no more Egypt!

Finally.  I'm done with Ancient Egypt.  I am so sick of that topic, LOL.   We've been going through Exodus at church for several months, and now to spend 2 weeks on all things Egypt..........I am so pharoahed out    (what happened to all the cool smilies that used to be available??)

Those 2 weeks were interesting to say the least.   Hopefully I can look back on this at the end of the year and see markable progress.  My patience was so severely tested.  My 6 yo dd can space out so easily and not pay attention to what we're reading, and not be able to answer a question when I just read the answer 20 seconds ago.  But, she's learning.   We're using Story of the World, by Susan Wise Bauer, author of The Well-Trained Mind.   We're not solidly classical, but I like a lot of the things she has to say.  We're also using Galloping the Globe, and then an eclectic mix of other books and supplies.

I came across a neat tool to help organize things I find on the internet.  Google Notebook

a couple other egyptian links I came across:
http://www.neferchichi.com/
a fantastic clipart/photo site
inside the pyramids and other photos
egypt ideas

back in action!

alright.  It's a new year!  A real year this time.   I'm so excited to finally be doing 'real' school!  Alysa is in 1st grade, Aiden is only 4 and a half, but he wants to tag along for a lot of Alysa's stuff.  So we'll see if this ends up being preschool or kdg for him.  Baelin is 21 mos, so this should be very interesting to work around him, and the baby, Sydney, is 6 mos old and so adorable!!!  She's such a happy baby so I'm not too worried about her interfering much.

We are still doing the unit study method.  I am using Story of the World as my basis, and also using the E.D.Hirsch Core Knowledge Sequence as my other guide.  I have a 1st grade math book I picked up at a sale awhile back, and it turns out that a lot of the stuff in there is what Alysa needs to work on, so I'm just going to use that for awhile and not worry about a math curric. for right now.

We like the idea that Bauer has in The Well-Trained Mind, and SOTW, of doing a 4 year span of history, repeating it 3 times.   However, we've decided to shrink that down to 3 years instead of 4, and repeat that 3 years, so that they will only be doing school like that for 9 years.  So, we'll see how that works out this year.