10 Exciting Things About Starting a New School Year!

We start school in three weeks!  I am looking forward to a new year.  Our 14th year of homeschooling!  Here are 10 things I am excited about this year:

1) NOT reinventing the wheel ~ I love to create my own curriculum and come up with my own ideas. However, this year I am going to take a step back and enjoy the many literature unit studies put out by Veritas Press, Beautiful Feet, Prairie Primer, and Beyond Five In A Row.

2) Guiding my two tweens through tweendom peacefully ~  We will be concentrating on the three R's (Responsible, Respectful and Refined).  I hope to continue laying the groundwork for mostly peaceful teen years.

3) Really getting a handle on the dyslexia that is plaguing some of my students ~  We will be done with vision therapy in a few weeks and ready to go through remedial spelling and reading programs this fall.  Hopefully we will make great progress in writing this year.

4) Using Charlotte Mason techniques for art and music ~ We will be studying a different composer and artist each quarter.  I haven't picked our composers yet.  Our artists will be Frank Lloyd Wright, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and N. C. Wyeth.  

5) Getting back to weekly nature study ~  We will be using the Handbook for Nature Study and Barb's blog, Handbook of Nature study.  I made a brand new nature box with all of our supplies for the car so it will be super easy to be organized.

6) Introducing "poetry teas" each quarter ~  Our poets this year will be William Yeats, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, and Robert Frost.

7) Dad taking over our family read aloud books ~  Dad is reading a family read aloud each night now before spending individual time with the kids each evening.  Currently, Daddy is reading Davy Crockett.  This will help a great deal in getting through more classics and history books.

8) Seeing the kids participate in activities that give them public recognition ~ I am trying to encourage good work ethic in several different ways this year.  One way is for the kids to make projects and enter them for public judging.  They will enter the state fair and the Festival of Knowledge (natural history) this year.  Additionally, they will be participating in "The Nutcracker" and "Swan Lake" with our dance studio.

9) Going on field trips ~ We love field trips and hope to do at least one a month.  We are hoping to do some homeschool days within a reasonable driving distance, such as The Biltmore House.


10 ) Starting back to our "out of the home classes" (okay, the kids are way more excited about this one than me) ~ They live for dance and being on the stage.  They are such show biz kids.  I really don't know where they got their love of the stage from ~ it isn't from me!

I am looking forward to getting back to school. But, for now, let's enjoy the slower days of summer.

I am joining ManyLittleblessings.

Blessings, Dawn