Update on school

First and foremost, (drumroll please)

Brittany FINALLY finished 5th grade yesterday! WOOHOO!!!! :-)

I had given her two goals she had to finish before she could be considered done with 5th grade and sort of left it in her hands to figure out when she would get them done. (they were both memorization) She is scheduled to start Jr. High Youth Group at church on the 20th and I told her she couldn't start it if she wasn't done with 5th grade. I think she FINALLY "clicked" yesterday and she got cracking. She did great and she is now officially done and ready for 6th grade! WOOHOO!!!

We have a bunch of changes for 6th grade this year. Most of our curriculum is changing, we are changing what activities we do and I am changing our focus.

We have done Salvation Army's PE/Art/Cooking/Swimming program on and off for years. This year they are greatly increasing their prices so we are dropping out of that. However, we DO have fun things planned. Brittany is joining 4H this year and will also be taking horse back riding lessons! She is very excited about both of those.

As far as curriculum goes, we are trying a whole slew of new things. Some things haven't been working, some things WERE working but she has moved on and I need to change the emphasis on other things to get her ready for high school. We will be using LLATL for Grammar/Literature/Spelling. She is switching from BJU math to Saxon math because SHE said she needed more drill. (not what I would have expected a child to say!) I got her a new devotional from Kenneth and Gloria Copeland that looks terrific. We are doing a new science curriculum called Christian Kids Explore Biology. We have never done a science "curriculum" so I am excited to have a whole year of lessons laid out for us! If we like this, which I am sure we will, we are going to do their Chemistry curriculum next year. As far as history goes, we are REALLY veering off course (for those of you who know me) because we are NOT going in order this year. AAAAAH. But Brittany missed out on her state study the year Kaedy was born and I really want her to have a firm knowledge of where the states are, their capitals and their main features. Our Konos group is doing a state study this semester and we are going to join them. We are then going to go back to our regularly scheduled history. (lol) The only thing we are really keeping is Latina Christiana which we didn't get through last year. We are going to concentrate more on writing this year, memorization, vocabulary, and notebooking. She is also going to get grades! (up until now she has just had to keep redoing her work until she made an A+)

We also have Emmy starting this year. She is officially in Kindergarten. I don't really know her learning style yet, so we are trying a few different things to see what works.

Anyway, today we are going to work on getting the schoolroom back in order and getting a schedule made, etc.

I am really excited, though, and the girls are too!