What time of year is that you ask? The time of year when I remember that I never did spend time early on figuring out what we'll be doing for homeschooling this year and so I must figure it all out quickly, make any necessary book orders, figure out a preliminary school day schedule and send in the homeschooling application. It's also the time of year when I flip through the Rainbow Resource phone book sized catalog and the Montessori Services catalog and decide I want to buy everything.

Since buying everything out there wouldn't actually help me and would impoverish me, instead last week, I sat down and figured out my basic curriculum for the two oldest, who will be doing first and third grade work this year. I think it will go well, although one can never tell, I suppose. For some subjects, we'll be using the books I planned to use last year, but that we put aside in December when we moved into our house and never picked up again, opting for a more unschooling approach during the spring when we were traveling, renovating and getting ready for the baby. I'm buying a few new books, but not all that much.

The subjects I mainly intend to cover are: Mathematics, English, Science, History, Religion, Art, and Music Appreciation. The oldest will also be doing a Latin tutorial. To keep things simpler for me, I've decided to do the same science and history for both kids. I will probably require more from the older than the younger (certainly I will at first, because other than her name the five year old can't write anything yet). Both kids will continue to work at their levels in Math-U-See, which we started using last year and which we have all been very pleased with. For English, the oldest will be continuing on with Serle's Primary Language Lessons and I'm going to try a new book with the first grader called McRuffy 1st Grade Phonics And Reading.

Besides doing Sunday School classes at church, we'll continue to study the catechism at home, use Catholic Mosaic to learn more about the Saints and just try to develop a better sense of the liturgical year as we move through it. We'll be doing artist studies every month or so and I'll make up related art projects as we go along and we'll be taking the kids to the symphony and introducing the music and composers they will here there. I'd like to sign them up for piano lessons, but we'll see how my sanity is holding up before I take that step.

If I can get all that going along with all the regular reading, thinking and stuff of that nature, I think we'll have a year that covers a lot and in which we all learn a great deal.