The Best-Laid Plans

Hooray! All of the homeschooling books and materials are finally here. My best-laid plans are made. The notebooks are organized. The school room is on its way to being finished and ready with the correct books on the shelves, while I weed out a few extraneous things as I settle finally on what we will use this year in our studies.

I have high hopes for the coming school year, like I do every year. This year, though I have put much more time into planning, and my biggest goal for the year is to bring more diligence to our daily work. Diligence in myself is going to be the biggest hurdle of all, I think.  I know that our plans will not be followed to the letter, since there really is never a "typical" week with four children all learning at home, a pastor's unpredictable schedule, and the knowledge that there will be areas where we will have to re-evaluate and make adjustments to our plans.  But, grace.

With grace and diligence at the forefront of my mind, here are my grand plans for the coming year.

Morning Time

I've been doing a lot of reading and listening to podcasts about adding a regular morning time with the children all together to do the things that instill honor, beauty, and truth into our hearts.  So we will begin each day with a rotating basket-full of things to do together.

Bible reading
Poetry memorization using IEW's Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization
Working through A Midsummer Night's Dream using How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, and moving on to other Shakespeare plays as we finish.
Artist and Musician Studies
Nature Walks


The Eighth-Grader

Our eighth-grade son will continue his work on becoming more diligent in his studies, while also delving deeper into his areas of passion.  He is a big chemistry buff, so he will finish working through Ellen McHenry's The Elements and Carbon Chemistry.  And he is currently reading some works of fiction about an element hunter named Itch.

He will continue using the Life of Fred series for mathematics. He is about mid-way through Beginning Algebra, and will move on to Advanced Algebra when he finishes that.  We may revisit the Elementary Physics book as well, if he finishes his chemistry work early.

He will be focusing on the Middle Ages in history this year, using the resources from History Odyssey for the logic stage.

He will begin a high-school vocabulary textbook and move away from simply spelling words, as well as continuing his study of Latin using First Form Latin from Memoria Press.  We will also use Fix-It Grammar from IEW to reinforce grammar and good writing form with the two older kids working together.

We will also spend the first semester working hard at the free Mensa for Kids writing resource, aiming for competence in writing essays and reports.

The second semester will be spent delving into logic using the resource The Art of Argument. (Though I'm not sure I want to teach him to argue any more than he already does!)

He will continue his study of martial arts, specifically Shuri-Ryu Karate and Weapons classes, as well as some reading on the topic and working on learning more Japanese. (We may ask for Uncle Marc's help, here!)  He will also attend the local middle school every day to play trombone with the eighth-grade band.

The Fourth/Fifth-Grader

Our almost-ten-year-old daughter will be working this year on continuing the basics, and moving into more in-depth studies.  She will be doing her first year of in-depth history study of the Middle Ages, also using History Odyssey, but at the grammar level.

Science will be done together with her younger sister, studying zoology and anatomy using Elemental Science's living book series called Sassafras Science.  I'm pretty sure she will take a detour to spend some extra time on marine mammals, since that is one of her passions.

She will begin using the Phonetic Zoo for spelling, work with her brother on the IEW grammar books, and continue daily writing assignments while she works diligently to master the basics of language.

She will begin the upper-level Life of Fred math books beginning with Fractions. She's a mathy girl, so I believe she'll work quickly through them.

She will continue competitive swimming through the Toledo YMCA. She has made some great friends, and is in excellent condition from all that time in the pool!

The First-Grader

Our seven-year-old will continue to build upon her basic skills, focusing on reading fluency by reading lots of fun books together.  She will probably begin formal spelling this year, but we won't be sure which resources we will use until we try a couple to see which fits best between All About Spelling and Spelling Workout.  She will finish the second half of Peace Hill Press's First Language Lessons.  We still use the older version that is a non-consumable book containing the first two years of grammar basics.

She will begin Math U See Alpha this year, with the hope that using more hands-on manipulatives and video instruction will help get her over the hump with basic math.

We will add in studies in Middle Ages history with The Story of the World, and working with her older sister on life science activities.

She will also continue taking karate lessons like her brother, but is still at the age where we like to let them experiment with different extracurriculars to find the one that they like best.


It sounds like a lot, and it is!  You can see, though, that as each child gets older and more capable of independent work, we can add more and still enjoy time together in the afternoons before the evening rush to activities begins.

Monday is the day!  Here's to the best school year we can have.

Grace, Grace, Grace

   There's nothing like opening my dusty blog titled, "Growing in Grace" to start a new school year with high hopes for resurrecting this space, only to remember suddenly that I have a son who needed to be picked up at the high school!  Grace, grace. I made it on time just to see him walking out the door. Grace, grace.

   Normally, I would have been beating myself up for my forgetful, distracted ways, but today, I chose grace.  Really.  This is a new thing.  Maybe I am growing. I'm not saying that I shouldn't set myself an alarm every day so I don't do it again, but today I chose to remember that it's only the second day of this new schedule, that it's totally OK not to be perfect.  I am working on that perfection idea. God doesn't ask me to be perfect, just to be faithful.

    This is not the post I came here to write.  I came to write up my plan for the coming homeschool year.  And I will do that.  I will do it imperfectly.  The school year will not go perfectly according to my hard work of planning the curricula, the schedule, the speed at which we will move and learn.  And hopefully, I will continue to choose grace for myself and for my children as we begin this year with a first-grader, fifth-grader and eighth-grader.  Grace, grace, grace.

   If you're looking for encouragement for the coming homeschool season, you must read the book Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie.  It is transforming my thinking about teaching my children.