Would It Be Wrong...

of me to try to talk Cyrus into staying with Saxon rather than switching to Teaching Textbooks? It's just that I already have Saxon 6/5 and 7/6.

Hmmm.

Oh, and thanks for the compliments on the new blog look! I played around with it a little more, obviously, and I'm really happy with it!

Wishing....

My boy the happiest twelfth birthday ever!

It is an honor and a joy to be your mom, Cyrus! You are creative, funny, and so smart it scares me sometimes. I love you more than words can ever say!

MY Summer Plans...

I do have some goals for myself, mainly reading/re-reading, now that I am done with the classes I was taking, and have graded my last stack of papers until fall.

First, reading-related goals...

Goal One:
Re-read The Writer's Jungle and the Brave Writer Lifestyle Articles, and decide if we really need Writing With Ease and Writing With Skill (for what it is worth, Cyrus says he'd rather have me teach him than a book do the work). My issue is, BW looks like more "fun" and it would give me a chance to use some of the stuff I have laying about the house, while WWS looks very thorough. I also want to research more about the Elson Readers and the accompanying Teacher Guides/Workbooks for Cassia.

Goal Two:
Finish re-reading Charlotte Mason's Home Education

Goal Three:
Read at least 4-6 books/assigned readings from my gigantic college reading list

And then non-reading-related goals...

Goal One:
Finish taking all the carpeting out of the house

Goal Two:
Clean out the garage

Goal Three:
Get everything set for homeschooling again in mid-August, which includes ordering any supplies (not much thankfully), cleaning out and organizing bookshelves, and getting the rest of the house nicely organized

Goal Four:
Take the kids on some fun field trips!!

Thankfully, I have 5 weeks off from work to help me accomplish all this. Of course, during that five weeks off, we'll also be heading to the beach a few times, going swimming with friends, maybe get in a couple of long weekends of camping.... I am really looking forward to it!

Weekly Report: Finding Balance...

image courtesy of craftgawker

While this was a [purposely] light week, it was a good one. It gave us time to make goals for the rest of this school year, and to figure out where we're going down the road. And, I was able to let go of all the history and science plans that frankly drive me batty.

Following up on yesterday's post, I took the kids to the library, along with the new guidelines:
1 science book (per week)
1 biography/autobiography (per two weeks)
1 book of poetry (per week or two)

We'll add in history and music/art a little later on, since I have history all planned out for the rest of this year.

I expected maybe a little resistance on being told what to check out, but to my pleasant surprise, there was none! And actually, they seemed to enjoy finding books that fit these categories! A couple of the books we had to place on hold, namely the biographies... Cyrus has chosen to learn about Henry Ford, and Cassia wants to know more about Amelia Earhart. We're using this fabulous list of "Messner Biographies" as a source for well-written, in-depth, but still fun to read biographies.

They also found poetry, Cassia discovered the Scientists in the Field series, and Cyrus is going to continue reading through the Secrets of the Universe series.

image courtesy of thegospelcoalition

So I think, at long last, I have found balance, somewhere between schooling and unschooling!  Child-and-interest-led, within parameters. Besides this giving them freedom to explore their own interests, I think it builds responsibility--they are taking ownership of their own educations.

So, what did we do this week, besides figure some stuff out?

We read about early lawsuits surrounding the manufacture of cars. We enjoyed egg-laying. We traveled to Hogwarts with Harry Potter, and to Frankfurt with Heidi. We read about herons and egrets, after seeing some on Mother's Day. We watched a couple of episodes from season one of Downton Abbey (I've got the kids hooked at last!), and discussed civil rights and art during and after watching Pleasantville. The kids played a lot on their scooters, and did chalk paintings all over the driveway. We sprouted corn for our garden, and bell peppers.

Oh, and Cyrus and I (maybe Cassia will tag along) signed up for The History of Rock Part I through Coursera. If you haven't looked at Coursera, you should! From their website: 
"Coursera is an education company that partners with the top universities and organizations in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free."

Since we're a week "behind" in signing up, we have a little catching up to do over the weekend, but we're pretty excited about this. We're looking at future courses on archeology, Beethoven, from the Big Bang to Dark Matter, and so on.

Next week we dive back into the depths of homeschooling... six weeks to go, then we'll take somewhere between six and eight weeks off.

Hope you all had a good week!