houle school 2015-the plan

i'm on a quest to simplify.  i want to enjoy my days with my kids.  i am tired of trying to figure out how to fit in ALL OF THE THINGS.

my schedule last year was kind of nuts.  i had literature studies and poetry tea times and memory work filling in the gaps of the main chunks of our day.  and it didn't work.

insert the idea of blocking and looping and morning time and when i look at our schedule for this year i feel like i can take a deep breath.

basically, when you break it down, there are three main components of our school day.

morning time

one on one's

history or science


morning time is where we will do things like composer or artist studies, read missionary stories, work on memory and habit and the like.  i made a little agenda for me to follow to take some of the guess work away from me on any given morning.  we will not do all of these things every morning.  more than likely we will work our way through one book or study before picking up another one.  these are good, beautiful parts of soul education, not one of them needs to be covered everyday, or even every week, but placing a variety of these things before our children is what allows their souls to be nourished.  no need to be a schedule freak (ahem) and add poetry studies on the 3rd tuesdays, artists on the 1st thursday and composers on every other friday, just put them all up there in that time slot called "morning time" and you will likely hit on each one often enough through out your school year. there, now doesn't that feel nice and tidy and SIMPLE. :)

here's my basket with all of my morning time stuff in it.

i made a binder to keep our agenda, memory work, virtues and habits all together.

art, virtues and missionary stories. :)  love this stuff.

we are still reading through this.

one on one time is basically our skill work.  i work with the girls in right start and in the phonics road.   (phonics road is a complete language arts curriculum.  grammar, spelling, composition and latin.  it's all in there.  i really love this program)

the phonics road comes with these dvd's that you watch to get you ready for your week in language arts land.  oh barbara, you are kind of boring but i love you anyway.  

and here are ian's one on one time books we will be working through together.

when the girls are not working with me, they have little planners with assignments.  here are their on their own books.

ashton's

avery's

they also both do about 10 minutes of xtra math. 

history or science will happen in the afternoons, right after recess and before quiet reading hour.  i listened to a pod cast about block scheduling and knew right away that i wanted to give it a whirl this year with history and science.  for about 6 weeks we will do history every afternoon.  then we'll switch and do science for about 6 weeks.  i love this because we won't be switching back and forth and holding those two subjects in our brains simultaneously.  we'll give each subject our full attention.  gosh.  so great.

beautiful feet books early american history
berean builders science in the beginning. 

i've learned a LOT from folks like sarah mackenzie and pam barnhill and can't wait to start implementing some of these life giving ideas.

SLOW DOWN.
do less.
only carry a small basket of things you'd like to accomplish in a day.
trust that God will multiply what's in your basket.

those four truths are just so very encouraging to me.

tomorrow's our first day! i wrapped our first day of school presents yesterday and i'm eager for our days to again be filled with healthy nourishing food for our minds and our souls.