Planning and Planners.

As you can see, I've done a marvelous job of keeping up with my blog and posting. Ahem. Well, at least, I've done a pretty good job keeping us on track in our schooling this year, despite it being a baby-year. He's cute, but demanding.

 I think it really helped that I took time last summer to plan out the books we were going to use, and figure out how many lessons per quarter we'd need to do in order to stay on track. History and science are really the main ones that we're a bit behind in and those I didn't plan out as carefully. So, lesson learned. When I was looking for a planner last year, I found this one, the Complete Catholic Homeschool Planner, which they have updated for this year. It's so much prettier now, but with all the great planning and record keeping forms that it had before. I can't wait to start using it!

This year though, I've also looked at Holy Simplicity planners (thanks, Cristie!). They're just beautiful and packed with lots of helps for daily planning for the home and school. I particularly like all the helps for celebrating the liturgical year that they include. The ones for students have chore check-lists and virtue practice checklists for the kiddos, in addition to the normal space for recording lessons. I love the student planner, and think I'll be trying it out for my 3rd grader next year. And it just so happens that they're giving away a set of the planners! Go here and sign-up for your chance to win them!

What we're studying this year.

Here are my curriculum choices for the year.  I suspect that they may be a bit ambitious for a baby year, but for now it's working and we can scale back later if necessary. We're already 8 weeks into the school year and I'm hoping to finish up the ninth week before the little one comes. This will let us take a nice break to adjust to having a little one around again. Of course, we'll still be trying to work do our extras - gymnastics/ballet, co-op enrichment day and nature study club. And probably some art and music, just to keep everyone happy.

2nd grade:
First Language Lessons - Level 2
English 2 for Young Catholics - Seton
Phonics 2 - Seton
Writing Our Catholic Faith / New American Cursive / Prima Latina Copybook
All About Spelling 2/3
Memoria Press Literature Guides - Beatrix Potter
Math-u-see Beta/Gamma
Maps Charts and Graphs Level 2 
Faith and Life Grade Two Online
Prima Latina


Together:
Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding - K-2
Connecting with History Vol. 2
Story of the World 2
Lingua Angelica - CD only 
Making Music Praying Twice
Art for Young Catholics
The World's Great Artists Unit Study

K:
Phonics 1 Part 1 - Seton
Reader Rabbit - 1st Grade
Kumon: Simple Addition, Lower Case Letters, Cut and Paste, etc.
All About Spelling Level 1
Math-u-see Primer/Alpha
Memoria Press Storytime Treasures
Getty Dubay Italic A
Seton Kindergarten Catechism

Preschool:
Little Saints Preschool
Kumon workbooks
Preschool Theme packs
Preschool circuit