2012-2013 Education Plan COMPLETED!!!

We are on our summer/fall book break and I have taken some time to get things reorganized before starting our fall session. I think that I have arrived at the point where we have made the final decisions for the majority of KM's lessons for the next three sessions. AS ALWAYS nothing is set in stone, but each year I feel more comfortable and end up changing less things throughout. I take a lot of time researching and organizing in the beginning to help us feel comfortable and to allow our year to flow.

I will also continue to update the Home Education Through High School Resources page so be sure to check it out!!!

KM's Education Outline

Summer '12 – Spring '13 Sessions 

ELA - Literature & Writing

Classic Fiction including - Little Women, Frankenstein, Yearling, Ethan Frome, Wrinkle in Time, Animal Farm, & Adventures of Huck Finn ~ additionally we will be watching various cinematic versions of each of these when applicable. 
Glencoe Literature Guides

Steck-Vaughn G: Language Arts, Writing
Reading Section from - Steck-Vaughn Complete GED Preparation 

Math

^{Hands on Banking For Teens - Summer Only 
Applying Algebra - Fall - Spring}

Science

Chem Prep Unit 1 of GPB Chemistry Video Resources - Summer Only

Chemistry (Science) 

Various Chemistry related videos which will be listed - HERE 

Social Sciences – U.S. History, Current Events & Geography

A History of US Books 5-9

Story of the US DVD

U.S. History – Basic Not Boring

CNN Student News

Election Study - iCivics Resources

Will of the people - Virtual Field Trip

Health & P.E.

What Do You Stand For? For Teens: A Guide to Building Character 
Bowling
Tennis
Ice Skating

ExerBeat

Electives

Milady's Standard Cosmetology with Theory Workbook & Practical    Workbook

Youth Group

Volunteer Work

Chess Club 
Teen Advisory Group 
Shakespeare Theatre Group

Japanese from Zero!
Japanese 1 - GPB Resources 

Essentially this would be KM's 10th grade year if she were in traditional school.  KM's lighter Summer Schedule - 

and her Fall - Spring Schedule

Recognizing What is Really Important - Thinking about your child's future

Should have known then
 she would want to go
into cosmetology!

There is no time like the present to think about what your child wants in the future. If you have been a reader of my blog for more than a week I am sure that you have seen more than one post about changes that we have made - in curricula, scheduling, hair colors you name it! We are all about changes, going with the flow, following interests and dropping things that just don't work, but I also really REALLY like a plan so that I have a constant direction.

When a parent is looking ahead at their child's home education path they need to have an end goal in mind in order to help their child achieve their goals - be it college, trade school, internships, job skills, entrepreneurship or whatever else they can think of. In order to focus on what is important to the child you need to be aware of their likes and dislikes and allow them to have some say in what they are doing. You also need to be observant of your child and by recognizing their strengths and weaknesses you can often discover at a young age which path might be a good fit for them and help to lead them in the right direction. I am not saying that you can determine at the age of 5 whether a child will be a doctor or a runway model or a gas attendant, but if you pay attention you will be able to acknowledge that your math hating 14 year old will probably never be an engineer.



I hear so many parents complaining about fighting with a child to get work completed, especially when the kids enter the teenage years. The cries of "when am I ever going to use this?" bring frustration and resistance into a relationship at such a critical stage which requires nurturing and continuity. Listen to your child and really think about whether they are likely to "use this" or are you just following someone else's pre-designed plan. More than 90% of people never use the advanced high school math that they were forced to learn in the "real world". That is JUST math. How many adults know how to diagram a sentence, know all of the functions of the organs, can recite the periodic table of elements, can name all 50 states - you homeschool mom's don't count, since you probably learned it while TEACHING it to your kids!!!


