Totally unrelated pictures, but I like a post with pictures. These two little boys...so sweet. And this baby...oh my, how I love this baby!!!
We wrapped up our school year a couple of weeks ago. Yippee! Joe graduated from eighth grade. I have pictures that eventually I will post, with all of those thoughts and emotions. Julia finished the seventh grade strong. She has blossomed so much as a writer. One of the things I do like about her being in school is having a teacher to critique her work. She also enjoys this. I am very pleased with everyone's progress here at home. Despite it being a "new baby" "worbooky" kind of a year we accomplished a lot. Maybe not as much as I would have liked. But enough. We will work on math this summer to keep up our skills. I am also going to get a typing program for Patrick on up. Typing skills are going to be a necessity for Joe next year. All incoming freshman at the high school that he is going to next year get an iPad. Some of their textbooks will be on the iPad. They will submit papers, take notes, all on the iPad. I have mixed feelings about this. Part of me is thinking "pretty cool" the other part wonders how distracting this is going to be for him. We will see.
I know what we are going to be using next year for our homeschool. We signed up with a Classical Conversations community that we will attend once a week. We visited a community just this past year and the kids really enjoyed it. I was extremely impressed with their essentials program for 4-6 grade. It is a grammar and math program. These kids were dissecting sentences like nothing I have ever seen. Very impressive. I attended a three day parent practicum hosted by Classical Conversations and I really enjoyed it. I am excited about it. We are also going to use "Exploring Countries and Cultures" by My Fathers World. I do realize this may be overkill, but we are going to go with it and see how we do. I still need to work on book lists for ecc. I want to find stories about all of the great saints from all of the different countries we will be studying. I am excited about infusing our Catholic faith in this beautiful little program. I am also excited that everything is planned out for me.
So, what are your plans for next year?
