I Have Not Forgotten My Blog LOL

Well I've neglected it but I haven't forgotten it. Things have been crazy and I was out of town for most of Jan. to the first of May but I am home now and trying to catch up with everything that was neglected at the house. I will be making some new posts soon with lots of updates about us. Tomorrow and Saturday we are having a yard sale so we will be super busy but then I will also have a bunch of junk out of my house that has been cluttering it up.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer,
Paige

One Of My Favorite Blogs

A Holy Experience

Words can not do it justice. Get a cup of coffee or tea and read, read, read.

I never fail to be speechless as I am now having just come from reading there.

All About Spelling Beehive Reader 1 is Now Available

Well I am so happy to report that the first Beehive Reader that corresponds with Level 1 of All About Spelling is now available. It looks really great. If you have a young child that is learning to read All About Spelling can really help a child advance with their reading. Now Marie Ripple has added a reader to help them along. I will be ordering this in the very near future for Joshua and I know Jacob will use it in the future too. Just click on any All About Spelling link on my web page here and then click Products and you will find the new Beehive Reader there. There are several samples to look at and best of all it's on sale until March 31 for only $14.95. It's a hardbound book and was designed to be a keepsake book so the price is awesome on it.

While you are there be sure and check out All About Spelling's book All About Homophones. It's a great way to teach kids about words that sound the same but are spelled differently.

Also hop on over to The ChatterBee for straight talk about Language Arts. It's a great board to talk about any language arts issues and even other subjects. It's free to sign up too!

Hope everyone is having a great day!
Paige

This weeks Preschool plans

I have received all my books for Heart of Dakota's Little Hands to Heaven except for the Singing Bible. I should receive it tomorrow. I absolutely adore Playtime Devotions. I am so glad I decided to spend a few extra dollars and get this book before I couldn't get it in the future. It's the perfect devotion book for Jacob. That is what I love the most about Carrie Austin. She is so discriminating in her book choices for each of her manuals. I have come to trust her and that is why I really looked at the out of print books that were originally used in Little Hands to Heaven. I knew they would be top notch and I am not disappointed at all. I am really looking forward to snuggling up with Jacob to read our Bible stories and do our letter activities. Jacob loves to read together and he loves saying his ABC's and many of their sounds. I have no doubt Jacob will love the fun learning activities in Little Hands to Heaven. I will try to take some pics of him on his first day or preschool. I didn't do things like that with Joshua and I regret that I didn't now. We will be doing more memory type things with both boys in the future.

Fun stuff in store for us this week. How about you? What are your plans for this week?

Next Year's School Plans

Well I think I am pretty set on most of next year's curriculum choices for my oldest son. We will continue with Heart of Dakota's Bigger Hearts for His Glory until we finish it. We will also continue with All About Spelling. We are currently in Level 1 but I expect to finish that by the end of summer and move into Level 2. We will also continue using BJU English & Writing. I am really liking this because of the alternating focus that BJU takes with this course. It's one chapter of grammar and then one chapter of writing starting in 2nd grade.

Right now we are using Singapore math and using the lesson plans that Heart of Dakota has written in their manuals to coincide with the Singapore workbooks. I really like Singapore for it's mental math component and Joshua is doing fine with it. I keep thinking don't change something that's working but I really am considering putting him back in BJU math. We did BJU before Singapore and he did fine with that too. I am waiting to see what BJU does with their online classes because I want to use the distance learning classes for English, Math and Handwriting from BJU but right now you can only buy full grade kits at $1000 a pop to get those classes. So no classes for us right now. I am teaching the English class myself and it only take about 15 to 20 minutes for us to do. If they offer an acceptable plan for the online classes then I will use those classes for English and also move him back into BJU for math. At least with the distance learning classes I know that the basics will get done if for some reason I am unable to teach one day.

With Bible I am thinking of going with the Summit's Building on the Rock World View/Bible Survey curriculum. We currently use Grapevine Bible in addition to HOD's Bible and we really like Grapevine but I am drawn to the age appropriate study that Building on the Rock offers. I just might have to try it out to see how it goes. BotR is somewhat expensive to get started so I haven't made up my mind for sure yet but I am strongly leaning that way.

I am also looking into adding Evan Moor's A Word a Day books for vocabulary. Thanks to Dana for that idea.

Soooo I am fairly set except for concrete decisions on Math and Bible yet. We will be working through summer since we didn't get very far at all into Bigger Hearts. I know it will be a great summer with HOD though so I am really looking forward to watching Joshua grow in his reading ability while doing Bigger Hearts. We will be going through HOD's emerging reader set over summer and into next year to help give Joshua some practice and confidence in his reading.

How about you? What are your plans for your homeschool next year? Any new things? Keepers? Tossing? My top keepers are for sure Heart of Dakota and All About Spelling.