I am not discounting any of these as important or not, just using it to point out that different people have different skill sets and different kids have different interests. Families have things that are important to them and parents have some things that they are not willing to bend on for various reasons. You should expose your kids to EVERYTHING, introduce and encourage exploration, but if no spark is lit then what is the point in forcing drudgery and disdain for the topic. This "one path fits all" approach that many homeschoolers start out with really is not much better than school. Not all children are going to head off to college and they shouldn't! We need people who work at the grocery store, at the gas station,on the theater stage,and  to invent the next must have gadget, just as much as we need doctors and engineers. There is no less value in any particular path and all are necessary for our society to function.


So when planning ahead really take into consideration your families fundamental requirements and your child's interests and goals. Don't just follow the status quo, but challenge it and challenge yourself to truly meet the needs of your child!

Last Day of Sailing!!!

KM had her last day of sailing class and the weather couldn't have been more perfect!

Although we will not miss getting up early, KM will really miss this class and hopes they will be willing to run it again in the fall for home learners!!! Lets keep our fingers crossed!

Journey North Mystery Class Locations Revealed!

Today was the big day for the Annenberg Journey North Mystery Classes to be revealed and we didn't too bad!

We were exactly right with #2, 3, & 7 and got the correct countries for #1, 5, 8 & 10. The ones that we got wrong were off by a bit more but not crazy wrong so we are happy with our results! If you joined in on the fun please let us know how you did as well in the comments section!

Looking Ahead to High School - Part 6

If you missed any previous parts HERE is a quick link to them.


Now that we have covered most of the basics, I have been going through my stash to fill in some other things and see what might peek KM's interest in the areas of Health, Physical Education, Nutrition and "elective" subjects. I tend to lump Health and P.E. together, because I feel as though they are one in the same and nutrition fits in quite nicely in that way as well. These are all things that we do and discuss on a regular basis, but KM does actually enjoy delving deeper into some areas.


I came across a kit that I got a while back free from the FDA called Science and Our Food Supply : Investigating Food Safety from the Farm to our Table. Now a majority of people would just take a kit like this and do one of two things, teach it as is without even and thinking OR throw it out the window because how on earth could a biased government agency give a clear and honest outline of something like this? WELL we are going to take this kit dissect it and use it to do our own research and see what we can find out. See how much truth there is to what they are "selling" and what kinds of choices we might need to make differently in order to better ourselves and our family. We are all about questioning and we are both very EXCITED to see what we uncover. 


Along these same lines we will also be looking into another free kit GET IT! - Global Education To Improve Tomorrow, that we got from a non-government agency Heifer International. We will use this program in the same way - dissect take in and research to make our own discoveries. 


As for the Physical Education and Sports aspects, KM is 95% sure that she wants to continue bowling through the summer and is considering doing a 6 week, 2 day a week intensive camp. We will also be continuing with Hiking, Tennis, Yoga, Basketball, Roller Skating and Ice Skating. She has no interest in taking lessons or playing these competitively - other than against me and some of her friends - but she does enjoy playing and doing them for fun. She has also really liked playing some of the newer dance games she has for the Wii which include Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 2  and 3 , Just Dance 2, and Dance on Broadway which are a SERIOUS workout! I also got a fab new yoga and pillates workout game for the wii - New U Fitness First Yoga and Pilates - which is the first one that I TRULY LOVE and I think KM is going to enjoy it as well! 


As for the arts we are hoping KM will be able to continue with her incredible theater group. She also is really enjoying the PBS Art 21 Series which she is viewing through Netflix and she is going to be finishing seasons 3, 4 & 5 over the summer. For music she will be continuing her self-learning on the keyboard, strengthening her voice through the use of Voices 2 Go and the many singing games that she loves, and her guitar and band hero ~ you can see our music picks by checking out our curriculum picks page HERE. 


As for other electives at the moment the only thing she has decided on is to try the Spanish Conversation Demystified, but other than that we are going to wait and see what interests are sparked! FRENCH! After working through several Spanish programs, she has decided to give French a whirl! I have a feeling this is more about working on her accents, but that is fine with me. We have a few random CD-ROM language programs and games that have come with other sets that we have purchased throughout the years and I will probably order French Conversation Demystified with Two Audio CDs if I can't get it on Paperbackswap soon and French DeMYSTiFieD, Second Edition when it becomes available in June.
 


