Excited about the 2009-2010 School Year

I am so excited for this upcoming school year.  Our little school is growing and we are going to have so much fun together.  I will have my daughters who are hitting the high school books pretty hard.  Then I will also have Julian who started coming over twice a week last year and will come over three times a week this year.  My sister is going to start homeschooling this year.  She has 4 daughters, 3 of whom are in school, so she will be homeschooling a 10dd, 9dd, and a 7dd.  They will be coming over to my house to participate in group lessons and activities three times a week.  Also, I will be starting my son, who is 4, on preschool/kindergarten school work.  He has learned so much this summer.  I just love seeing the light bulbs going on in his brain.  I feel so blessed to be a part of those learning moments in my children's lives.

Our curriculum this year will center around Diana Waring's What in the World's Going on Here?  World Empires, Word Missions, World Wars Unit Study book and audio lectures.  I really enjoy her unit studies.  The high school girls are working through Teaching Textbooks Geometry and Algebra 1.  Julian is in Saxon Math.  For science the older kids are doing Apologia Physical Science. (Hannah has already done Biology and loved Apologia).  And for English my teen daughters are using Jensen' Format Writing and Julian is using Daily Grammar.  They will also be concentrating on World and English Literature... Bring on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis, Jean Plaidy, G.A. Henty, etc...  

I am getting organized now cause I know this will be a giant undertaking.  We are going with a plastic crate system this year since there will be kids coming and going and we all us the dining room table pretty extensively.  Last year everyone just left their stuff on the table all year which was bad because our dining room is right off the entry way.  With the crates each child will have their own and can stow their school work in them at the end of the day.  They are stackable also.  Oh, I am so excited.   I also have a great Spanish teacher that I really want to teach my children; I just have to work out the time and place.  We got a family membership to the zoo this year also.  I could go on and on...