When I was a younger mother, I envisioned days of back to school shopping and back packs and school buses. Homeschooling has changed those visions. I still feel the need to make the beginning of the school year exciting though! We still keep the back to school shopping and back to school pictures, and we do a special breakfast. I was feeling a little overwhelmed this year, so I did cut out a lot. My usual huge photo shoot with props was instead 10 minutes in the front of our house. It works!

We happened to really luck out on back to school shopping day. RedCart was having a super deal on all back to school supplies... 25% off! So I loaded up and saved lots of money! Nothing gets me excited about school more than a fresh load of school supplies!

Last year we used Ambleside as our curriculum. As great as I thought it was, and as much as I agree with the Charlotte Mason philosophy, it wasn't working for me. I had a tendency to get overwhelmed some days... and needed something that would tell me exactly what I needed to do. The Family School was literally an answer to my prayer. They had a free trial and I immediately loved it. They had a support page on Facebook, and I was able to ask a lot of questions too. This curriculum is flexible but also thorough... so if one day I needed to know exactly what to do and say, it's all there. If I wanted to add in my own things and make it fit a Charlotte Mason method, I definitely can do that too. I love it so much.
Every year, the Family School starts with what they call Foundations... lessons that help prepare the kids' minds for the upcoming school year. I loved the lessons so much. And the kids did too. We took lots of breaks, but were able to cover a lot of material. And the activities were fun and interesting enough to keep even my kids' attentions!
My favorite activity involved a puzzle. I gave them each one piece of the puzzle (I had my niece with me that day too) and asked them to guess what the puzzle was all about. They had very random guesses as you can imagine! An ocean, space, the sky... Aurora Borealis...all good guesses!!

Then I poured the contents of the box onto the table to see if they could figure it out. They started getting bits and pieces... a horse! A mermaid! But they still couldn't quite get it. They determined that in order to put the puzzle together, we would need the picture on the box. I related it to history, and how bits and pieces of what happened make the story complete. They totally got it and I LOVED that!

A little surprising, but Landen stuck with me all the way until the end of the puzzle. Turns out he really likes puzzles!

There really were some awesome lessons to start the year off. The kids LOVED the treasure hunt!

After going through some of the classes, I decided to revamp how I was going to teach the lessons. Instead of a subject for each day of the week, I decided to teach by Units. I had put a lot of work into putting together a schedule, but I started over. So we took a week break after our foundations classes. We are going to be doing year-round school this year. It just makes more sense for us. I am so excited about all the things we will learn about this year! I LOVE learning new things, and as a homeschooling mom, you really do learn so much along with the kids. Our first unit is on Astronomy which we started today! I plan to keep a pretty good record of everything we do and resources we come across on this blog- there's certainly a lot, and I hope it will help someone who stumbles across this space!