Back to School

As we attempt to get back into a school time routine (good or bad) I have cut back on my work by delegating the supervision of all the other bookkeepers to someone else.  I can already feel the relief!  And I am weaning the boys back on electronics.  This weekend I said "no" to extra iPad time, and guess what?  They actually found something else interesting to do.  (I knew they would...)

Cole modified some of his Lego creations.

And they both decided water and balloons were just begging to be "tested".  Here's a couple of videos of the whole thing.  

The one below is a link to Dropbox (the file was just too large for blogspot.)

CLICK HERE for 2nd VIDEO

Last night I told them to shut off all electronics around 8:30pm.  They pulled out a board game and happily played together in their room until bedtime.  Very nice!

So today we started school and all in all, it went well.  We have a plan of attack.  We have the curriculum lined up.  The boys are working together nicely.  Day One complete!  Now all we need is follow through....

For my homeschooling friends, Abeka online academy last year was not as successful as I had hoped.  Since both boys had completely separate curriculum and teachers, it was actually more headache for me, rather than less.  Oh well: Live and learn.

This year we are using "Life of Fred" for math.  They've been progressing quickly through the elementary levels this summer.  The LoF lessons are short and easily digestible.  Not to mention quite zany, and if you've never heard a kid laugh out loud at the problems in their math book, well, it is a treat!  I also downloaded a bunch of math-fact worksheets and we have flashcards, of course.

Cole works on Life of Fred

We are utilizing some of the Abeka materials for history and reading.  Plus mixing in some Christian Heroes books from YWAM.  Then I bought a new writing curriculum (Write Shop) that I had used in the past with Aldan.  It's fairly creative and teaches the writing process with each project over the course of 3 weeks.  That sounds doable to me.

Fold N Go grammar guides - this week, an easy review of punctuation

We are signed up for piano lessons again (this is year 2.) Then I am using AmblesideOnline.org Year 5 as a framework for making our way through the Life of Christ (N.T.) and Prophets/Kings (O.T.) in our daily Bible work.  Was pretty cool this morning watching and listening to the boys while they first FOUND the book and verse to read, then alternated reading from the book of Luke.  It was just awesome!

And for the boys' favorite subject: Science...we are studying Apologia Anatomy and Physiology, which we also started this summer.  I have Art lessons built into each week too (which is another subject they both like.)

Keaton works on Art

Keaton's lesson on perspective

Cole's woodpecker drawing

Would love to throw in some foreign language...we have Rosetta Stone Spanish around here somewhere...and swimming lessons.  But we'll see how we can fit it all in.  Today went splendidly thanks to a lot of prep and prayer beforehand.  I was able to work for 4 hours and create a blogpost as well.  Now, if we can just keep this up for 180 days. :)