Ready, Set... GO!

So tomorrow (yes, Sunday) is the first day of our new semester. I wrote up a basic plan for the week, a relatively simple plan, one that can be adjusted since we seem to have a lot of "extras" on the calendar this week as well.

So here's tomorrow's "agenda"... I am really hoping all goes well, and that we enjoy as well as learn, though I readily admit I am nervous, going from more or less unschooling to much more schooly:

For The Boy (though The Girl will likely listen in): A story from D'Aulaires Greek Myths

For The Girl (while The Boy works on a brief summary of the above): Chapter 1 in Kaya's World

For both:

Chapter 1 in The Human Odyssey, Volume 1

A chapter from Breakthroughs in Science OR a chapter from The Tarantula in My Purse (OR both?)

A fun art activity from KinderArt. The kids actually did this same project back in 2007, so it'll be interesting to see the differences!

An introduction to our composer of the month - Handel

Watching another episode of Wild Africa (geography). We might also read a bit in Halliburton's Book of Marvels.

Some reading from String, Straight-edge & Shadow.

And, last but not least, we'll start The Magician's Elephant.

The kids are working on choosing books for a book review each. A local bookstore will be displaying homeschoolers' book reviews in their main window later this month, so I've asked the kids to work with me on forming one each as I think it is a great opportunity to share their enthusiasm for a good book! The Boy will be writing much of his own, and then I'll help polish it (checking grammar, spelling, etc.), while The Girl will likely narrate hers to me, which I will then type up.

I did look again at writing programs, like Writing With Ease, IEW's multitude of offerings, and so forth, but decided we'll stick with the Brave Writer Lifestyle for the most part (The Boy may do some work in Igniting Your Writing and/or Writing Strands, but I'm not positive about this yet). I am choosing a monthly "focus" to work on once or twice a week... after the book reports it will be poetry, with Pizza, Pigs & Poetry: How to Write a Poem. Another month we'll do letter writing, then another will be paragraph structure, and so forth.