Yesterday, I took all of my books that I am using this year for our core curriculum and input the assignments into Homeschool Tracker.

I have played around with Homeschool Tracker before, but I have never put a full year of assignments into it. I have to say, it was pretty awesome.

The software allows you to “copy” an assignment over a given date range. You can select which days of the week you want that assignment copied, which students it is for, and (optionally) what chapter or lesson you want to start from and what increment you want to increase by. It automatically excludes any dates you have pre-set in your calendar as holidays.

For example, if I plan to do a chapter of history every Tuesday and Thursday from September 1 through October 31, starting with chapter 3. It will automatically assign the next chapter for each Tuesday and Thursday. If one of the days is a holiday, it will skip over it.

Then I can print off an assignment list daily or weekly for each student.

I know for some, this sounds like overkill for a homeschool, but the D always wants a list of what we need to do for school work each day and now I will have it ready at my fingertips.

And I did all of this (and much more!) on the free version. It even works with Vista. (Ugh, yes, I have Vista on my laptop.)

But summer is nearing its end. The public school starts three weeks from Wednesday. I have to have my homeschooling paperwork in to the state by the end of the month. School is once again on my mind.

This year, I am switching from Saxon Math to Singapore. The kids just were not responding well to Saxon, as much as I liked it. We are going to start in with the new Singapore books this week. They just arrived today.

Another big change this year is that Little E will start kindergarten! He just got his new math book, too, and is very excited. (Singapore Earlybird Kindergarten Mathematics book 2A)

I can’t believe that he is going to be 5 at the end of next week!

I am looking forward to getting back into school. This summer has been very hectic, emotional, and disruptive for all of us and having the sense of normalcy that a school-y schedule will provide us will be a change most welcome.

I also look forward to sharing about our home school life with you here on this blog.

The banana on the left (without yeast) looks pretty much the same as day one, except for a little browning.

The banana with yeast (on the right) has started breaking down and is all mushy and watery.

You can’t tell from the photo, but the banana without yeast was still very firm, while the yeast banana was very soft.

I have been busy, busy, busy and it is all I can do to update my other 2 blogs.

I have so much to post about on here, though. I am going to try to steal some time to write some stuff this week. However, if I can’t, you’ll be glad to know that I am getting a laptop and soon I will be able to post while the kids are having their computer time.

Yea!!!

I thought I would check in and let you know I am still here.

Thanks for reading.

(More to come!)

You also might be interested in the Homeschool Hi-Lights Meme, a collection of posts highlighting a moment from the past week of home learning, posted each Monday at Fun Learning.

And I still intend to post those pictures from our banana experiment!

Kaboose has Earth Day crafts and classroom ideas.

About.com: Family Crafts has some Earth Day crafts and other things to do.

Evan-Moor has Earth Day activities worksheets.

EarthDay.gov has a kids page full of links.

And DLTK’s Growing Together has lots of Earth Day activities, too.

Yeast is one such decomposer.

Today, we started an experiment that compares the decomposition of a banana slice coated in yeast to that of a plain banana slice.

We placed each banana slice in a plastic ziplock bag. We then placed the bags in a warm, dark place and will observe them each day for a week to see what happens.

We will check back in tomorrow to see how the bananas are doing.  (Did I say tomorrow?)  The after photos are finally posted.

What are your goals for home education? What do you hope to instill in your children? Are you planning any changes to how you educate your children?

Looking ahead, my first thoughts are about next year. One big change is that Little E will be the age at which he could enter the local kindergarten. With him showing so much interest in reading, writing, and numbers, I will definitely start some more formal work with him in the coming months and for the next school year.

That is going to change the entire dynamic around here.

Right now, Little E just plays by himself, uses the craft supplies, watches TV (I know, bad mom), or plays “Curious George” games on pbskids.org, while I work with the older two boys.

Next year, I really want the boys to work more independently. I am grooming them for that now by pulling back a little from the help I usually give them and offering them more independent assignments or assignments they can do together.

With the older boys working more independently, I will have time to work with Little E one on one.

I am also planning to tweak the curriculum a bit. I want to add Latin (which we are going to start soon, actually) and maybe another language. Spanish seems like the obvious one, with the number of Spanish-speaking people in the US, but since we live so close to Canada’s French-speaking province, Quebec, we might do French.

I am also going to change our Language Arts curriculum. We have been using Learning Language Arts through Literature, which I love, but they do not. I figured that after using it for two years, I should change to something they might like more.

Beyond the next school year, my long-term goals for the boys are to prepare them for life. We all want to continue homeschool through high school and I am excited at the opportunity it gives them to gain some sense of what they want to do with their lives before they head out into the world. I want to give them the freedom to explore their interests and develop their passions.

While my reasons for homeschooling were not religious, family and home are an inextricable part of homeschooling, and therefore our faith, as well. I want to give my boys a foundation of biblical knowledge and character that they can carry with them into adulthood. Even if they turn away from God when they get older, I want them to at least have the seeds planted in their hearts from the lessons, the time spent just talking, and from seeing my husband and I model it ourselves. (We are still working on that last part.)

Oh, yeah, and I want to have fun. I feel so serious with all this talk of developing godly character and developing their passions. Don’t get me wrong - those are very important things. But what is also important is to love these little guys while I can, before they are all grown and gone.

So my final goal for homeschooling is to play games together, read them stories, do crafts together, let them help me in the kitchen, and occasionally ditch the school work for the day and go outside and enjoy their childhood.

Be sure to head on over to Principled Discovery to find out what other homeschoolers see when they are looking forward.

This morning, I asked each child, “What do you think about homeschooling?” Here is what they said in their own words.

The D (age 11/grade 5):

It’s great.

He’s a boy of few words. Actually, he’s not; he’s a chatty one. He just woke up though, which leads me to believe that his favorite part of homeschooling is being able to sleep in late.

Big E (age 9/grade4):

I think it’s cool because I can work at my own pace - unless I am doing a timed quiz - and I don’t have to wait for the other kids to finish. And it’s much more challenging than the work I did at public school.

Yes, he really does talk like that in real life. We’re all a bunch of geeks around here. Part of the reason we decided to homeschool was that the boys were really bored in school though, especially Big E.

Little E (age 4):

Hmmm, pretty good. [Then, in teasing voice, while giving the evil grin to Big E,] because I get to play on the computer when they do school work.

Yeah, he is the classic little brother, always trying to get a rise out of his big brothers. He’s very good at it, too. He has his dad’s wit.

Head on over to Principled Discovery to see what other homeschooled children have to say in their own words.