The past two days, we have started opening the day with a group prayer focusing on 1) giving thanks for anything we feel thankful for 2) asking for help in our character and behavior that we noticed fault in the previous day and 3) asking for his blessing on our school day. Also, I have been making a schedule by hour on what we will be working on and putting it on my new 4' x 4' dry erase board located behind my desk.  These 2 things have worked so well, that not only are we finally completing everything I want accomplish each day, but we are getting it done more efficiently and in less time then I even have allotted for it on the schedule; making our days 2-4 hours shorter with more work completed.  I am truly amazed at how much God continues to bless our homeschooling, faith building and character development efforts. "And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, `do' all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Colossians 3:17

Refreshed

This morning I am finding myself refreshed.  I am up and ready to go, I feel like we can really get ahead.....but there are no children LOL!  They spent the night with my mother last night and have not yet arrived back home.  I find myself in search of curriculum for the 2010-2011 school year.  My husband and I have been doing A LOT of discussing about which route to take with the children and what seems to be working best for them.  I believe we are going to try a new math curriculum, Math U See was recommended by my sister and we have been looking into it and I do believe we have decided to start the children on it later this year.  Science I believe we will stick with Apologia and move to Exploring Creation with Zoology next.  History we will be learning through a more CM friendly method with living books and Geography will be map studies to go along with History.  Language Arts is still completely up in the air..... if anyone has a good recommendation, I would LOVE to hear.

God Bless you all this day and keep you safe.

First day back

Today was our first day home schooling in 2010 and it went really well.  The kids really enjoyed the Exploring Creation with Astronomy for their new science curriculum.  Tim (2nd grader) labeled 48 states from memory on the US map, again with no teaching or instruction involved, just daily blank map that he fills in from memory first, then fills in the rest using a key. For handwriting we are using two blank handwriting sheets, which I then put lines for him to copy, I just use proper sentences from the material we are working on.  Today was a list of the 4 middle colonies "New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware."  and text from science "The study of the universe is called astronomy."  The teaching across the grades is still a success.  Of course, we have to keep skill based subjects individual (math, language arts, etc) but everything is working out better than I expected.  Tori (5th grader) is really excelling with the new structure of learning.  Using Charlotte Mason's narration technique is helping her tremendously.  Tomorrow we begin a new character trait in our character development study, we will be focusing on consistency.