Naomi and Zoe taking a nap together in our living room the other day :)I'm not sure why, but every year for the past three years, I have had these feelings of being overwhelmed when I think of the school year ahead. Maybe it's because David's in high school, or because I'm teaching all five kids now, I'm not sure. But the feelings are there, just the same.
It doesn't last the whole school year, obviously, but it's like I have to work through my shortcomings and realize that God is big enough to help me with them. I have to turn it over to Him, do the best that I can do, and not give myself guilt trips about the rest. *Then* I can begin to really enjoy doing school with our kids again. And I do! :)
For those of you who care to know (and I apologize to the rest of you!), this is our curriculum line-up for the year:
- David (grade 11): Ambleside Online, Switched on Schoolhouse Geometry, Apologia Chemistry
- Marissa (grade 8): Ambleside Online, LifePac Math, Apologia Physical Science
- Joshua (grade 4): Ambleside Online, A Beka Language Arts and Arithmetic
- Jesse (grade 2): Ambleside Online, A Beka Language Arts, Letters & Sounds and Arithmetic
- Naomi (grade 1): Ambleside Online, A Beka Letters & Sounds, Handwriting and Numbers
I just have to say that we love Ambleside Online! It's a good, solid, literature-based curriculum that tends to be very challenging in the higher years. We feel like our children are getting a very sound education. Ambleside Online is a Charlotte Mason-style, free curriculum I found online a couple years ago. (Charlotte Mason was a British teacher whose hometown was Ambleside, hence the name).
The free curriculum consists of booklists and schedules for each year, then I have to locate the books we need. Some are in our library district, and others I find on amazon.com or ebay. It's like Christmas here lately... every day we get a new book in the mail!
Marissa & my especial favorites are the older, hard covers (especially former library books) that smell of old, quaint bookstores. We have several of those in our collection this school year. :)
Something that I did this week to help feel more organized (and... well, to *be* more organized) was to haul a little-used bookshelf from the boys' room down to our living room and put our school books on it. Matt & I love it, and I just *feel* more organized every time I look at it. :) Up to this point, we had piles of beautiful books stacked on the shelves of our coffee and end tables and a little, shifty old shelf at the end of the couch that was more or less a junk pile.
I definitely feel more organized now, and that seems to help with some of those overwhelmed feelings. Talking to Matt helps, too, as does talking with other homeschoolers who know how I'm feeling. :)
Well, I'm off to get going on the day. I hope you have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!!
2 comments:
I like the book shelf there in that corner. I see the binds still haven't been fitted to the window there. :)
Thanks, Mom. :) I like the bookshelf there, too. I'll have to post some of the new things we're working on here once we get them finished. (Shelves in the girls' closet, a "new" armoire in our bedroom, my desk moved to the girls' room, etc.)
Yeah, the blinds are still not up. We thought we could get them trimmed at Home Depot but they couldn't do it for us. So now we have to figure out how to trim them ourselves. One of these days...
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