Almost Time for School

This year, those words send dread to my heart.

Usually I love the beginning of school. New books, schedules and things to learn (yes, I am a nerd!). This year, school means that Lee gets on that big yellow bus at the end of the driveway. I don't like that......not one little bit.

I am attempting - for myself and the sake of the rest of the family - to control my emotions and steer my attitude in a direction that will lead to JOY. So, here is a list of things I am thankful for this year..........

1. I still have Greg and Bear at home
2. Lee will know his bus driver in the morning and many of the kids at school already
3. We have orientation tomorrow night so we can meet all the teachers
4. Lee and I can't argue anymore about how much work I assign
5. Greg is very excited about school this year - he gets to pick science topics :)

For school this year - Greg is in 4th grade. We will be using Sonlight Core 4 as our spine for history/reading/read-aloud/Bible. We are jumping off the Intermediate Language Lessons wagon (although I still love it!) and giving Writing Tales a try for language arts/grammar. All About Spelling (Greg is on book 3) and Italic Handwriting round out Language arts. Greg will be finishing up Saxon 3 and moving into Saxon 4/5 sometime around Thanksgiving. For science we will begin studying penguins using Hands of a Child's lapbook as the jumping off place.

I bought a cute little science experiment book for ages 3-12 about creation. I am hoping to occassionally have some stuff from there to use with Bear. I am also setting up tot-boxes (like tot trays except with no tray). You can see how that works HERE. So far, I haven't set up much in that area and I really need to get to work on that....my heart just hasn't been in it this year.

So, I think that we are ready for school :) Lee is ready and I am ready for the waiting to be over with....lets just get it started and move on . Prayers for the 1st day (Friday 21st) are appreciated! Have a great day!