Updates!

After reading through my comments this morning I realized that I really do need to update this blog. ;) (And FYI Jen and Charity - my birthday is tomorrow. lol) This have been SO busy! We've finally just calmed down this weekend, and it was a very determined effort to do that. C was sick this weekend which kept us home, but we did dodge some other committments for Sunday even before we realized that she wasn't going to be feeling well. Our oldest now has it unfortunately!

What's going on around here...

A has gotten settled nicely. She's still living with most of her things in the garage, but we're working on that. My plan for this week is to get the den cleared out and start on C's room so that she has a good space of her own. The den will become more of a "family" area than a school area which will allow us to bring in A's couch (temporarily stored at a neighbor's.) This will hopefully make enough room that my kitchen table can be a "project" table in the corner and A's kitchen table can come out of the garage into the kitchen. Whew. I'm tired just thinking of the juggling. :) All in all we'll make it work. One task at a time.

We made it through C's first year of testing! Yea! We chose to use the Woodcock-Johnson III this year rather than going through a portfolio review. Let me just say right here and now that it was so much easier on me this year! Our tester was great, and C really enjoyed it. It's a very different test as the majority of it is oral rather than written, and to avoid frustration kids are tested on what they do know not forced to go through the motions of a set battery of questions even beyond the end of their knowledge. I loved it. Even better, I walked away with a nice little stack of papers and a discussion that gave me a lot of insight into how my kid learns and retains info as well as the typical areas of stregnth and weakness. (Let's just say we'll be having a lot of geography fun this year after!) We've been wondering whether or not we're headed in the right direction with planning, and this really truly turned out to be a big help. Which leads us to our changes...

DH has always been a strong advocate of interest-led unit studies. He doesn't believe in winding our way willy nilly throughout her education, but even plans can be loose and based on the kid's interests and needs. I have been the hold out because quite frankly I'm a box checker. :) I like checking those boxes knowing that we made it from point A to point B in a logical - make that chronological - path. After really looking at what she learned and how she learned it, along with various other things, we decided to make a big switch this year. I've long tried to ignore the fact that my kid is an immersion learner like I am, but now we're going to go with it. Enter Konos! When you add together all of the features of Konos I really think that it will work well for us. It has the hands on aspect that works well for her as well as the ability to immerse herself in a topic as far as she needs to go. I don't have so many rules and too much structure so that halfway through the year I'm fighting to plan my own, but it isn't so much planning that it will take me till September to plan the first unit. Add in character trait work and a good Biblical foundation, and I'm sold.

I've added a column on the side ---> showing the units that we're going to work through this year. We chose to start with Volume 1 of Konos because it contained character traits that we need to focus on as well as topics that carry a lot of interest. It didn't hurt that it also has a unit on Kings and Queens/feudal system which will fulfill my chronological need at the moment. (Hey, we did ancient history last year so it just fits well!) We noticed some issues with attention during the test, so we're going to focus on that this year. As our proctor pointed out, if we start with topics that hold her interest she'll be more attentive, then we move into other topics and areas once the habit is established. I LOVED that tid bit! It makes so much sense and is something that I should have recognized, but just didn't. I also loved that while she took C's ADD into account she didn't attribute this to it. We take a "no excuses" attitude with things. It might mean finding a work around to a problem, but it doesn't mean that you can just skip the problem all together.

I didn't schedule breaks in this year not because we're not taking them, but because we're not good at taking them when they are scheduled. ;) We'll simply work through the list as much as we can before next summer, and then we'll continue through it again when we're ready. I'm sure that some will take less time and others more than planned, and we might even move things around a bit or change it up. Example: C originally asked to complete a unit on "Crime and Punishment" first. I think she just wanted to learn about famous criminals. lol But, after really thinking on it she chose horses which will then fly into cowboys and the Pony Express after a few weeks of animal anatomy, breeds and training, and horses in art/history. I might even schedule a nice wrap up day trip to the Kentucky Horse Park. We're both looking forward to a good unit.

My stress is actually very low compared to where I thought I'd be after a switch like this. After all, I had already purchased EVERYTHING for this year. Some we'll save, some we'll sell, and some we'll use. We've decided on a new math program, but I'll post on that this afternoon in a new post. Spanish will stay the same. Geography will change as will literature and history/science. It's been a long time since I've had this much peace about what we're using though. It feels good!

Now, if I can just resist the temptation to buy the other two Konos volumes and arrange everything chronologically. lol Nah, we'll be fine. I did buy a good, bound time line book though. :)

More later - I promise!