The summer was fun while it lasted but I can't wait for school to get back into swing.  There was a time when I couldn't say that.  I dreaded another year of pushing the children to do their school work and hoping I wasn't "ruining" their lives.  Now, I find myself filled with excitement and anticipation for all the awesome things we are going to learn together.

  What made the difference you ask?  Two things...I would say. 

First is the curriculum.  This will be our second year using the Tapestry of Grace curriculum.  It is a four year study of working your way from Creation to Present day.  As you study history, you learn your geography, read fantastic pieces of literature, and learn to express what you have learned through writing.  It is filled with an extensive vocabulary and it is designed to teach to all age groups. Last year,  I learned so much as we studied ancient history.  I was actually quite intimidated when we first began because I was really fuzzy on our ancient history, but the more we read and then paralleled it with the Bible the more I learned and things all of a sudden made sense to me.  The curriculum is also filled with arts and craft activities which we love.  We made mummy masks and salt maps, models of Greek temples, Egyptian games, food from the middle east, everything we could.  This year we will be skipping the Year 2 curriculum and jumping into Year 3 (this was a co-op decision to benefit our juniors and senior)  which focuses on the 1800s.  Already the children and I have been reading about the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte to prepare ourselves to enter 1800 and all that it holds around the world.  That is the other thing I like about this material.  It doesn't just focus on the US but on what is going on all over the world at the same time and its impact on us.   I can't say enough about Tapestry of Grace.  It does look intimidating at first glance because it has material for all the age groups.  But if you focus on your child's age group you will see that it is very doable.

My second reason why I look forward to school is our Co-op.  Our Co-op is made of at least 12 families who are all using the Tapestry of Grace curriculum. Moms are assigned roles as either host (class is held in her house), teacher, or assistant teacher.  (The host is usually the head teacher.)  We set a schedule that we all adhere to and every Friday we meet together to allow our children to share with one another what they have learned.  What we do is on Friday morning we all meet at a central location which we call the Hub.  (Walmart's Park and Ride)  We then exchange our children with one another.  All the Lower Grammar children (K-2) will get into their groups van, all the Upper Grammar  (3-5) will get into their groups van,  Dialectice (6-8) have a separate van they go to, and Rhetoric (9-12) get in their van.  Then all the mom's take their class to a house where the host mom is waiting for them.  For two and a half hours the children will be with all the children in their age group and will do age appropriate activities based on what they learned that week.  The Grammar students will have a time of history and geography review.  Then they will do some arts and crafts, maybe put together a scrapbook (lapbook) of key people and events that they learned about that week.  They might even practice putting on a skit, acting out what they learned.  The Dialectic group will also spend a time of review, do some arts and crafts, and learn about logic and reasoning.  The Rhetoric group spend a full two hours reviewing and discussing their material.  At the end of our time we load every one back into their vehicles and head back to the Hub where we retrieve our children.  At the end of each nine weeks, we have a pot luck or celebration as Tapestry of Grace calls it, and the children put on display the things they have made, perform plays or skits, recite poems, etc to showcase what they have learned those nine weeks.  This is a time that we encourage dads, grandparents, and friends to attend.  This year we are adding  writing teachers into the mix.  Two moms are using the Institute for Excellence in Writing material and will be working with each group, teaching them how to write and assigning them their writing for the week.  Then our children will come home and they have to complete their writing assignment for co-op.  Co-op gives the children the peer pressure they need to do their work, knowing that they are going to be held accountable for having their work completed on time.  It also put the pressure on us moms to stay on task and make sure we are doing all that we can do to teach our children. 

Tapestry of Grace covers history, geography, writing, reading, and vocabulary.  For spelling we are using Spell to Read and Write which is for all three children.  For math and language we are still using ABEKA. 

Our Science this year will be Apologia's Land Animals.  I love Apologia.  We used it for the first time last year and fell in love with their science series.  I never read a textbook that was so enjoyable to read.  We are also starting a science co-op.  There are another 12 families (some are Tapestry Co-op members and some are not) who are all using Apologia's Land Animals so we will be gathering together every other week to do our experiments and science activities together.

I think that covers it all.  Bonnie is middle school (Dialectic) this year, so I am trying to push her to do more on her own.  I will be assigning her separate reading from the rest of us and she will be required to answer questions and be prepared to recount what she has learned to her co-op class. 

Brian is still plugging a way.  He likes to be challenged but wants it to come easily.  He is starting to feel the pressure of doing harder math and more work.

Bryce is still my slow and easy going fellow.  We are still working on reading.  It is not as fluid as I would like it to be for him.  He is a mix of 1st and 2nd grade.  My main focus for him this year is reading and writing. 

All in all, it is going to be an exciting year.