Learning choices...

I HAVE TO SAY I just love library day!! Especially when I stubble upon a great find! Early in my homeschooling career I felt I really needed a 'boxed curriculum' to accomplish my year of education with my children. Now after over 10 years of homeschooling I love the freedom of building our own learning plan.

Teaching the 3 R's has always been my main focus for learning in the early grades, just because I believe a solid base of knowledge is so key in the career of a child's learning. In addition to that I love to do hands on learning and lots of oral work. Having mainly boys to teach, writing has been so much of a chore. While we do, do a fair amount of writing I try to other activities to build the skills you need for writing, instead of just focusing on the chore. While my boys may be on the later spectrum of things, looking back I'm so glad I took this route. I think it made it less painful all involved!

This year I am using Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child: Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor for the first time and I must say we are all loving it! My oldest is studying the 20th Century and in the early 1900's the Theory of Quantum Physics was discovered, so as a family we are doing some fun physics experiments from the book Teaching Physics with Toys: Activities for Grades K-9. It is a wonderful resource and my oldest sounds excited to leading some of the experiments for his siblings. I love opportunities when we can ALL participate in learning together.

While I was able to find all these resources at my local library, I'm thinking I will have to be making some of these part of our home library. It's really great, however to be able to try them out first to see if they are a good fit.

Hope you are excited about your new school year! I'd love to hear what you are trying new this year in your comments. Thanks for stopping by and enjoy your day!