Life with Lucy

We are having a great year so far. No one got in trouble today. We had our first test in math today. I only missed one. We watched school house rock . I am almost done. Connie Belle have the baby to play with him. And mama is working with Molly. SO see ya later.

Catching Up with Connie!

Well hello there! I am Connie, and I am here, against my will, to tell you about life.

Well I had a very, very busy summer this year. We went on 3 vacations with the whole group and 2 with just me and Belle.

We went to Hilton Head like every year and to Sanibel which was new but awesome (as usual), we also went to Greenville for a cousins wedding. We did those with the whole family.

Me and Belle went to my Grandpa's lake for a couple nights which was fun, like always. My favorite part was the fireworks we saw for the Fourth of July. Then as soon as that trip was over we went to West Palm with my Grandma. We were there for 9 days. It was a new thing and it was very neat going through my Great Grandma and Great Grandpa's stuff.

One other thing we did this summer was become addicted to all thing heroes. We love anything and everything to do with Marvel and DC Comics. Belle and I have, in fact, become so addicted we have a couple of action figures. I think Belle's main reason for watching, is all the hot guys they cast.

I don't have anything to say about school except it has started and stinks already. :-(

Back to School 2011-2012

We had our first day back to school today and it went surprisingly well for kids that have basically been living in Fantasy Land for the last 9 weeks. What a wonderfully busy summer we had and I enjoyed every minute of it, but I sure am excited about getting back into some sort of routine again, too.

We have lots of fun things planned for this year and lots of switches in curriculum and plans. Connie and Belle are both in middle school, 8th and 6th grade respectively, Lucy Clare in 3rd and Molly is in 1st. Bram will tag along with pre-pre-school activities, mostly Montessori based, which I'm excited about since I didn't know anything about homeschooling when the girls were his age. He's going to be a fun experiment.

We've stayed with our Math program, the hand's on, manipulative based Math-U-See and will add in Life of Fred for Connie and Belle.

I'm very excited about History this year, my favorite subject, since we're studying ancient world history. Connie and Belle are using The Old World and America, a Catholic based text and Lucy Clare and Molly are starting the 1st year of The Story of the World, a very interactive, project based curriculum.

For science, usually our weakest subject, we're trying a new program for Lucy Clare, Focus on Science, and Molly will tag along on most experiments, while she continues to read age-appropriate science books as her core work. Belle is going to tackle the Biology program that Connie did last year, and hopefully we've learned a lot by the end of last year and won't have the same frustrations we started out with. Connie is going to take a General Science class at Summit Academy, a homeschool enrichment "school."

We're switching to a much more classical approach for Lucy Clare and Molly's grammar with First Language Lessons for both of them. Connie and Belle are taking a year off of traditional grammar and will use Daily Grams each day to keep up review, and build grammar lessons into much of their writing and their literature programs, Lightning Literature.

We're all working on the Baltimore Catechism this year, as well as the Gospels of Mark and Luke, and a reading comprehension book of Saint Xavier (Belle) and Saint Joan of Arc (Connie.)

Molly will continue with Explode the Code and Hooked on Phonics. We'll do Fallacy Detective and all 4 girls will start/continue with Latin, as well as vocabulary and spelling. Lucy Clare will learn cursive this year (hopefully.)