I am finally at peace...

with my homeschool schedule that is. Last year we did our own thing based on the book Galloping the Globe. It was fun for a while, but I found myself going off on tangents, staying with some countries entirely too long and not long enough on others. I felt I needed more structure. So this year we went with Sonlight. Everything we needed came in one great big box (which you folded inside out to make a castle - added bonus) plus it came with a big nice instructor's guide with everything scheduled. This was perfect, wonderful... no planning, just get up and look in the book. But then life got in the way... we misplaced our first reader (still haven't found it), didn't have all of the stuff for a science experiment, etc. Suddenly I found myself right on track with some subjects, behind in others and even ahead in some. I was beginning to get frustrated with my big ol' schedule book. I was getting lost trying to remember which week I was on in which subject. My first bright idea was to take some time off from the subjects we were ahead in, slow down in the ones we were right on schedule with and speed up those slow ones until they were all caught up on the same week. Well... that experiment was a failure. Finally, the light bulb came on and I got it... I have not abandoned the instructor's guide, but have pulled out the applicable pages for each subject and put them in a separate binder. I am ignoring the week numbers at the top of each page and just concentrating on moving forward. We are so much happier now. I am free to double up on the read aloud assignments when the kids are so into a story that they don't want me to stop. I am able to accept the fact that we have no clue where that first reader is and move ahead to the second one even though it is scheduled a ways further into the year. We are able to be a few weeks behind in science because we have taken time off to incorporate Alex's Cub Scout beltloops into the mix (we've completed his fishing beltloop and now we're working on his geology beltloop and pin). Well... at least that's one less thing I'm stressed out about lately! :-)

Other than that... nothing really to report. I finally used one of my 2peas Gift Certificates. Here's what I bought...

Well... I'm heading to bed!

'nite!