Last Day of School

Tornado Boy had his last day of school Friday. They had a Christmas party in class, with a book exchange. Afterward, the teacher told the kids to say goodbye to Tornado Boy. I held the tears back at that point, but when I had him go give his teacher a hug, the tears came out. I know this is best for him, and I'm really excited about going through this journey, and he is excited also. Honestly, he seemed to not care at all that he was leaving his friends. Of course, he'll be seeing them in Cub Scouts still. It was still bittersweet for me, but I'm confident in this choice for him.

So it's official... We're homeschoolers now. Scary and exciting, both at the same time! I'm ready though... ready as I'll ever be. I'll spend the next 2 weeks working on the house - decluttering and arranging homeschool stuff. The boys will be getting several things for Christmas that are useful for homeschool - math manipulatives, educational games, toys that work on fine motor skills, etc. The littles have plenty to do while I school Tornado Boy. I will also be printing out some file folder games and such, now that I have the fun laminator!

Looking forward to the start of school... I have finished entering everything for the year in Homeschool Tracker Plus (HST+). I have lesson plans for each subject, and they don't have dates attached to them, so I can go as fast or slow as we want to. At the beginning of a week, I'll assign items from the lesson plan for that week. Each assignment will have library book resources, experiment supplies, etc. included. HST+ will also help me keep track of when books are due and from which library I got them (I'll be using two different library systems). I already have a print out on my desk of the library books I want to check out next week, complete with title, author, and call number. Over the last few weeks, I've searched for every book I'd need from the libraries and determined which libraries have them, putting that info into HST+. I also chose some read-alouds to do that aren't tied to science or history. I mostly pulled from the writing curriculum, as it has several good classics.

Just two more weeks until our first day of homeschool!