back to school, 2015.

It's been fun this week seeing all the Michigan families posting their back to school photos.  We've been back at it for four weeks now, two weeks after the local public & charter schools here in Arizona have been back at school.  It's hard to believe it's already the end of summer (especially since we're still having highs in the 100s here!), but here we are.

We started our school year here on August 17.  Joshua is a ninth grader.  Crazy how fast they end up being in high school.  Jesse is doing 7th/8th grade.  He's kind of been a little ahead, hence the slash between grades.  And Naomi is in sixth grade this year... so surreal to have our youngest be this big now.  Wow.

The obligatory first day of school pic.  6th, 7th/8th and 9th grades this year.

It seemed like a group selfie was in order, since we spend our days together doing school.

Our first nature walk of the school year.  Charlotte Mason was really big into nature walks, and we haven't been very good about doing them the past couple school years.  So this year, we are doing them on Fridays, our lightest day of the week.  It was a bit hot that first week but as we get farther into the school year, it will be nicer.

Jesse was sitting on a swing while drawing a plant.

Naomi with the flower she'd drawn.

Since 2008, the bulk of our what we do has been a Charlotte Mason-style education using Ambleside Online.  It's our eighth year using AO and we love it.  We learn so much from using living books in this curriculum... among many that we are using, we read Shakespeare and Plutarch every week.  I have never learned so much history (and loved it!) as I have since we've been doing Ambleside.  (And I'm just the teacher!)  We continue to use A Beka for Language and Arithmetic, and Apologia Science.  

So far, we're enjoying getting back into the routines that school entails.  It's not been perfect but that's the way life is, isn't it?  We're working out the kinks and getting ourselves settled into new systems for making our school days more effective.  I'm excited to be on this homeschooling journey with our family.