Homeschool Official

Since my oldest is now in first grade, we registered for homeschool this year and we have quite a bit more structure and curriculum. The kids and I are excited and eager for it to go well. I'm trying to stay organized, yet laid back. Serious, but fun? It's a hard balance for me to find - let's hope I get there quickly!

Here's what we're up to:

We start at the breakfast table, and move upstairs to our school room, so I carry this basket with me with my essential stuff: weekly curriculum guide; read aloud books; coloring pages and lapbook games to keep the preschooler busy while I'm working with sister, copywork to keep big sister busy when I'm getting my stuff together; phone; pens, crayons, stapler and other supplies.

We've started a bug collection, so every dead bug we come across lands on my mantle. It mostly looks like I haven't dusted for awhile - but there's potential, I think.

Our nature books are just above our nature table, so we are always identifying birds or bugs, or adding rocks and acorns to our nature collection. 

We've added two neat bird's nests and a turtle shell to our nature collection this summer.  Also, we found some cool polka-dotted seed pods from a tree, but they withered up so L drew a picture of them for the collection.

Oh, how I wish our school rooms was super pretty. For now I'm settling for sort of organized and mostly in one place.

We're using a history spine, with a Charlotte Mason approach (lots of nature and living books). Below is a list of some of the curriculum we're using, along with some other resources. We use our library a lot, and do hands on art projects frequently too, but these studies are framing our year. We also have a church curriculum and ballet class - so lot's to do!

• Story of the World - This is so conveniently arranged for new teachers like me - and my kids really enjoyed the readings.
• Ancient History Portfolio Junior - I'm very excited about these portfolios. Lou loves hands on projects, and with this portfolio, that goes nicely with Story of the World, we can do a reading and then do a little project. This is just perfect for us. I'll probably use this history combo at least for the next 4/6 years.
• Homeschool Journey also makes a Nature Portfolio, which we purchased, but are saving for next year. We've already got the bug and nature collections going, I thought I'd save it for later. But it looks like just as much fun, and I'm looking forward to it. 
• Right Start Math - I love this program. Check it out.
• Ancient Science - fun projects of a wide variety. We'll use this book somewhat sporadically as the projects correspond to our readings.
• Free Print Clearly and Print Clearly Dashed font for copy work - We're working on handwriting and letters with both children. I'm kind of new to the concept of copywork, but I'm beginning to realize how valuable it is. This simple font is great for copywork, and the dashed version is great for tracing letters. Another free font that includes the ruled lines is called Penmanship.
• I'm using the beautiful Jan Brett's alphabet tracers and fun and quick DLTK mini-books for my preschooler.

What curriculum are you using? Good luck this year!