Quite a Collection . . .

I have been trying to pick up as many of the books on our reading list as I can, but only if they are a great deal. There are a lot of the classics that you can find at your local library, but since most of these will be read by all four of our children and they are great books, I have tried to keep an eye out at local thrift stores and also looked a lot on ebay and amazon. So far, I think that I have done pretty good! This should last us at least through the first few years.



I also got some of our texts in the mail over the last couple of weeks. It just gets me more and more excited! I am still having a hard time getting a couple of the history books I want at a price that I want. I have each of these on a disc to read that came with our base course (curriculum; see older post), but I think it is nice to have an actual book to read as much as possible. I have also worked a lot on getting our spelling and penmanship pages done. I do, however, find myself neglecting things around the house, to spend time on school projects, I need to find my balance.

Longer School Days

I thought this was interesting, it is an article about President Obama's plan for education. The problem with the vast majority of children and education is the lack of parental involvment and they want to take the children out of the home longer! They don't think there is something wrong with the system, just that our children are not in it long enough, huh. Here is a snippet:

Obama also wants kids to spend more time in school, with longer school days, school weeks and school years — a position he admitted will make him less popular with his school-age daughters.

Children in South Korea spend a month longer in school every year than do kids in the U.S., where the antiquated school calendar comes from the days when many people farmed and kids were needed in the fields.

"I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas, not with Malia and Sasha," Obama said as the crowd laughed. "But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."

"If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America," Obama said.

Breaking The News

Well, we told our kids today about our decision to home school. Their initial reaction, which we anticipated, was tears because of not being able to see their friends. So, once we explained that they will still see their friends on playdates, in church, and other activities, they listened to our plan and got very excited. Then they started giving us all kids of ideas, which I loved. They seem very happy about the plan and I look forward to them helping with the decision making and planning. Now we will, over the next few months, get our plan underway and get the courses worked out. I started making phonics flash cards for the beginner readers and will go from there. We are all very exctied!

Books, Books, Books . . .

So I spent the day, yesterday, making a list of all the books we will need this fall. It is a long list. I made three lists. The first is the books that the library carries, the second is of the books that we have already, and the third is of the books that need to be bought or borrowed. I'm sure you can guess which is the longest, the third list. So, I ordered the books that will be used as text. For reading we will use the McGuffey's Eclectic Readers Revised Edition (1879). We will also get most of our spelling from them. I also ordered a few history books. I'll post to the left what we will use for each subject as I decide. I will also list what books we are reading at the time. I was very surprised and sad at what books our library did or did not have, even some classics!

I am getting very excited to begin and not at all overwhelmed. I just finished reading Homeschooling For Excellence and found it very encouraging. I now need to get started printing and laminating the phonics picture cards. It may seem like a little work now, but I won't have to do this again for the kids coming next. I also won't have to keep buying text after text every year for each child. I am sure that we will make some changes as we go through this, but I am confident that they will be minimal and according to what each of the kids needs.