our dozen beautiful feet

A few years ago, I started doing year-long planning for one subject over the summer. It started with history. I tried to basically plan out our books and projects for the year so I could have the books ready to go, and the project supplies on hand in hopes these things would actually get done. When my oldest kids were 3rd-4th-5th this was a great way to save some time over the course of the year by doing long-range planning in the summer. But as they've grown, I've started expanding this long-range planning to other subjects. Last year, I added science because the older kids wanted to study the human body.  Since I haven't ever loved Apologia and it was the only ready-made curriculum for elementary I could find on anatomy, I decided to put together our down study.  I had a few resources chosen, and I laid out which chapters coincided with each other, and what order we'd do them in, how long we'd give to each body system, etc.  This worked out really well for us l

Morning Time is quite a buzz-word in homeschool circles these days.  I first heard of it through Cindy Rollins' old blog Ordo Amoris. We've been beginning our days with Morning Time for about four years now in an effort to not skip over the really beautiful and rich parts of our education that usually get shoved to the side in the busy-ness of a normal day.  We started small: Bible reading, memory verse, and a read-aloud together.  But gradually over the four years, we've grown into a robust hour of Morning Time on an average day. Here's how I organize and plan it over the summer so that it actually happens during the year. :)  I begin with this overview chart for the year.  I organize Morning Time into six terms.  We try to do school on a semi-Sabbath schedule: six weeks on, one week off.  The top chart of the page lays out by each term what Bible passages or catechism questions we'll read, what hymn we will learn, and which Shakespeare play or Pl

Here's what's on tap for next year at Preedy Academy! This is the plan for my older two kids. They do all their studies together with the exception of their math studies. Language: -Writing & Rhetoric Books 7-8: Encomium & Vituperation, Comparison -Latin for Children C: Second half of book -French for Children B -Poetics: A World of Poetry by Michael Clay Thompson -The Art of Argument: Introduction to the Informal Fallacies Logic: -Math-U-See PreAlgebra & Algebra, some select Art of Problem Solving work for fun -Novare Earth Science -A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: Numbers 1-6 Humanities : -20th Century History: The Century by Peter Jennings, biographies -Literature: 20th century literature with Teaching the Classics AND -Memoria Press American Literature: Poetry & Short Stories (selected works) -Memoria Press Geography 3: 4 units of the 8 They will also continue with piano lessons and orchestra at the local school. We