Homeschooling

For those who don't know me, I homeschool my four children.  My daughter is 11, and my three sons are 9, 6, and nearly 2.  They have never gone to traditional school.  I have always felt strongly that homeschooling them is in their best interests for a multitude of reasons (I won't get into all of them there but the reasons range from purely academic to social--my kids are free thinkers in a very conservative area).  Those feelings have not changed; the amount of time and energy I have to put into homeschooling has changed.

Every year except this one I spent most of July and August rereading The Well-Trained Mind, researching curriculum, piecing together every subject and filling in gaps.  I really love this time, as it's a chance for me to breathe in and just plan.  I love to plan and organize.  I'm good at it.

This summer, however, I've taken 10 credit hours (in 8 weeks, oy) as well as Russian tutoring.  I don't have the time or energy to micromanage homeschooling right now and I have 12 credit hours (anatomy & physiology, concepts in mathematics, psychology, and exposition & persuasion) coming in the fall (I'm toying with the idea of adding microbiology, so you might try to talk me out of that in the interest of sanity--microbiology just looks so interesting!) so fall doesn't look to be any less hectic.

I've decided to rely, for the first time, on a boxed curriculum.  I've always pieced together a neoclassical curriculum and will still add in Latin, Russian, and violin (foreign languages are non-negotiable here) but I've decided to rely upon Oak Meadow for the rest.  I'm actually pretty excited about this and I hope it works well for us.