Back to the Books

Our June break is over and we have started our new homeschool year. We are starting our 6th year of homeschooling!!! Yay!!!! Mirror is in 6th and McGyver is in 4th.

Our homeschooling philosophy is still fairly relaxed. Our goal is for our children to be able to reason and express themselves clearly, rather than be able to recite a meaningless litany of dates and facts.

Here's the current plan for the 2009-2010 year.

Math- We're sticking with Saxon. Math 5/4 and Math 6/5. It works for us.
Reading/Language Arts- We've taken our sweet time working through English for the Thoughtful Child, vols. 1 and 2. Mirror will finally finish these books this year. I prefer to approach writing and grammar from a relaxed standpoint, teaching her how to express herself with writing without the grammar "drill and kill". If she reads and writes enough, she'll connect with the grammar along the way. I know, shocking talk from a former English teacher!

McGyver is still a struggling reader, we are working on improving his fluency. I am making an effort to find things for him to read that fit his current interests-- it seems to motivate him to keep working at his reading skills.
Spelling words and vocabulary will come from our reading. I have a few biographies and some historical stories planned, but we will also read as much non-fiction as possible. Most students do not read enough non-fiction, which is vital for college-bound students.

We had a hard time finishing our US history curriculum last year, so we'll finish that up and go back to Story of the World and get as much world history in as we can. We are keeping history notebooks that are a hybrid of notebooking and lapbooking.

Science is easy. With a year-round garden to tend, too many animals and two acres of bugs and creepy crawlies to collect, we can always find something to learn about and record in our nature notebooks. We are going to work on taking better observational notes and learn how to write science reports. To fill in the blank spots, I'm looking forward to using Energy and Simple Chemistry from this series . I'd really like to get the full set and go through all of the books this year.

We're going to start composer study to supplement the piano lessons that Mirror and McGyver are taking. Their piano teacher has given me a few composers she'd like to see them learn about. She is also going to work with them on a few hymns that they can eventually play at church.

Feels like we are just picking up where we left off at the end of May. Just sliding back into our school routine like putting on a pair of comfortable, broken-in shoes. This is the first time I've felt that way. I like it.

July In The Garden

I'm clearing out, cleaning up and planting again. Yep, I'm planting another garden. Our first frost is about Nov. 15th, so we have just over 4 months to get a second crop in. The summer heat will help the plants germinate quickly. By the time the plants are ready to fruit, it should be cooler, which will help with better production.

All of the green and yellow wax beans are gone and I've planted three Roma tomato plants in their place. We've had fresh tomatoes until Thanksgiving before, so I'm hoping the new tomato plants will help with that goal.

The squash bugs were getting pretty bad, so all of my zucchini plants are gone. Now it's time for some new varieties of beans that I want to learn more about, cantaloupe and pumpkins. When this garden is done in October/November, we'll start working on the winter garden.

This year-round garden/harvest project has been a great learning experience so far.

Before, During and After

Before:


During:

After:

This is what I've been doing! I made it to the local berry farm in time to get the last of the blackberries at a discount. They couldn't wait, they had to become jam or be frozen pretty quick. My new food mill made quick work of the tomatoes! Sure wish I had one of those last year! I froze the puree, I'll wait a bit to can tomato sauce when it is a much cooler.

We are out of homemade jam and I refuse to buy it when I've got plenty of fruit available. I took some of last year's sliced pears that I canned and turned them into jam. Soooo good! Jam is not at all hard to make and so much better than the store bought stuff! You can control the amount of sugar when you make your own.

I finally made bread and butter pickles with the cucumbers I grew. It was a bit of a challenge, waiting to grow enough pickles to can, without the first ones that were ripe going soft. Guess I need more plants next time.

No more canning until Hard-Working-Hero brings home a refilled propane tank so I can work outside. Canning jam and pickles in the house does not take long, but that pot of boiling water really heats up the house.

Shelled peas and whole peppers are bound for the freezer. The peppers are so easy to freeze: wash them , bag them and freeze them! I wait until I need one to chop it up.

Glean a Few Ideas for Homeschooling

I came across a few homeschooling sites that may be helpful to you in adding a creative spark to your homeschooling program. I love gleaning ideas that fit our family's interests from sites like these.

The Creative Homeschool

Interactives - free interactive units in a variety of curricular areas at all grade levels.

Word Duck - play hangman or complete an online word search using the word list that you create. Sounds good as an extra spelling activity.

Mini Offices- I think we'll create these for the coming school year. I love Mrs. Meacham's site, she is a creative teacher. Many homeschool moms forget to take a look at classroom teacher web sites for ideas.

Life Comes Full Circle

When I was a kid, I used to complain about driving from California to Texas just to sit on my grandparent's front porch and shell the peas my grandfather had grown in his huge garden. Now I'm in Texas, shelling peas that I grew in my garden. I grew up with both sets of grandparents living creatively frugal country lifestyles. I'm thankful it rubbed off on me.

Note to self: Buy peas for planting by the pound at the feed store instead of buying seed packets. Must plant 10x more peas next summer.

Found My Old Drapes

I just couldn't help changing my blog background when I found this one that reminds me of a set of drapes I used to have hanging in the living room. Funny reason to change a background! I was missing the picture of our front porch as well, so it's back too.

I found a treasure trove of free blog backgrounds at Simply Blog It Backgrounds. Scroll down the sidebar and you'll see links to tons more free background sites. You might find your old drapes too!