Our new school year!

I am so excited, all of my books came this week and I am getting ready to start our new year in school. My oldest son is 5 and will begin kindergarten using My Fathers World. He is excited and that makes me even more excited. My daughter is going to start second grade and will be using My Fathers World, Wordly Wise, Learning Language Arts through Literature and Math U See. They are both excited about starting school and that makes it even more exciting for me! My only challenge is trying to figure out how to get it all done with both kids. Trying to keep Tra focused and Joyona working on her work. I think I am going to try a timer for our son, he does well when he knows how long he has to sit and work. The good thing about this year is we are schooling all year long, so we will work for 4 weeks then take a week off. So, if I need to change anything I can do it on our break. I am also going to only write out 4 weeks of lesson plans. This way I don't get too overwhelmed and if I need to change things I have the time to do it, and don't have to re-write out the entire year. So, now I have to un-box everything and organize it, and make out the first 4 weeks of lesson plans, then we will be ready to start on August 31st!

Getting ready?

This has been my first year homeschooling my daughter and it has been a long and interesting year. During the Christmas holiday I decided to school all year. It is working out so much better for us in the long run. However, we are still finishing up our school year. We are not really behind, just not where I wanted to be. After looking at what was left to do, we will be finished completely with our first year on August 10th and I am so excited! Now, before I get too excited, we are going to start back up with our next year of school on August 31st. This way I will be able to keep a schedule of 4 weeks of school and 1 week off. We are going to take an entire week off for Thanksgiving, 3 weeks off for Christmas and 2 weeks off for spring break. We will end the year at the end of July 2010 with the month of August off to play! Since it is the end of July, I am getting ready for the next year and the more I get ready the more excited I am getting. I put together my calendar last night so I have written down exactly which weeks we are doing school and which weeks we are "off". I have written out everything I need to buy so I can begin to buy it as I have the funds available. I have to confess that I love buying school supplies this time of year too. Walmart had a great sale last week and I bought some things that probably could have waited, but I was just so excited that I got them anyway. Even my oldest son is getting excited to start his first year of Kindergarten this year. I am so blessed to be able to stay at home and teach my children and even when the days are hard, and my patience is wearing thin, I try to remind myself that "this too shall pass" and "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength!"