If you have any free resources or suggestions to add please feel free to leave them in the comment section! 

New Found Interest

Our Computer Elective

KM choose to do an elective unit on computers this session so we have been mixing and matching resources together and so far we have had an awful lot of fun taking apart an old laptop...

So far we have been using the Usborne Computer Dictionary, Usborne Computer Graphics and Animation and Brain Pop! It should be really interesting for all of us!

If you have any interesting resources to share - PLEASE DO!

Weather, Weather, Everywhere!

KM has inherited an obsession with weather from her father which for a while she has just been fiddling with her and there, but she asked me if I could come up with something for her to go a bit deeper and here are some of the resources that I have come up with -

• NLP Understanding Weather and Weather Patterns
• A Field Guide to the Atmosphere
• A Golden Guide - Weather
• 1001 Questions Answered About the Weather
• The Handy Weather Answer Book
• Exploring the Sky By Day
• USA Today - The Weather Book
• Investigations in Science - Weather
• Scholastic Atlas of Weather
• JASON Mission Center
• Weather Channel Kids
• FEMA for Kids
• Massachusetts Teacher Domain - Weather Lesson Plans
• BrainPOP - OF COURSE
• Educator's Reference Desk - Meterology

If you have any additional resources to share PLEASE DO!!!

Winter Session 7th Grade Curriculum Picks

As we are drawing our fall session to a close over the next week, I figured it was time to look ahead and finalize the choices we have made for the upcoming Winter Session! Since we are always changing things around here, this is of course a rough guess of what we will be doing. Most of our picks for the fall session worked out rather well, but there are some areas that we needed to tweak a bit. Here is our "intended" outline -

ELA -
We have swapped out our ELA system SEVERAL times in the past two years, but I do think that we have finally made a bit of progress in this area. KM worked through Levels 3 & 4 of Writing Strands rather quickly and decided to work through a few workbooks for latter half of this past session and the next.

• She has been working through 5-Minute Daily Practice Grammar, she tends to do all 5 lessons for the week at once on Monday, but she is getting them all correct, so I guess I can't really complain can I.
• Quick Practice Writing Skills is a bit more of a challenge for her - well it varies day to day. There are some things that she just needs a slight reminder on and others that have never been covered, so when we come to an area that needs to be covered completely we stop and cover it. It seems to be working and she is far less weary of asking for help.
• For writing itself we have gone back to the 3 minute non-stop writing and are using 350 Fabulous Writing Prompts. Some of the prompts are not so fabulous in my opinion, but we just skip those ones and take those days to go back over and review or edit her previous days writings.
• We will also begin working through the Grammar and then Writing on BrainPop.
• For literature we will be using Teacher Created Resources for Tuck Everlasting and The Island of the Blue Dolphin. As well as a Scholastic Book Guide for Around the World in Eighty Days which will coincide with our Geography. KM of course will also be continuing her free time reading - not that I have to worry about that.

Math -

• We will be finishing up The Complete Book of Algebra and Geometry this next session so that she can feel confident when she goes back to the Teaching Textbook for Algebra in the Spring.
• I also thought that it would be fun and interesting to take a look at Women Mathematicians during this session. This book features 15 women and we will spread them out covering one or two a week for the 10 week session.
  

Science -

• We have decided to put off Story of Science again as KM wanted to slow down a bit on her Physics so that she could really investigate each area more closely. So for the next session she will continue with her Physics Workshop Kit from Thames & Kosmos. She will also continue to supplement with Brain Pop.
• We are also going to revisit Chemistry. She had done a bit of it last year at our co-op, but I think we will try to dive a bit deeper this time around. I have gotten a light textbook - Chemistry of Matter - from Paperback Swap and she has agreed to try it. I have the Periodic Table from Basher Science Books - WHICH SHE LOVES! - as a stand by in case the text flops. I have a lot of projects and kitchen chemistry things to add in as well as BrainPop - AGAIN!
  

