Planning, Planning, Planning....

One of the best parts of homeschooling (or pre-homeschooling in my case) so far is the planning.  I have spent hours, literally, reading websites, looking at book reviews, reading emails sent from other moms, reading books...and I LIKE IT ALL!!!  I want to take a piece from everything I read and put it together...I love homeschooling moms...they are awesome and my life has been changed forever and for the better since knowing and listening and hearing from some of these women.  I love how everyone has their own style and things they do best and things they lack in....

Last week, I kind of got it all figured out and decided on what I wanted to do.  I know that I have way too much stuff planned....I already know this and figure I will eventually decide what to cut out but there is just so much good stuff to do and teach the kids.  Here is what I have in mind:  It will probably sound very confusing and I will have to tweak it but so far this is what I want to do with Emily.

Personal Quiet Time
Family Bible Reading/study
Habit Training using the Young Peacemakers book (12 week study)
Math--Using ABEKA 3rd grade
Copy work to then advance into cursive second semester
English/LA/spelling/grammer....using ABEKA but also looking into From the roots up (15 minute a day greek/latin studies)
Science/History/Geography..unit study using My Father's World...American History and Nature study for 3rd grade...We will be using a timeline, world and U.S. maps and nature studies/books for science

At night:  Read Alouds..fun reading/classics

Most Homeschooling moms I know do school Mon-Thurs.  Depending on when I work (I only work 2 mornings in the whole month of August so far) then it may look a little different for us but I would like to do formal school at home Mon- Thurs and then take Friday as a "Fun Friday" and go to Maclay Gardens and read out of our book "What makes a Rembrandt a Rembrandt" or take our colored pencils and let her draw something she sees and then read some poetry or a story from "Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare" or make it a library day or do some cooking or sewing or a really cool Science Experiment Day or do some Mindware puzzles or have a field trip or some of the extra things that I have heard about that I might not be able to add in our regular school day.  I have finally figured out that if I did all of the wonderful things that I want to do with her or that are out there in "homeschool land", well we would have 11 hours of school everyday, so some of those wonderful things like reading shakespeare might not happen everyday! 

I kow this will change but I guess right now you can call me an ecletic homeschooler....or an ABEKAunitstudycharlottemason "ish" type of gal...

other things I have swirling in my mind are:  Science Fair, Geography Fair, Washington DC trip, Vocab notebooks, art classes, mission work, studying about missionaries, book reports, unit studies on parts of nature, and the list could go on!