Upcoming Plans and Prep

I was looking through some old pictures the other day, and I realized that I missed doing some things that brought me joy!

Now that we are more settled into Colorado, I’m feeling like I can start doing some things that I used to do… NOT because I feel like I have to, but because I enjoy them and WANT to!

I’m also not working as much as I thought I would be this summer, so I have plenty of time to get things done AND prep for the fall! The fall will be much busier, but in great ways.

I’m mostly writing this for myself, but I thought I’d share!

Plan for the Summer

• I plan to make sourdough more often (but also just making whole wheat yeast bread because I’m not a fan of whole wheat sourdough)
• I’m going to try making kombucha again. I haven’t had good luck with it since we moved, but I’m wondering if it’s because I’ve been trying to make it continuously instead of my old way. I’m going to try my old way again.
• I might try to make sauerkraut again! I haven’t had great luck with it, but I want to try again!
• I plan to do a small garden after all! I was going to wait until next year, but after being in my dad’s garden, I decided to plant one! Thankfully, it’s JUST now time to plant where we live. I’m just going to buy live plants since I didn’t start seeds already. I won’t make it super large, but I just really love having a garden.
• I plan to really work on improving our yard. I’m going to prune the lilac bushes in our flower bed, put mulch in the beds, and mow/weed-eat the yard (front and back). We also need to just work on our backyard in general because it’s a mess.
• I’m going to get back to just making more from scratch and doing more food prep!
• I plan to harvest a ton of dandelions and make stuff with them! We have them EVERYWHERE.
• Farmer’s Markets have started in Colorado! There is basically one every day of the week right now. I cannot wait to start checking them out! There’s even one about 10 minutes away that has 55 vendors!
• I will be getting more time in with Karis in addition to getting her ready for college. I can’t believe she’s about to “leave the nest.” She is also doing some volunteering and job tours with Vocational Rehabilitation this summer which is fun. In July, we will be headed to her university for orientation!
• I have a 10k trail race scheduled for June 9th and a half marathon scheduled for August. I try to workout about 5 days per week including at least 3 runs!
• I will be working about 3 days per week, but not full days!
• I want to have a good plan for next school year in addition to having the first few months prepped so that I don’t have to worry about it for a bit.
• I plan to use my friend Beth’s “A Mother’s Education” this summer! I purchased the “Fill Your Cup” bundle that has so many amazing things to use this summer to “fill my cup.”

I’m going to do my best to do these things a little bit at a time, but I’m very excited and motivated at the moment! Hopefully I won’t try to take it all on at once!

Plan and Preparation for the Fall

Ethan has officially decided to continue homeschooling which has me thrilled to be honest!

I’m already starting to plan which is my happy place. I’m mostly using things that we’ve done before with an addition of a few new things.

My goals for this year are:

1. Get the boys to a better place with his literacy skills. I’m going to do some “intervention” for Ethan’s fluency and comprehension in addition to focusing on writing and grammar skills. I’m simplifying a bit in this area in order to make sure the boys are prepared for life. I’m looking at the Colorado state standards as a guide, but I have other plans as well. I’ll continue using Brave Writer for sure for our literature. I have always loved the Brave Writer literature guides! They seem to work best for the boys. I am also using a couple of programs from Silo & Sage. They are both writing/grammar programs. One is called Read, Think, Write. It looks amazing and is pretty inexpensive! Another one is Paragraphs and Picture Books. Also so fun! It’s for highschoolers, but using picture books, which I adore. I will probably start with this one! I might add in some The Good and the Beautiful language arts. We will see! The only reason is because it has art history and geography also mixed in! If I did this, we wouldn’t use the whole program… mostly just focus on spelling through Dictation, grammar, art, and geography. I can just print out their free curriculum.
2. Focus on some special interests for the kids. Specifically for Ethan: coding/computer science/electronics. I will purchase kits from Creation Crate for Ethan. Specifically for Levi: Culinary arts/cooking. I think I’m going to create my own culinary arts curriculum for Levi. We will see if I can find something that I like!
3. Continue keeping science simple. I am using a curriculum for science that is supposedly for “the logic stage” (which is junior high/middle school), but to me, it teaches what they need to know. I love it, and I haven’t found anything else that I think is as good! So, I’ll just keep using it! We will finish biology then do chemistry next. It’s called Elemental Science, and it was created with the Classical Education model in mind. I just love it! It’s very organized, and there is a routine every week. The boys know what to expect. It involves vocabulary, reading and answering questions, labeling, and an experiment every week! I will be adding the Periodic Table Notebook created by my friend Beth at Little World Wanderers. It looks awesome! Oh, also, Levi and Ethan will be doing science with their special interest activities as well!
4. Continue using Chronos, Survey of World History (by the same creator of Chronos), and Story of the World for history. I hope to finish middle ages/Renaissance in the fall and move onto “modern” and US History in the spring. I hope to make it a little more hands-on. I will add a timeline notebook for each kiddo to keep up with that as well. We will probably go back and add the Ancient history timeline dates to it as well.
5. The boys are doing SO well with Teaching Textbooks for math! They are learning a lot and they actually don’t mind doing math with this program. It has been the best fit so far.
6. I will use Schoolhouse Teachers for Spanish and will probably use it as a resource for other subjects as well. I truly like how they teach Spanish!
7. I plan to spend 2-3 mornings or afternoons a week working with them then have them complete their work independently, especially the first few months because…
8. We have Outdoor Education happening at camp August through early October, and I am going to need to work quite a bit during that time. So, I’m trying to figure out how to make that work! I’m going to discuss what would be best for the Outdoor Ed program with my boss now that I know we are for sure going to continue homeschooling. That’s the beauty of homeschooling… it’s flexible!

We are currently driving home from Texas, and I cannot wait to get home and get started on my plans!