Social Sciences -

• For history we will be working on Ancient Rome and finishing up volume one of Story of the World. This will also conclude our Giant Lapbook! I will be sure to post all the info on that when it is complete! This will be our final history pocket as well. KM is very happy that we will also be continuing with the Horrible Histories series, which despite mixed reviews from others, has been going over very well with her! We started out with the books, then I purchased the animated series on Ebay and now have been using the resources for the CBBC series.
• We will be finishing up Rand McNally's Intermediate Geography as well as doing a cultural study of each area as it is covered in the book. I am using several other resources for this including Global Trek, Hands-On Heritage series and Art Projects from Around the World.
  

Health -
KM really likes the Learn to Be Healthy site - though some of the content is a bit below her level, most of it seems to be sinking in and she is moving right along through it. They do have a high school level, but I don't think she is ready for that set just yet. She is also working through the Health topics on Brain Pop.


Electives -

• Staying with our strong Science focus - per KM's request - she will be studying weather and meteorology this session. I will be listing our resources for this in a separate post.
• For her foreign language she is going to be doing Spanish. We were lucky enough to get a FANTASTIC deal on Tell Me More by Auralog through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op last summer and she is REALLY enjoying the program. The voice recognition software is great and the homeschool edition has worksheets that you can print off to supplement with. I will be supplementing with two workbooks - Let's Learn Spanish Grades 7 & 8. I also picked up to sticker books that I thought KM & SC could do together. This would help reinforce the basics for KM and would introduce SC to a bit of Spanish as well.
• Music Alive! is still a big hit and we will continue with this through the next session. We also will be taking a look at some opera pieces from Opera for Everyone and will be going to the Boston Lyric Opera's presentation of Barber of Seville.
  
• Piano Adventures is working incredibly! She will be starting on Level 2 and I am amazed and awestruck by how well she is playing with no outside instruction. There was talk of an interest in Flute, but I am not too sure how serious that was...
• She will be continuing with Drama at our co-op and they will be working on another Shakespearean play with music and dancing, but the title has not been disclosed yet!
• We will be continuing to work through the Meet The Masters for our art practical and theory section. She will also continue on her cross stitch work and may start some sewing as she interested in working on her costume for the play this spring.
  

Again I can't stress enough how much of a guideline this is and it is in NO WAY set in stone. I am very open to changing things that are not working and try to make sure that KM feels that she can be honest with me about how she feels something is going.

Weather Center

While I was digging around looking for things to create a weather unit for KM, I came across this freebie at Currclick - Whatever the Weather. It was young for KM but I figured that I would save it to use for clip art or if she wanted to make a weather game or something. Then when I was trying to come up with things to put in the "toddler area" of our class space, I thought it would be perfect to use to create a weather today center.

I made up the background sign myself and then printed it on to cardstock. I used the brown tape to make the square and rectangle so that it would be very easy to see which fit on which spot. I took the word strips and pasted some of the smaller pics to those so that SC could match them up with the larger picture. Then I used magnets that I had left over from something - ?calendar, notepad that was suppose to attach to a fridge? - you don't need to much and if they are too strong little hands will try to rip them and get frustrated. I attached them to the piece on the wall and to the strips and squares. I am thinking I may cover the pieces with clear contact paper or packing tape to reinforce them a bit though as the edges are already getting a bit worn.



We don't do the center everyday because SC is not here everyday and is only 2. If she were older - or when she gets a bit older - we might print out a calendar and record the weather for every day. This could also lead to graphing, prediction, pattern discussions and all sorts of other things. This could also be a great way to incorporate younger siblings and make them feel included in the days work.

Quick easy addition to a morning routine that can expand to lots of different curriculum connections!

Thanks Wendy for asking - I got to it a bit quicker than I thought I would!

Curriculum Picks for Fall Session - 7th Grade - Everything Else

This is the list of everything else that we will be covering!

