New School Year 2011-2012

This year has many changes for us in school.  Of course each girl has gone up one grade level in work.  Hannah and Sarah are now in 6th grade, Mary is in 3rd and Lydia is doing PreK.  We also have a new teacher with us.  Memaw moved in with us in June and we are looking forward to her expertise and help in many ways.  We also have a new room for school.  Since Memaw moved in we gave her our room upstairs, DH and I are now in the room downstairs, and the school room has been pushed out into the family room. 

You see in the header picture the girls on the first day of the new school year.  They were so excited to start.  I am thankful for that.  We had only been off for a little over a month but they were ready to get back to a normal routine.  I was too.  It is nice too that they still remember the last several spelling words they did, the last math concepts they were learning and just our basic routines.  With the oldest two moving to 6th grade we are now doing more writing in school.  They are excited about the new challenge of essays and written narrations and so on.  I am also glad to be using some of the materials I taught so many years ago when I was the 6th grade writing teacher at a Rapphannock County Public Schools!  Looking through my old lessons and the children's papers (samples that I kept) and the collection of stories I wrote as examples while teaching was a pleasant walk down memory lane.  I look at the year books and I wonder about those children and how they are.  Some I see on Facebook but so many I will never know how their lives have turned out.  I am so thankful to be able to teach my own children and continue with them each year.

Another curriculum goal I have for the girls is to go deeper in our study of Spanish, Greek and beginning Latin.  Studying Greek and Latin are more for learning the roots of English, but it has been very interesting too!  In Spanish I want to give them a good foundation in vocabulary this year so that when we begin to study the grammar and usage, the words will be there already.  Plus the Spanish videos we watch (Salsa) are lots of fun.!  The girls are using more of the words in everyday conversation.

In History we are studying WWI to modern day which is full of important events and people.  For Mary in 3rd we are doing the colonization of the New World and the travels of Marco Polo to the Orient.  I am using my sister's Rod and Staff books for our science and grammar this year and the girls are enjoying those!  I will try to post a little of what we are learning here for a better record of our year.  We always like looking back through the notebooks of last year on the first day of the new year.  So I was thinking that maybe we would read through the posts this year and see what we thought was most memorable. 

We are only in the first week of school so Memaw is still getting her feet wet as an assistant teacher.  She joins us at Bible time and I hope she is finding it enjoyable.  She has also enjoyed reading to Lydia, listening to Mary read aloud, playing math games, or listening to the girls as they play their songs on the piano.  She is also being dragged along in our study of Spanish as the girls practice their vocabulary and sayings on her! :)  She is helpd me tremendously by getting lunch ready for us.  It is so nice to come up stairs and lunch is all ready to eat.  She would do every bit of the house work, but I am trying to continue the use of our chore charts.  I have to admit that the carpet under our dining room table and the kitchen counters and sinks are clean on a more consistent basis since her blessed arrival!  We pray we are blessing her as she is us. 

 Here are a few pictures of our new school room set up for the year. I am sure the arrangements will change mid-year because 1) I have that disease, I mean gift, and 2) once the fireplace is up and going some change will be necessary.