Good morning!

I hope everyone is as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I am. Heh. Ok, maybe bright-eyed and bushy-tailed is a bit of a stretch. I am up though. Like my bil says "still looking at the ground from the top down". That's a line in one of my favorite songs by Mean Old Man, or Medina, or whatever they're calling themselves now.

I am deep in the process of figuring out school for next year. Time is quickly running out and I just don't know what to do. My heart is in homeschooling. I had considered private school briefly but the realization that I would have to load up all the kids every morning to drop one off, then go back for her after school, and be on time, and suddenly all of our worlds revolve around one of us. It doesn't sound do-able to me. If they were all in school then maybe I could swing it, but for now it just doesn't seem like a good fit. So, we're on the curriculum hunt. Up until now we've been unschooling. That is, not doing much of anything structured, just letting kids be kids and joyfully discover as much as they can on their own. This has worked well for us. Winnie is reading at grade level, math is at grade level, she seems fine. Finn has come out of his anti-reading funk and is quickly acquiring reading skills so I'm not worried about their progress. I also have no problem with them following their own learning cues and interests. However, I feel like we need some more tangible learning. We at least need some loose structure. Winnie is BORED with challenging herself. She actually enjoys worksheets and projects and desk work. I would also like the structure, so we search for structure.

Miquon math looks like a good program. It's inexpensive and seems like it would have everything we need to keep us busy for awhile. I'm also liking the looks of Oak Meadow curriculum. My concern with OM is that it's Waldorf which is different that how we've approached learning up until now. I LIKE Waldorf, but I'm not sure how much backtracking and shifting we'll need to do to get into the groove of Waldorf education. I suppose one can only try and see what happens huh? I need some grammar supplement, handwriting (cursive for Winnie who would LOVE to write in flowery cursive), and thinking skills too. I like how OM works on understanding time and how life flows. Winnie will love that. I think it would do all of the kids some good.

So, there we are.