our dozen beautiful feet

Yes, you read that right. We are no longer Preedy Academy! When we moved to our new house, I had to update our address for our school registration, and thought I might take advantage of the opportunity to give us a more creative name that reflects our style more. Spero is a Latin word that can mean "I hope, I dream, I wonder, I Imagine." That about sums it up. Latin, Wonder, Imagination. So. These curriculum pick posts may be becoming a bit redundant, as about three years ago I really found our sweet spot and the people and companies we trust. There's not much deviation now. But I suppose each year we're doing a new grade level for the first time, and are figuring that out as we go. :) So here it is:  Time Period as a Family: Antiquity Meryn: 3rd grade Language :  -All About Spelling Level 3 -McGuffey Reader Book 1 & 2 -Writing Through Ancient History by Brookdale House -Song School Latin 2 Math:  -Math-U-see Gamma Levi: 4th

It's two weeks away from the start of the school year. It's been hitting me this summer. Luke is doing Geometry. Geometry is a high school credit. I need to have a plan to keep track of actual grades and credits and such, at least for this one class.... Years ago, I purchased OLLY  for both my desktop and the iPad. I quickly realized it was more than I needed, and I couldn't figure out how to make it work for me at the time. So I abandoned it. But thankfully, I didn't delete it! I resurrected that dinosaur of an app this month and began tinkering around with it. It's going to work GREAT for me to keep up with grading assignments that really need to be graded, assigning credits and keeping track of what we need to get to graduation. I've set it up to give me accountability with grading. I don't have all the kids assignments in there. I just have plotted out the assignments and exams that will receive a grade. This year will be a trial run to see if I&#

For the greater part of my adult life, I always knew when my next flight was.  The summer before my senior year of college I took my first trip overseas to Izmir, Turkey.  From the anticipation of that trip in 2000 until the summer of 2014, I was in a state of perpetual anticipating of the next flight. Those years of jet-setting every few months saw my life morph from a single college girl to a married working woman to a seasoned missionary and homeschooling mother of four. As a mother, I always thought the announcement at the beginning of every airplane ride was pretty unrealistic. What mother really puts the oxygen mask on herself first while her kid is sitting there struggling for breath? I always tried to picture myself doing that, and it always seemed wrong. I really do understand how badly things could go if mom passes out, but I never could wrap my head around that mental picture of just taking care of myself first. But. When it comes to educating our kids, I think this p

This year has been so full, so busy, and I'm really ready for it to be wrapped up. :) I taught four classes. I took a class. I started a part-time job in January from home. My autoimmune health has been all over the place. I've loved our studies, but I way over-planned. (What's new?!?) We ended up totally dropping both Memoria Press programs, as well as the Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe.  My older two kids started doing two hours a day at the local middle school which left them with less time at home each day. We had to pull back and focus on the main things. And I learned a lot from this. Like: -orchestra, drama, choir are REALLY worth our time and not getting in the way of the curriculum, they are a majorly important part of the curriculum -more books and academics is not necessary for a quality education or a happy life -it's okay to do some of a program and not all of it, to scale things to what we need -it's ok to leave plenty of whi

Last spring,  I went to the Great Homeschool Convention in Fort Worth, TX with a big question. For a couple of years, I had been studying the liberal arts on my own. I'd read pretty widely and thought I understood the first three arts, the trivium.  As I began to try to understand the quadrivium, I had read The Liberal Arts Tradition by Clark and Jain, as well as Beauty for Truth's Sake by Stratford Caldecott. I still didn't even begin to understand what the quadrivium was about. I went to the conference ready to ask people for their thoughts on how to teach the quadrivium. I left pretty unsatisfied. I got varying answers from "teach sol-fa for music" to "let them take a drafting class" to "teach them what home means."  I knew I would not make any progress at this point without a guide.   A few weeks later, I heard that a new class was being offered by the CiRCE Institute. It would be The Atrium with Andrew Kern on the seven liber