My MIL has offered to pay for my oldest to try CC this next year. Is there any "prepping" that might be helpful to her? I am not really sure if we are in it long term as I find it a little hard to know exactly what it is we are actually getting, but since it's free... I'd also be interested to hear what kind of teacher prep I should do. If she does it, then I will use it as her curriculum (as opposed to being supplemental).

Have you looked around for a First Lego League team? It is a robotics team based on the EV3 (technic).

I like it, at least in the earlier grades. I definitely see a difference in my son who got more terminology and rules training and my girls, who though they are way above average readers, still struggle with spelling.

VBS Church Camp CORE Camp (STEM activities) Lots of free reading programs We will see how the money goes for any other camp type things LOTS of time at the pool Even more time at the pool Volleyball Soccer As far as school: Writing with Cover Story Creative Thinking Activity books Finishing their current math and grammar Science History As we finish the books I won't start the next until after our family vacation in mid-September. Timing has just worked out that we will likely be doing math right up until that week though :/ The biggest change is my daughter having dropped competitive gymnastics. That alone frees up about 20 hours per week! At the moment I am still feeling the urge to just replace that activity rather than just enjoy our new found freedom.

I panicked for a moment over it and then read that they will continue with the LU. We enjoy the psychological benefits of being able to see each book disappear from our shelf. Thankfully, even if they did decide to do away with the LU we are a grade ahead of their timeline for the moment. I can see how those with large families would like this option. It does make an already affordable curriculum even less expensive.

Spring: Finishing up CLE 100 which is really far too easy for him, but I figure it can't hurt Finish up CLE Learning to read Finish up CLE LA 100 Finish up HWWOT penmanship book 1 Summer: CLE Reading 1 HWWOT Penmanship continued CLE Math 200 books 1-5 (?) Lots of reading programs from our local libraries and half-priced book stores Fall 2016: CLE reading 200 CLE Math 200 books 6-10 and Math 300 (maybe only part way through depending on how he does) HWWOT Penmanship continued CLE Bible 200 He just listens in on science and history at the moment.

I have found that a lot of middle school math is a repeat of 5th-6th grade math. Is this the case with CLE? If there is a lot of repeat I figured it would be better to just shore up where they need it and move straight into pre-algebra.

I have two that will be working at about the 6th grade level and this is tentatively our plan: Bible: Pilgrims Progress Study by AIG Language Arts: CLE Writing: Cover Story Math: CLE History: I *think* I am going to cover Texas history but I might do that over the summer and move us on to World History...I am still very undecided here. Science: If we manage to finish General Science we will move on to Physical Science Other: My oldest is participating in our Jr. Zookeeper program at the local zoo The middle is taking STEM classes and learning how to do 2-D animation Both are participating in First Lego League. We are also considering some fun classes at our local co-op. I am still thinking on it though. If we do, my oldest wants to take a cooking class and my middle wants to take a writing class based on Lego.

My STEM girl (11) participates in First Lego League (the Mindstorms robotics are used for this), Scratch, Lumberjack, Alice, Python(all open ended I believe) and she runs a Minecraft server that she is learning to program in. We also are fortunate enough to have my brother who is basically a genius helping her learn to write in Java, my husband who is also a very talented programmer, as well as a new program that is sort of like Mathnasium but is less of a tutoring program and more of an enrichment program. They cover nothing but STEM using a wide variety of resources. This past week she was at a coding camp hosted by graduate students from UTD. The CORE (the place I just described) also had some very neat open ended building toys out called Zome Tools. All three of my kids, especially my younger son LOVED these. They are on the expensive end but get great reviews and would be great for teaching geometry and such later. We have found that being a STEM interested girl has been a bit of a challenge socially for her simply because it is a male dominated area still, even at the younger ages. She was the only girl in either of the two sessions for the camp last week. It bothered her at first, but then we talked about how special it was that she was helping to "pioneer" STEM activities for girls. This year we are FOUR girls participating in Lego League and granted two are my girls, it is still two more than we had last season.

PS. Just looked at your siggy and my kids went through gamma and Delta before we changed.

We moved over from MUS to CLE. MUS served the purpose of reviewing multiplication but I didn't see the method being sustainable long term for our family. I did have to put both my girls back a few grade levels in the CLE because there were topics that MUS hadn't covered yet at that level. I am finding that CLE was a good choice for us and I moved my younger son over quicker than I did my girls.

Maybe you need to try having 5-10 minute tidy ups throughout the day? This way you can teach, but can also know that at such and such time you can get those little things done.

Such a slow start to the day today. We didnt even get out of bed until about 9am but we are moving now. Living room is cleaned and vacuumed and the kids have started their chores. We also got our Bible reading done and are about to get started on math. The focus today will probably be on math and science again since those are the two things I really want wrapped up before our trip. We are looking at temps between 105-110 next week. Typical Texas but still HOT.

My day is over. DD did her tumbling class. Somehow ended up showing off on bars LOL. Art class also finished. Got what we needed to do with math, science and history done and the girls did their reading. Luke had a bit of trouble with math this morning but did really great with his reading. He is in a new ETC book which has started doing blends which he has a hard time pronouncing (he says cwock rather than clock) so I am hoping this will really help him practice those sounds. He can do it, but I let him get lazy and now it is a terrible habit. I took a hot bath and am now curled up in bed lesson planning. I hope to have science done by this evening.