Foreign Language - Latin
We will be continuing our Latin study at least through the fall and maybe into the winter...

• Learning Latin Through Mythology - two of KM's favorite things rolled into one, where could you go wrong with that?
  
• Minimus Secundus - KM really like the first level of this book, so I figured we should go for it again!
  

Art -
KM loves art and is very excited we are going to be starting Meet the Master which I got another great deal on through Homeschool Buyers Co-op!


Music -
Another one of KM's favorite areas so we have multiple resources here -

• Piano Adventures Series - this covers her lesson books, artistry and technique, theory, performance practice and her favorite - Christmas songs!
• Music Alive!
• Classics for Kids
• Voice Lessons To Go

Health -
We will be continuing to use the free curriculum supplements from NICHD publications. When I found this resource, just over a year ago, I thought it would be just some small little packets or pamphlets. I ordered almost everyone and nearly fell over when they arrived! These are full sets all ready to go into a 3 ring binder and some come with CD-Rom games and online interaction!
We also will probably be using a few of these websites -

• KidsHealth in the Classroom
• Learn to Be Healthy
• Safe Kids
• BBC's PHSE site
  

Term Elective - KM picks a subject area each term that she would like to know more about!
With the newest baby around so much lately KM has become very interested in learning about child development. It is rather tricky to find information for Middle School at this level, but I did manage to find a few things...by searching under Babysitting Skills!

• Babysitting Handbook - American Girl
• 4H - Child Development Set - I was sooooo excited when I found out that you could just order the 4H curriculums and use them at home!
• REAL LIFE BABY IN OUR HOME 2-3 DAYS A WEEK!
• REAL LIFE TODDLER IN OUR HOME 2-3 DAYS A WEEK!

CO-OP Classes
We will be attending our co-op for two classes this fall, as well as a Theater Group with our local homeschool support network. Our first co-op class will be Geography and loosely based on the Trail Guide to World Geography for the mapping aspects and different parents will be responsible each week to provide the cultural aspects that go along with it. The second class will be on Algebraic Reasoning using Family Math for Middle Schoolers and LOTS of math games. The theater group is the same one that she participated in last spring and they will be continuing to do some work on Shakespeare, as well as some monologues and some skits on famous historical times and people.



I think that is it for our fall session line-up. If you missed any of the previous posts just head to the top of the screen and type in curriculum picks and they should pop right up! Don't know how much we will get done or how many times we will change things around, but we are hoping for the best!

It may be quietier around here for the next few weeks as we take a bit of time off in between sessions! Be sure to let us know how your fall is starting out!

7th Grade Curriculum - Preliminary Decisions

As most of you have probably figured out - as I know I have stated it SEVERAL times - I am a HUGE planner, I need to feel like I have a game plan and though I am open to flexibility and wiggle room, I NEED to know that I have something set and ready to go! So before the warm weather gets here for real, I want to make sure that I have everything planned out for next year.

For the most part I have known for a while what we would be doing, but there were some final choices that I think I have committed to. So here is what KM's 7th Grade Curriculum will look like -

Summer Session - Yes we do continue our lessons during the summer, but it is on a much lighter scale. KM and I sat down and tried to figure out what she thought would be manageable and what I would agree to as enough. Here is what we came up with:

Daily:
Summer Bridge Activities - This is a review type book that has different activities each day, but helps you kinda stay on track. Most of the things are fun activities and she has been doing them for YEARS now so she figured why change something that has worked for such a long time.

Egyptian Study - if we keep at the pace we are right now with our History timeline study we should be right at Egypt when we start the Summer session. I have TONS of projects, resources, sites, kits and books for this which I think I will list separately. This will be an ongoing thing throughout the summer that I didn't really want to schedule in so we will be working on this bit by bit throughout the session.

Mondays:
Cooking - We will be using the Usbourne Internet Linked Children's World Cookbook - to travel the globe through food. We will also be going to our local farmer's markets to get local produce of the season to cook with as well as using the bounty from our own garden!

