Saturday, September 5, 2009

3 Weeks of School Completed

We have now successfully completed 3 weeks of school. I have a little bit of tweaking to do with our schedule, but things have been running very smoothly. I am so pleased with myself for keeping up with history discussions and grading. We are continuing to use the workbox system, which is keeping me accountable on a daily basis to get things graded, recorded and prepared for. Another big help was to enter all of the assignments for the year into an Excel spreadsheet for grading purposes. I can now open that up and see at a glance what I need a grade for. It is a visual reminder for me, which I find extremely helpful.

My biggest problem right now is how best to utilize our science lapbooks. We started with Ecosystems from Hands of a Child. I got this one for free several months ago, and went on to purchase lapbooks on Sled Dogs, Chocolate and the Holocaust. Dd is not enthused each week to continue with her lapbook. Right now there has been a lot of writing involved and she typically does not like to write things by hand. HOAC does have many of their lapbooks available as "Type It In". I purchased at least one of our lapbooks in that format so we will see if she likes that format better.

I signed up to be the coordinator for the middle school field trips for our local homeschool group. It is a lot of work since I have never coordinated field trips before, but I hope it will be incentive for me to get out of the house on a monthly basis and do something fun. It is suggested that we do one educational and one social event per month, but that is not strictly enforced. I already have us scheduled for a scavenger hunt downtown (complete with tours of the Powder Magazine and the Heyward-Washington House), a trip to the state museum and a living history day at Boone Hall. That will take us through the end of the year on the educational front.