While everyone else is getting ready to restart, we are finishing up our current year. I would say we have about 2 weeks of math and 2 weeks of science left. I finished up our history last week so the girls will just reading some historical fiction during the break and they have a few simple read and answer the questions pages left to do. I have lesson planned for 1 semester of history and am working on science right now. Wow does our science increase in difficulty this year. I am a little nervous about how much more reasoning and deduction is expected this year. I still have a ton of planning to do, and I really need to have it done by the end of the month so we can start back after Disney. I think it will get easier to plan as the girls finish up their subjects for this year though so hopefully that will free up my time a bit.

Haha didn't get up "until" 7. I was about to come on and brag about being up by 7:30. The kids have a friend over today. They are considering homeschooling but the situation is unique so are still on the fence. Both of the girls parents work so grandma (who is my daughter's head gymnastics coach) is thinking of homeschooling her but besides being a coach she is also a nurse practitioner. I don't think the parents have any interest in homeschooling her themselves, but are letting Grandma make the educational decisions (I don't quite understand the family dynamic. I have never even met the girl's parents and she competes on the same team as my daughter. All of our sleep over communication is also through grandma). Anyways, grandma told me to make her do school with us but I can't bring myself to make them all sit through school when this is their first sleep over together. I think we will play here for a bit and maybe head to the library before gymnastics tonight. While they are playing I am going to work on lesson plans I think. We will "reset" officially on Sept 14th. Anyone have any thoughts on using MUS long term? It is doing great things for my daughters right now and we will use it all the way through percents. I was considering from there, moving over to CLE.

Aww Critter. I am sorry about your chicken. My original flock is all but gone since they free range and that means are vulnerable to predators. I stopped naming the chickens after the first few because it made it hard when they disappeared. Aurilea- It does wonders for my mind to have a plan set out. I have just about finished ours and we will start mid-september after we get back from Disney. It's a mad rush right now to try to get what we are currently doing finished without making it pointless to do it. This morning has been pretty productive. I thrifted a coffee table last night so stripped it and and started painting it this morning. Waiting for the top to dry right now so I can flip it and have a better angle at the legs. Looking forward to having it in here. My living room is still rather boring at the moment because my previous house was so small I didn't have space for decorative furniture. Between that and the salvaged industrial M my husband hung over the weekend I have had a pretty good "thrifting" week. We have also started school. Which my kids are determined to make difficult. We have done Bible, L is started on math, K is finishing science and I have no idea what my other one is doing since she is upstairs working. We will need to get history read and then I promised the kids a trip to the pool (pending an attitude adjustment).

We got a full day in. I probably should have pushed for a bit more but we did enough. The girls are finishing up art class right now, which thankfully is at our house. I cooked lunch so I did sandwiches for dinner so at least that was easy. No activities tomorrow until the evening and since we did quite a bit of cleaning this morning I think tomorrow will be fairly easy. My stylish girlfriend came over and helped me "shop my closet" so I could take pictures of outfits. I feel like I am getting to that age where I am either going to go frumpy or go fashionable yet appropriate. Being a SAHM with out many places to go tends to make me lean frumpy and I never feel good when I look bad.

Monday and the official start of "kick it into gear so we are done by Disney". Got up this morning and scrubbed my bathroom while the kids did their chores and we are about to sit down and get started on school. We have to do everything today so it is going to be full. On top of that we have company coming at around 1pm and then K has tumbling tonight at 4. To top that we are going to do Whole30 before heading to Disney so I need to get meal plans sorted so we can start that Saturday.

You have had a full Sunday! Church, lunch and a nap so far for me LOL! I thought about cleaning something but I am too lethargic from sleeping in the afternoon and this heat. Tomorrow we will be getting back to a full on day. No tumbling camps, or even team practice in the evening tomorrow. I think our summer activities, with the exception of our Disney vacation, are all pretty much over. Thank goodness. I am ready to be done with summer if I am honest. No matter what my intentions and plans are we always end up SO busy during the summer.

We have orthodontist appointments today. Fun stuff. My older daughter has her consult and my younger (whose case was much more severe) just has a tightening. After that I head straight for the tumbling camp so my DD can participate in the show off show they do, then we will head home and school for a bit before heading to her practice tonight at 4:30. I am going to try to hit up the library and drop off reading logs as well but that may have to wait. My little guy finished up his Explode the Code 1 1/2 book yesterday. I can't decide if I want him to start book 2 now or not. I guess that 40 days is enough time to make a good start on it, but it will definitely put us having to finish some of it after Disney. It really doesn't matter, but I like the idea of going on vacation and then coming back to fresh books.

I went into town with my mom and we hit up Hobby Lobby. They were changing the facade and all of the industrial letters were just thrown in a dumpster! Made a call to a friend with a suburban and in 30 minutes we had loaded up 30 of these awesome letters! Going to re-purpose some for our own homes and the rest are going on Craigslist for $30 each! And yes, I did get into the dumpster haha.

Grrrr just spent several hours lesson planning our Uncle Sam and You only to realize that I wasn't planning enough lessons per week. I had gotten on auto pilot from planning Science which has us going through one chapter per week and in Uncle Sam I need to do at least 3 per week. I hand wrote it all too...

I used to run one that brought in people from all over dallas. It is the Kaufman and Surrounding areas group. It is an all inclusive group and is mostly meet ups and field trips.