Our last week with public school

This is an interesting day for me.  It started off like any typical Monday, but smoother than normal.  There was no arguing and fighting from the girls when I woke them up to get ready for school, and only one fit when it was time to go out to catch the bus.  The girls are as excited as I am right now about this week ending I think, and are sticking it out to get things done so we can get back to our REAL life again here starting Thursday afternoon when they get home.

There is no school on Friday this week, and Thursday the girls have late start so this is a short week to live through.  It also is the last week of the semester, so they will have gone for half of the year.  We've had a lot of great experiences with the school they attended this half year, and I don't regret sending them at all.  It was truly needed for us to have this opportunity.  However, I have done a lot of soul searching in this time and rediscovered things about myself that I had forgotten, and now it is time for us to pick up again with learning at home.

I plan to go easy on the girls the first week or two, as we find our footing again and develop a good working routine for everything.  We will do math and language arts for sure daily, but are going to wait on the rest until I get the printer Scott said we should be able to buy me (he agreed that I need a laser printer with teaching them at home, I burn through too much ink to make an inkjet worthwhile for regular use).  Here's what I have in mind for the remainder of this year and all of next school year (maybe beyond, depending on how long we take to work through this unit study series).

Cantering the Country (multi-subject unit study for grades 1-6 on US Geography)
Easy Grammar
Math-U-See

See, keeping it simple and keeping it together.  The girls will all work together to learn cursive, and then in pairs (Missa and Liddy; Kimmy and Jojo) for math and language arts.  Jojo will finish this year with Ohio Virtual Academy, so our first history focus for the other kids will be to learn to read different kinds of maps and I'll include them in some of her history lessons for second semester with it being some basic US history topics.

As you can tell, I have a plan in place for us to jump right back in, and I will adjust and add to it as time goes along to fit our needs better.  The unit study will include as many subjects as possible, so while we are in each state we will learn about the state bird, tree, flower, any artists and/or musicians, and a couple major historical things about the state.  If there is no artist or musician to study, then we will look for landmarks, monuments, memorials, or even study the state seal and the design on that state's quarter to cover the arts.  I'm hoping to spend 1-2 weeks in each state, but may stretch some longer depending on what is available for that state.  I'll keep you posted on how it goes.