When we began homeschooling I tried to duplicate the public/private school model. I made a schedule that included even recess! After about two weeks of that Bear and I were burned out already. I loosened up a little bit and dumped the schedule and then our school days ran in to dinner time. That got old quickly as well. I went back to the Internet to read more about homeschooling. I must say that the Internet is a great wealth of free information, but can also be overwhelming.
I don't remember the order we tried things, but the gist of all our experiments was this: textbooks, notebooking, unit studies, literature based, lapbooking, parent led unschooling, Charlotte Mason, Classical and co-ops. All that torture only to realize that we liked a little of everything. I concluded we were eclectic!
I still like textbooks and think they serve a purpose for certain things - certainly math. I also love literature and doing literature units that include comprehension, writing, analyzing and hands on projects. I like doing a notebook page here and there and Noodle enjoys lapbooking. We still like co-ops but not back to back or we get burned out.
This past year we were heavy on the textbooks/workbooks and literature. This coming year I will be heavy on the Classical methods. Bear will be doing a lot of outlining and writing to "catch him up" to the Rhetoric stage for most of high school. Noodle will continue learning to read, practice his handwriting, start narration and copy work. I plan on keeping
The Well Trained Mind
handy to remind me of the things I want to implement and work on this coming year.
I also plan on doing a lot more read alouds in our new school year. It is something I wish I had done more of this year. We have done them, but there were plenty of days we missed. I'd like to be more consistent with it so we can read more books.
As far as organization, I have big plans for that as well!
The Well Trained Mind explains how to set up notebooks for each subject and that is what I plan to implement. Getting Bear on board will take some training since he is like me and tends to surround himself with stacks of paper! Lest you think I exaggerate here are some recent before and after pictures of my desk.
As you can see we can probably benefit greatly from the notebook suggestions in TWTM. In case you were wondering I am about halfway back to the before picture! I think I will have to do something about that today!
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. He's almost done with Keys to Good Language too.
and reading additional easy readers for practice. Our read aloud is still 
and it is really cute.
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. He also continued working in 
