It Has Begun!!!!!!

Oh the joy and stress of this time of the year. This is the time of the year that super obsessive people like myself, must begin compiling the curricula for the coming year...This means printing endless worksheets, reorganizing entire collections and closets. Trying to figure out how to mesh a 3rd/4th grader's lessons with that of a k/1st grader so that I'm not teaching for 20 hours a day......not to mention the fact that my children are spread across the spectrum of grades....They really spread about 3 grades each depending on the subject. Since my state has no regulations or mandatory testing I never felt the need to push them into a pre-described box or grade. So in sciences they are at least 2 grades ahead of their peers while in math they are the same as their PS counterparts....it all has to do with the ... you guessed it... FUN FACTOR!!!

So, this elusive concept is what has me working for at least 8 weeks prepping the work for the coming year....what lapbooks can we do, what field trips, plays, experiments, etc can we do to keep up the FUN factor while still following some kind of plan....Total unschooling is like stabbing myself in the eye - I'm waaaaay to anal for that, I need some kind of plan...LOL...

So, I'm trying to simplify our lives while trying to increase the difficulty of the lessons, not an easy feat mind you...

I wanted to give you a list of the resources we'll be utilizing this year for both my boys:

links:
enchantedlearning.com
starfall.com
spellingconnections.com
teachervision.com
tlsbooks.com
abcteach.com
aaa(math, spelling, etc).com

workbooks:
America's Story (Books 1 & 2) - history workbooks, book one is US history to 1865 and book 2 is after 1865.
Teaching With Clifford (scholastic)
Brighter Child - we're using several of this brand - "I can tell time and Count Money". Math, etc
School Zone's Super Scholar series (we're using k, 1, 3 and 4)
Hooked on ___ Grade series (we're using k, 1, 2 and 3

Books:
Evan's & Moore's Getting Ready To Read (teacher's workbook)
Macmillan's 3rd Grade Language Arts

That's it so far. I'm still working on the Matrix for both boys, but I'll post them as soon as they're complete. We're trying something new organizational wise this year as well. I have 5 color coded folders. One for each week, and one for fun extra's. Each week this folder will have the blank index cards (for spelling/definitions) plus all the worksheets for that week. I had been using a shelf for each child but things always got messy and lost. Plus we'll have our Lapbook of the week and our Combo Books (which can spread for a month or more)...I'll keep ya posted!!