Since she has lost quite a few teeth, we have four different smiles for Satori to use when getting her picture taken. Here’s #1 smile (pleasant smile, no teeth).

And here’s she’s escalated to the full-blown, all-out, #4 smile – all teeth showing in a typical Satori laugh.

Satori loves her Crocs so much, it was a challenge to get her to wear these super cute shoes.

And just so you know that Satori isn’t always all “smiles”, here’s a picture of a glum Satori. (Due to being forced to wear aforementioned shoes for this picture).

Not to end her photo shoot on a negative note, here’s a smiley Satori once again.

David asked me to take his portrait this weekend as well, so I’m adding his new LinkedIn photo. We wanted to take advantage of the aspens turning colors which we just noticed starting yesterday.

The excavation of our driveway leaves a nice rocky background for a portrait.

Good ole’ Maddie loves her David.

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So far we’ve been very happy with all our curriculum, I think I’m finally getting good at picking out what might be a success in our homeschool. Some new curriculum we are trying out this fall include:

• Adventures in America (plus our own additional readings for American/US History)
• English From the Roots Up (just a few minutes a few times a week, so far we learned PHOTO and GRAPH)
• Minimus Latin (another fun Latin we started after Song School Latin)
• Writing With Ease 2(third time’s a charm, we flew through WWE1 in a few weeks and started 2)
• Reading lots of books! Just finished Mary Poppins and The Hobbit this week. Starting Lord of the Rings and The Voyages of Dr. DoLittle
• and a few others we haven’t started yet

We have moved to the next level/year in:

• RSO Earth & Space
• Story of the World – Middle Ages
• All About Spelling Level 5
• Wordly Wise Book 3
• Evan Moor Daily Geography Practice, Grade 3

Satori is also attending a Colorado homeschool enrichment program called OPTIONS. We are in love with her first grade teacher!!! She’s been a dream… always so positive, creative, and nurturing. She even has a blog with included student family permission and no names listed of course. You can see what Satori did in her second week of school. Satori can be spotted in the second picture, next to her best friend! She loves hanging out with her friends but is glad it’s only one day a week. She tells me excitedly about everything they learn – the wordless books by David Weisner, all about the rainforest, warm and dry colors in art, her new Spanish teacher, and so on…

While I write this blog post, after she finished her independent work, she then started putting name tags on a half dozen of her stuffed animals, so they can learn along with her and I can ask the whole “class” questions. New students include: Peter Rabbit, Roxie Dog, Pixel Bear, Cobbler the dog, and Tigriss Tiger.

It’s getting cooler and we see snow up on the mountain tops when we leave the gulch we live by. We had to turn our heat on one day already.

We miss you Daddy and Gramy and Grampy!!!

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If you’re curious about what’s sitting on top, head to my Vocabulary Power Flip books post to learn more.

We cleared out a spot for it in the loft and today I set about making labels for the subjects.

We haven’t gotten into the Workbox system, but I did have this sheet made by Heather, a fellow homeschooler/scrapbooker/workboxer, so I thought it would add to the motivation to get our subjects completed each day. (This was over two years ago and she most likely isn’t offering to do this for just $10 anymore, I see she just had a baby.) I framed her chart and laminated the numbers so they’d last longer. Currently they’re attached by magnets, although she originally used velcro on them.

Underneath the Workbox chart is a clipboard with timer attached that shows our actual schedule. I print this out everyday from Homeschool Skedtrack, the free online scheduling program we use.

I figured we’d put it on all our subject bins each morning and then add them back to the chart as we get done with each subject. Hopefully by the end of each day we’ll have a full chart. It’s been awhile since I read my Sue Patrick Workbox System guide, but I don’t think they specifically label the bins. We’ll modify the system to work for us though.

There are a few subjects we do in our Reading Room library, so I have three subject bins in the library closet – Story of the World, Writing with Ease, and MCT Grammar Island. These are stored in the tall, white IKEA frame that has ten slides to insert bins/shelves.

