Planning

How the heck is it already July?!?!?! Where in the world did the first half of the year go?!?! Public school starts next month!!!!! EEEEEEKKKK!!!!!! (Yes, I have been told on more than one occasion that I am dramatic)

I am trying to get my planning done. I have realized that as a perfectionist, I get anxiety if I don't have everything neatly laid out. If things aren't neatly laid out, I tend to pretend the problems aren't there and will just go away. I've also realized that as a lazy person, I can't just fly by the seat of my pants anymore. This is the LAST year I get before I have to start reporting Pigby to the school district. I really want to be organized and doing well BEFORE I have to report him. I think God put homeschooling on my heart so early because He knew it would take forever for me to get my act together. FOR. EV. ER.

In Utah, one only has to be reported from ages 6 on. First grade only needs to be 810 hours or 4.5 hour days for 180 days. I'm going to need to work up on that. Now Utah is a pretty easy state to deal with. All you have to do is send in your affidavit once a year. They cannot make you keep attendance records or take standardized tests or see your curricula plans or school room. So you can count playing outside as PE time or music lessons as well, music. But my point is, I need to be in a habit of keeping track of it all. No, I don't have to turn in attendance records. However, I would like to keep track of attendance hours as we go along. I want to keep organized records of what we do. And I will be making him do standardized tests once he's older. But I need to practice being organized now. Again, I can't fly by the seat of my pants with this.

So I'm cheating. I'm looking at what the public school does. This year they're starting on August 22, so we will be "starting" on August 22 as well. However, I plan on doing 4 day weeks and schooling year round. Fridays we will be meeting with our homeschooling group at the park. That means we'll have to wake up and drop Corey off at work and then come home and eat breakfast and get ready to go. To many disruptions to get in a full day of school, so I think we'll add in library trips in the afternoons. Might as well. To get 180 days, we'll need to do 45 weeks. So I'm going through and figuring out when I want those 7 week long breaks. Christmas and Thanksgiving will get some. I'm going to figure out a schedule where we school for 4-6 weeks then take a week off. But I need to print off some monthly calendars first.

I had sorta called this past year his "Kindergarten" year. It doesn't really matter what I call it, he does the work on whatever level he needs to. But I worried that if I called next year 1st grade and the year after that 2nd grade that when we got to high school, he might need an extra year before going off to college. I didn't think adding in 13th grade would be a good idea. But anyway, I listed all the grades in order and told them they go to the next one at the end of each year and asked him if he'd rather call this year "kindergarten" or "first grade". He chose kindergarten. Yes! No hypothetical worries for me anymore.

Our tentative plan. Yes, I know I post new "plans" every other week, but I'm still trying to figure it all out.

Language Arts: First Language Lessons, Handwriting Without Tears, and A Reason For Spelling and various read alouds.

Gospel Study: Continuing on with the Gospel Principles manual. Someone on the WTM boards, showed this awesome site, so I'm going through and tweaking it a bit for the new manual. Also instead of the recommendations they give, we'll start our scripture memorization with the Articles of Faith and then I'll just pick some new ones.

Math: URRRRGH!!! I'm in such a quandary. I can't decide if I should go on with Math U See or switch to Math Mammoth!!! Math U See has some very good pros and a few cons. Math Mammoth has good pros and one con. I don't know if Math U See's very good pros outweigh the cons enough to stick with it. I'm so torn.

When I'm doing well at these, I plan on starting Elemental Science and Galloping the Globe again. And someday we'll get to art, music, and French.