It's THAT Time of year

The one-room school-house of Little House on the Prairie of the 19th centuraly is not the same one-room house-school of the 21st century.  It seems to me they had about 4 books per child.  History, Reading, Spelling, English Grammar and Math.  Oh... that's 5... 

Fast forward to the 21st century house-school.............

The heaps and piles of homeschooling books are all in, placed in the work boxes (I know I promised to post about that a year ago but here we are and still no post... maybe this year...) and now I just need a plan.  A plan I'm going to stick to.  Next to God, I have a few people who are going to hold me more than accountable.  Golly friends are scary things to have!!!

To list all 8 school-ees + a pre-schooler will indicate a very long... boring... post so I'll share a generalized list of what we are doing.

Sam has a local dyslexia tutor who meets with him over the internet via headset and a pen he can write on the computer with.  As his tutor said he is a true dysleic so he is the hardest to find curriculum for but there is just so much out there now (one good thing to the "illiteracy problem" out there is there isa lot of literate illiterates haha.  Apologia has their High School Science all read on audio so that is huge. Math has DVDs as well.  This year I put him in This is Our Faith which has a book and audio so he can read along.  If you have a dyslexic, I highly recommend keeping him on grade level even if his physical reading ability is not up to par.

Othewise the rest are ordinary students. 

History I am using MODG (Mother of Divine Grace) lesson plans. I like that they use a nice text (often TAN Books) and then supplement with "living books" and it's all listed so I don't have to think about what to have them read to match their history.

Math the children have a choice:  Math U See, Teaching Textbooks, Saxon or Seton.

English Grammar is another choice area:  Easy Grammar, Primary Language Lessons, Seton, Voyages in English

Reading: Faith and Freedom Readers, American Literature

Phonics:  I LOVE EXPLODE THE CODE, I learned from a local homeschooling mother of 10 that there are comprehension workbooks and readers to go with this.  Matches right up... I'm delighted.

Spelling:  All-About-Spelling (love this one as well, but it is teacher intensive... we are late bloomers for spelling so the older ones are playing catch-up), for the littles I made spelling cards out of the phonics words and out of the early Faith and Freedom Readers

Handwriting:  Handwriting without Tears and Seton. This year I am incorporating more copy work, an area we slacked off on but I think critical to their spelling ability. 

Science:  Apologia across the board, for littles supplements with Enchanted Learning coloring pages and of course... gardening and ordinary country living

Language:  the oldest 5 will take First Form Latin (Memoria Press) and all down to Pippin are taking Rosetta Stone Castillian Spanish on some level or other, Eowyn is also taking Greek.  I'd like to do English from the Roots up which uses Latin and Greek.

Art and Music:  Children's Choir and the 3 oldest will also be in a homeschooling choir directed by Aristotle for those who know him.  Art is with MODG lesson plans as well as Seton's Ginger Himes art DVD's (they are great!)

Religion is of course the most controversial.  I have used Neumann Press over the years as well as OLVS study of the TLM.  However this year I am trying out MODG lesson plans which uses the Baltimore Catechism. 

Bilbo will be in Pre-school so I got him the preschool books from Seton as well as All About Reading Pre-K which is put out by the company for the spelling program. 

I have not decided when to start yet maybe the 16th or 23rd or 25th.  The name of our school is Sts. Philip Neri and John Vianney Academy.  I like to think that is because we take a summer vacation between their Feast Days (May 26 - Aug 8) give or take haha.  (no actually they are just 2 of my (many) favorite saints)