This Summer

This year was a wild ride. From my oldest embarking on the long road to an Aspergers diagnosis, our first foray into the world of Co-Op and both my hubby and I getting laid off, it's been an interesting ride. But I've learned so much this year - about myself, my children, and about how best to teach them and encourage the young men they are. This summer i'm hoping it will be fun and interesting and educational. I technically school year round - but our summer months are more like fun projects rather than lots of 'book' learning. Furthermore, both DJ and Xman work on the same project (rather than doing some stuff at one level and other stuff at the others' level). Well, here's our plans - mine and there's

My Homework -

• Finish designing my Latin Curriculum. It's been beyond frustrating with the crap on the market for young kids in the subject of Latin.
• Put together a list of Lapbooks to do for the coming year, and complete them.
• Design the curriculum for the next year.

DJ's Special Project -

• Design and write Pokemon website, as well as starting Web Store

Boys Joint Projects -

• Make a Solar Car. We're going to be building medium size wood cars and then building small solar enginges.
• Percy Jackson & The Olympians series as well as learning about Greek & Roman Gods, Roman Times, and what the world was like in ancient times.
• Multiplication - get comfortable with Multiplication
• Alice in Quantum Land & Scrooge's Cryptic Carol - learning a bit about physics and quantum physics.
• Exploring Painting and other mediums of art.

Amazing new resource!!

As many of you know, I used to use Time4Learning and IXLmath websites for school for the boys....but I'm really cheap so couldn't countenance spending money on them - and Time4Learning really decreases in interesting material for them....so I've been searching for replacement. I've come to like Head of the Class (but they have a lot of printables, which don't work well with my oldest)....and I absolutely LOVE Khan Academy.org for math, as it is full of videos. But another HS mom happened to mention another great resource to me today - Free World U - it is a free resource, but it is also an accredited online school. If you need to use an accredited program then you can pay $90/year (very reasonable!). It is essentially an interactive flash-card type set-up. I wish they had some sound (as my oldest is very much an audio learner) but still, as a free resource it can't be beat!