Tuesdays:
Geography - along with our world food travels, we will be using Brighter Child Geography Grade 6 which we did not have a chance to get to during this last year's studies.

Wednesday:
ELA - we have been using Scholastics Scope Magazine since last fall, but we could never manage to get to all of it, so we decided to save the reader's plays and the extra worksheets for the summer.

Thursday:
Science - I don't know how long ago it was, but at some point I picked up a copy of Homework Survival Guide: Science and I came across it when we were cleaning out our books over the winter. We decided to use it as a review and do one chapter a week for the summer. We will also be incorporating lots and LOTS of projects to go with each one so be sure to swing by for Science Thursdays starting in July. I think that this will really bring KM up to speed with the basic knowledge that she was SOOOOO lacking from her time at PS.

Fridays:
Math - another book that we just didn't get to as much as we would have liked was Fast Finishers Math so we thought this would be a good time to finish it up!


Starting in the Fall she will be doing -

Math - Teaching Textbooks was such a HUGE hit this year that I will stray from it! She will be starting Algebra 1 in the fall.


ELA - She will be doing 5-minute Daily Grammar - which should help to straighten out some of those things that really just need some repetition to get down. Also upon recommendation by a very good friend, countless internet searches and a LONG discussion with KM we have decided to give Writing Strands a try. We will be starting her off at Level 3 and she is very excited about the way that it is truly written to the student. It also has VERY little prep work for me! I also have on the back burner, Writing Survival Skills for the Middle Grades - which the same friend recommended and I lucked out and found on Paperback Swap! Also a great Paperback Swap find was World Smart Junior which will be in place of a formal vocabulary program.

Literature/Reading Comprehension - For fiction we will be using literature units from Teacher Created Resources. To start we will be doing The Cricket in Times Square, Island of the Blue Dolphin, Bridge to Terabithia and Tuck Everlasting. For non-fiction we will be using a workbook called As a Matter of Fact which seems like it will be a very good fit.

History - We will be continuing our timeline study using the Complete Book of World History as our time-line spine and we will probably begin with Ancient China in the fall. I will list these resources separately as well.

Geography - Our coop group is thinking of doing a full year Geography program, focusing on a different continent each session. This will be a GREAT way for the kids to learn about this in a group setting! I will be sure to post more about this as it develops as well.

Cultural Studies - In the fall we will be focusing on a Thanksgiving Unit that we got from Plimoth Plantation called Investigating the First Thanksgiving which helps to clarify what really happened at the first Thanksgiving and what it was really like for the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. Then we will use several resources to dive deep into the cultures of Southeast Asia, Japan, and Mexico and Central America.

Science - We have a large mismatch group of things that KM really wants to cover for Science next year. We will be starting out with the Basher Series which looks like they are going to be rather enjoyable reading, then we will be using the MOS designed Engineering is Elementary Program, a variety of free electricity resources that we ordered from National Grid and a unit on Inventions and Inventors. We will also be supplementing with a new site that I found through Homeschool Buyers Co-op called Adaptive Curriculum. Once she has all these things done I think she will have a very good basis to start some of the higher level sciences.

Foreign Language Studies - We will be sticking with Latin next year and will be using Minimus Secundus: Moving on in Latin as well as Learning Latin Through Mythology. I am already seeing a huge improvement with KM's word recognition and decoding roots since we started the Minimus: Starting out in Latin.

Art - we will be using a program that looks really intriguing called Meet the Masters. KM is a bit nervous about having to reproduce masterpieces, but I think once she starts and sees that it is really more about the techniques that she will really enjoy the program!

Music - KM is still loving the keyboard so we will be continuing with Piano Adventures. I also came across this rather interesting classroom magazine called Music Alive and for $9 I got all 8 issues of this past years magazines, which feature a current artistic from a different genre each month. KM is so into music that I couldn't pass up a deal like that! We will also continue to utilize the incredible monthly content at Classics for Kids. I am seriously considering signing her up for private keyboard lessons, but I am worried that this may deter her natural drive that she seems to be following. She reads music incredibly and truly enjoys playing, so I will just wait and see if she starts to peak off or has trouble just using the books on her own.


