Weekly Wrap-Up: I'm changing it up again!

Believe it or not I really would like to have a brilliant plan for our homeschool year in August that I implement and have it work beautifully all year long.  I have also learned after 6 years of homeschooling that the probability of that happening is slim.  Extremely slim.  So I'm changing some things up.  Again.  Probably not for the last time this year.

First, #2's progress through her math book is going to come to a stop for the next several weeks.  This is because we switched from Math-U-See in 2nd to Saxon in 3rd and back to MUS for 4th.  Live and learn.  I am now completely committed to using MUS through 4th and then switching to Saxon.  Good news for #3 and #4, not so fun for #2.  We're having to take some time to go back over multiple digit multiplication since Saxon did not cover that last year.  It's not a huge deal, I do remember how to teach it, and thankfully MUS has a worksheet generator that I can just print worksheets and their answers right off the computer.  And it might actually turn out to be a really good thing since she was on track to finish her math book about 2 months before we were done with everything else.  Now if I can just remember that she's not supposed to be working in her book. 

I am also making the leap and breaking up IEW and language arts into different semesters.  I will do just IEW with #2 and just language arts with #1 for the rest of the semester and then switch and do the opposite next semester.  I'm not sure why I have such a feeling of trepidation about this.  I think maybe because I'm realizing that #1 is getting to an age where I can't just shrug my shoulders and say we'll make it up eventually.  But I really think this is going to work for us.  Turns out using First Language Lessons has put them way ahead of schedule on Language Arts.  And after talking to Hubby we agree that learning to write well and being able to articulate your thoughts either orally or written is more important than knowing how to diagram a sentence.  So we'll be pushing through IEW more and taking it a little slower with the language arts curriculum.  I won't really know if this is going to work until sometime next year, but I think it is a good decision.  Want to know a secret? Sometimes not having someone tell me exactly how I should be doing this is a little frightening.  Shhhh, don't tell anyone.  We don't want anyone to think we homeschoolers aren't super confident in every decision we make for our children!

In other news, #3 has figured out how to work out word problems on her own.  Hooray!  Figuring out word problems is hard!  That's a big step for her.  Also, I no longer want to stab a pencil in my eye every time she reads to me.  I've figured out that if I have her read a book to herself first and then read it to me out loud that she figures out a lot of words the first time through and then it doesn't take such an agonizing amount of time to go through the story with me.  But really, it's such a joy to listen to her read.  I may or may not "forget" to have her read to me some days.  I should really get my act together better!

We have a busy weekend planned and then we have no school next week because we're heading up to Oklahoma for Hubby to speak at a Youth Camp.  And it just so happens that we're leaving the girls with my parents and I'm going with him.  I think the time off from school and the break from kids is going to be a much needed relief for all of us!