It's been fun...

I think one month is perfect for a summer break! It was enough time for us to have a great time - lots of swimming, park trips and even a day camp for a few days. Lots of DS playing, reading books and playing with one another. Not to mention all the time playing outside and the fact that Papa even stayed with them for a whole week! :o) One month really is plenty long. I think we're all ready to get back to the books. Really.

So, I'm all planned up. The first six weeks we're not doing any SOW...for several reasons. A big one is that we don't have money for new books yet. Another is that we still have some books that need to be finished. So, I figure while we're waiting for the funds to get the new books we'll go ahead and finish the old ones. Makes sense, eh?

For the month of August and maybe into Sept a little it will mostly be the following daily:
Math, English, Spelling and Art.

Superkid didn't get a lot of phonics when he learned to read. I'm finding now that phonics is pretty important to help learn to spell. His spelling isn't so hot. He can sometimes spell some really difficult words, but some of these really easy ones he struggles with. I think it's because he needs some work decoding instead of just doing it by sight. So, we'll be working with that this year a lot.

I can't believe he's going into 4th grade!!! He's growing up so fast. ;o)

Little bear will continue working with Little Hands to Heaven until we finish the book. Well, we'll probably stretch it out until January. That's going to be a big time. I'm expecting that we will spend that much time from Sept/Oct time until Christmas on Geology in SOW. Then in January we will switch into Astronomy. I'm planning to bring Little bear in to begin SOWing with us then too. She will almost be 5 (in April) and so I figure we can start a little phonics with her then. I'm going to do the phonics thing with her - now that I've learned my lesson with my first. Live and learn, eh?

So, that's the short long term plan. We'll be continuing to take SOW slower than it says, especially since I'm adding a spelling program. I think I'll be able to do the SOW spelling program with Little bear when it comes time, but since Superkid didn't do the phonics program I'm going to do a little remedial work with him.

I probably won't update much during August since it's going to be a busy month for us and school is just the boring books stuff. I figure sometime in September I'll be back to give a report on some things.

See ya then!
All of us SOWers