I Did It Again!!!

Yes, I have fallen off the blogging bandwagon! My life gets hectic and even though I take tons of pictures and take pictures nearly every day, I rarely seem to get them posted here. My camera dock has not been playing well lately with my laptop, so I am considering buying a card reader the next time I get to the city. Then there will be no more excuses.

I am in the process of learning to take over the webmaster position for our website: Thankful Harvest. We are still working on getting our shopping cart features workable and I will also be blogging there about our farm.

On the home front, there is much mowing to be done, laundry and cooking as always, trying to finish up a few school subjects in the next 2 weeks and getting a list of curriculum to buy for next year put together, so I don't go way over budget. This week we are doing swimming lessons (got rained out tonight, so we'll make that one up Wed. night), hosting a meeting and then have family and friends coming over the weekend.

So I will keep taking pictures and maybe someday I will get a bunch of posts done so you can see what we are up to around here.

Thinking of Next Year Already....

Not next calendar year, but next school year. Generally I have made out my curriculum order and placed it in April. Life has gotten increasingly busy for us over the last year, with the addition of DH's consulting business and the growth of our direct marketing and his speaking engagements. Consequently I haven't done it yet.

As we are finishing up various subjects for this year we are looking ahead to next year. Some publishers we will continue on with at the next level. Some subjects, we have decided to try a new curriculum to give us some variation. I am not one to change every year. Generally we go with a publisher for at least 2-3 years. For example Spelling: we started with a Reason for Spelling. While I liked it for the 2 years we used it, it was expensive. Then we used Rod and Staff Spelling. Inexpensive, simple, got the job done. We used it for 3 years. But we didn't feel it was challenging us beyond the spelling lists. We plan to try Sequential Spelling for the next year. It is not laid out like the previous ones and I believe, will transfer to over to words not on the list.

I plan to spend some more time this week getting my curriculum list made and decide which things I want to look at when I attend our state homeschool conference in 2 weeks. Somethings I will order for sure, others I want to get my hands on to decide and compare side by side.

I have determined that with our busy schedules and the amount of time we spend in the vehicle, we could be spending some of that time learning. I plant to buy Story of the World 3 on Audio CD. We already have I Can Do All Things for our art curriculum on DVD. While we won't be able to do the art projects in the car, the drawing and marker portions can be done at our destination or during our in hotel time. I am also looking at math drill and spelling drill CDs to be used on the laptop when we are on the road. This should help us to make better use of our time in the vehicle and not put us behind in our schooling.

What changes do you plan to make with your homeschooling for next year? Who knows, you might give me a great idea I can use.....