our dozen beautiful feet

 Last year was kind of a blur, wasn't it? I think like everyone, we felt a little off-kilter with all the covid restrictions. For the first time in five years, my kids weren't able to go to the public school for orchestra classes or choir. Thankfully, their school orchestra conductor decided to set up a homeschool orchestra that they were able to participate in. So they didn't lose any momentum.   Overall, we had a decent year last year. My health was really deteriorating towards the middle of the year and I struggled to finish the year strong as a result. My thyroid was just dying. By May, I made the decision to have it surgically removed. That happened in June, and they ended up finding cancer there, so I'm very thankful that we made that decision and I've had about six weeks to heal and prepare for the coming year!  The nice thing about where I'm at in the homeschool and classical education journey is that I don't have to do a lot of guessing or thinking

I'm a planner. I like to have a plan. I'm slightly obsessed with curriculum research. Lucky for me I'm really also obsessed with a classical education for my kids (and me), which narrows down my potential curricula to research.  The past five years, I've looked at almost everything out there to find just what will provide us with the most richly restful, and diligently delightful education.  My oldest child is officially starting high school in just four weeks. I have worked the past two years to come up with a solid plan that leaves as little room for discontent, guessing, and changes as possible.  Dr. Perrin outlines some problems with the frenetic pace of high school for a lot of students in this article and urges us to a measured approach instead.  In conference talks over the past two years, I've heard him prescribe his solution (though he's never written another article outlining it), and here it is.   He suggests that to give our high school students a f

I'm beginning my 11th year homeschooling in about two weeks. Last year, I experimented with planning for high school credits before it *really* mattered, and I'm glad I did.  I came up with some best practices for myself for simple and flexible planning to help me facilitate and stay on top of assignments, assessment and schedules for doing four students at once! I wanted to share my planning steps over the summer that allow flexibility and simplicity and make the school year as restful for me as possible. I typically use this process only for my upper grade kids for whom I'm going to be assigning grades and credits. My elementary kids do not need such thorough planning. We just work faithfully and build skills without worrying about grades.  So here's my planning process for flexibility!  Step One: Source any pre-made lesson plans and weekly rhythms available.   Several of the curricula I have chosen for the year either come with pre-made weekly lesson plans from the c

As we're only two weeks from our start to school year, it's time for my Spero Academy Curriculum Picks post for 2020-2021!  I really, really love planning for our studies! :)  Upper School: Luke and Kiryn are 13 and 15.  They are doing the exact same courses this year, which will count for full high school credits for Luke as a freshman, and maybe also for Kiryn. I don't know that I want her graduating a year early, but it might be an option depending on what her immediate plans are.  I've tried really hard to reach for multum, non multa: much, not many. I want us to go deep and read rich things. I want there to be time to live fully too. So for the next four years through high school credits, we are focusing on the liberal arts. So our categories of studies are:  -Mathematics -Natural Sciences -Great Books -Latin -Logic-->Rhetoric -Music So here's our picks!  -Mathematics: VideoText Complete Algebra I wrote in my reviews for last year all about the major mathema