Well, almost there! Yesterday I got Cheery's and much of PMM's things all lined up. Whew! Then we went last night to Tallman's Scout camp Parents Night. That was fun, but very hot and sticky. It rained last night, not enough, but a little anyway, and is supposed to be some cooler today. Tallman is headed to the archery range today, I hear. :-)
Anyway, Cheery is doing many of the same things as Tallman for school. They are doing the same Latin and physical science programs. Cheery is doing MathUSee Epsilon this year, and doing most of Ambleside Online Year 3. We didn't do as much fiddling as we did with Tallman's Ambleside schedule; Cheery will pretty much be doing it as written. He is VERY enthusiastic about Shakespeare this year. For a "back to school" treat, we got him a Shakespeare Treasure Chest with activities and stuff in it, and he carried it around all day yesterday! LOL He was recently in an Activity Days play, and loved it. He might have the boards in his blood, lol. I'll be checking into some local outlets for that if he remains interested.
And now for the PMM. I know what we're PLANNING on for him, what I don't yet know is how much he's going to sit still for. He is officially "first grade" this year. He will be beginning MathUSee Alpha, and continuing with Teaching Your Children to Read Using the Book of Mormon. He has really thrived on this. He'll be doing Ambleside Online year 1, but at only half-speed--I really want to take the time to see that he picks up narrating, and copywork, and all that, and I know I won't do a good job of that if we are rushed. He is excited to begin regular copywork this year.
Today I need to finish setting up things to start PMM's new Spanish program, The Great Eight Mealtime Kit. The goal is to have the entire family speaking largely in Spanish at dinner time. We'll see how it goes-it is a very new program that we found at our local convention this summer. Also, I will be going over a late addition to the older boys' schedules--a communications program called Say What You Mean. I'll be going over it--I think it is possible to integrate this into the boys' narrations so they'll be getting the benefit of the course, while not doing much "extra" work, using as fodder for their communications and speech assignments, the books they would be doing written or oral narrations on. Those are my jobs for the day! Then tomorrow the schedules can be printed, the assignments sent off to the boys' Palm devices, and we'll be ready to go on Monday.
We are also planning something new for us this year--following the Ambleside schedules, plus an exam week each term, will make for 39 weeks of school. We've never done that before, lol. So the last two weeks of each term are going to be "crazy weeks" We'll be setting aside all of our normal schedules except for the Ambleside reading. The boys will have the terrific Business Math program from simplycharlottemason.com to help keep their math skills sharp, they'll read, and then we'll do those "other projects" that sound like fun that we never find time to do. A play based on one of our readings, perhaps, or extra field trips, art projects, whatever we can come up with. This will also be a great time to get videos of the Shakespeare play for the term and all that. I think it'll help keep things fresh and hopefully avoid burnout.
Well, I'm off to convince myself that I can teach PMM to set the table using only Spanish!