instead of reading from a screen, and I don’t like the expense of printing things out, so I’m glad I can just borrow the books for the first year to see how I like it. One of the difficult things for me to wrap my mind around is reading so many books at the same time. It is working brilliantly, though. We started our book of centuries so we can understand what century events were happening in and when compared to other events in history.
There is a list of extra books for “free reading” that Cristy didn’t have, but they are all available at the library or online. If you’ve never looked into it for yourself, here’s the website Ambleside
We are still using Natural Speller, Saxon Math, Rod and Staff Grammar, and Apologia (Zoology 2) for Science. I’ll probably continue using The Story of the World some since we were reading the same time period as in the ambleside year we’re doing. According to ambleside, I will still add Music/Composer studies, picture study (art), nature study, dictation/penmanship, and “handicrafts”
to my schedule.
Hopefully the excitement of the new school year doesn’t wear off too quickly. 2008-2009 school year, here I come!