So that is our 7th grade plan - I hope we will stick to it, but if you are a regular reader I would guess that bets are being placed as to when the first change will occur! It feels good to have it all laid out in front of me though and I think that I have found a really good balance of what KM wants and what CJ and I feel that she really NEEDS.

Moving right along -

is what our week has been doing. I can't believe it is Wednesday night already! Our spring session began on Monday and it is going really well. KM seems to be enjoying doing science everyday. We are using a new series for us from Usborne called Adventures of the Human Body in Ten Terrific Weeks. She really likes the shorter lessons and the hands on charts, projects and interactive websites. We are also making a collage on an area of wall in the playroom where she can display all that she is learning - kinda like a HUGE lapbook. I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of the program and am going to be looking into the Knighthood one once we get into the Middle Ages. It gives a really good outline using books that you can easily get through most library networks.

Another new thing we are trying is doing the Writing Tales lessons twice a week - we had been doing the full weeks lesson all in one day on Friday, so that it took her two weeks to get through the story as it is meant to be done. Now we are doing one on Wed and one on Fridays so that she gets the first and second drafts of the story done all in one week. This will allow her to finish the program by the end of this spring session and then she can decide if she wants to move on to level 2 or go onto a different writing program. KM has always detested writing! She would dictate things to me with no problem so I had always thought that it was the actual physical writing,but I am beginning to think it was more about the pressure of it being accurate and creative that would get to her. With this progymnasmata writing program she really seems to be becoming much more confident in her writing. It doesn't take her nearly as long to get it done and there have been fewer and fewer mistakes lately. That is why we decided to move it up to twice a week - she feels she can handle it. Although this curriculum is below "grade level" in comparison to everything else that she is doing, it has really been a perfect fit for her to gain the confidence that she needed. I think I am going to try to convince her to do the second level starting next fall and then move on to more essay and expository type writings after that. I don't think she will give me much of a hassle with it, but this is one area that I feel I don't want to rush through as I am seeing such a huge amount of progress.

We also decided to do away with spelling and vocabulary in the traditional sense. We are incorporating vocabulary into literature, using Number2.com daily and we are continuing with Latin using the Minimus program which I managed to get through Paperback Swap - SCORE! It amazes me how much she has already picked up and how quickly she has begun to really get the roots. She has also been using Word Coach on the Wii and Spelling Challenge for her DS. It amazes me how many educational games there are out there for things that I never would have thought of! It makes life so much easier when they are truly enjoying the things that can get so monotonous!

Our local homeschool coop is finishing up for the season and we will be having our closing ceremony this coming Monday, which will include the older kids performing in Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights Dream. They have been working on it since January and have really done a great job! They are all so excited about the upcoming performance and are already talking about doing one again next year! It is so amazing to see such a truly great group of "tweens" who are thoroughly enjoying Shakespeare!

Our other programs are all pretty much moving along the same as they had been -

• Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra is still holding up to our expectations and likings
• we are continuing on in our timeline of history - we are just getting into the First Humans and the beginnings of Civilization and are supplementing the text with lots of living books and projects from Ancient Science.
• KM is moving right along through the Piano Adventures series and still loving it!
• Next week we will for Health will be starting another NIDA free program called Brain Power! and KM will starting an astronomy unit - hopefully as a cooperative thing with one of her friends.
  

All and all things really are just moving right along! Now if the weather could just move right along into spring we would all be perfectly sublime!

Determination

She has been diligently practicing and greatly improving all on her own!

I am extremely proud of how committed she has been to this lately!
She is using the Piano Adventure Series ~ which I was very lucky enough to get from Paperback Swap ~ she LOVES it and I can see her confidence building as she moves through the units!
As you can see she has her inspirational poster RIGHT next to the keyboard!