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I plan to do a few more contests/giveaways to kickoff the typical start of a school year. I am going to be blog-reviewing a few of our favorite products and will likely do some giveaways of those products. I’d also like to give out some Amazon gift certificates. Check on back in the next few weeks for updates!

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Satori and I made a video to show how easy it can be to catalog your very own book collection. In this video we are using Collectorz. One of these days we will learn how to make our videos more professional and smoother.

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Going into second grade, we are happy to report that all of our official phonics and phonics review programs have been completed. Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading did a great job systematically going through teaching reading and Explode the Code workbooks continued on with a great review for Satori. We finished ETC last month. All that’s left is to enjoy reading!

Math is going swimmingly with Singapore Math. What a relief to find something that really works for us and that we both enjoy doing. We have plenty of extras that will challenge her – of course the Singapore IP/CWP books, and some new ones that we’ll be trying out this fall. I mention them on the curriculum page.

All About Spelling is fantastic as usual, we will be ready to start Level 5 the first of August. There are only seven total levels for this program (the 7th is not even out yet), so I’m starting to wonder what we’ll use next.

We’re finally utilizing an actual writing program every single day, and two different ones to boot! Winning With Writing was just released and we’re one of the first users. We started with Level 3 and so far it’s a cinch to get to everyday, and only takes minutes. More about that in a blog post next week. We also succumbed once again to using Writing With Ease, a more classical method of teaching writing for young children. We actually finished WWE 1 in less than one month and will move on to WWE book 2 next week. We want to be ready to start the level 5 program in a year or so. I showed her the samples and now both Satori and I are extremely motivated to do what it takes to be ready for that. Later this year, we’ll include Killgallon writing so Satori can improve her style. Main writing goal for first grade? PARAGRAPHS!

Following the classical education timeframe, we’ll also be starting both Middle Ages history and Earth & Space science next month. We’re going to use our timeline more, and I’m getting that all setup now. I finally ordered the new Pandia Press Classical Education timeline, which seems to give more space to more recent times than their old timeline does that we have. Looking forward to using it!  We’re adding another science program – My Pals Are Here science. It was painful to slowly keep purchasing all the different components to this program – I originally thought we’d just use the $3 student textbooks! But, being the perfectionist that I am, I should’ve known I would get the full program.

Ooh, Adventures in America was just released today. We’ll be starting that program asap.

MCT Language Arts has been a refreshing change of pace for us in the LA department. We’re still working through Grammar Island and have started Music of the Hemispheres poetry. We only do this a few times a week but should ramp it up more this fall. Newly released just this past 4th of July weekend is their new literature program which will be in our hot little hands any day now. More about that as we start using it.

Vocabulary is coming along nicely. We mostly use Wordly Wise 3000 (workbook and online) and have just started Book 3. Satori just loves to use new vocabulary, so this is a big priority at our house. I also am earnestly working on expanding my own vocabulary and trying to use it in conversations with her. All this work has definitely paid off. We also are using Evan Moor Word a Day, but we do one week’s worth in one day and we probably won’t continue with that program. Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary Workshop intrigues me, but I really don’t want to extend my curriculum addiction even further…

Languages… Finished Song School Latin and I had Minimus lying around which caught our eye. I figured we’d zip through that quickly just for fun. People say their children enjoy it but don’t retain much. The book says its for ages 7-10 to get exposure to Latin vocabulary, which is what SSL did nicely, so I figure we could give it a whirl. After that, Lively Latin 1 is all lined up for the fall, which will be our first serious Latin program.

I recently blogged about REAL Homeschool Spanish. We use both that and online Elementary Spanish. We haven’t done much this summer with Spanish, but for sure this fall we’ll be diving in more.

For Geography I recently discovered the Evan-Moor Daily Geography Practice books and we’re finishing up Grade 2 this month and will move on to Grade 3. We used to zoom through independent geography books (tried almost every series out there), so I wasn’t sure how much I’d like this series. There’s more parent interaction, and I didn’t think I’d be up for that for geography. But I’m really liking this series so we’ll continue with it. We do other fun stuff for geography like puzzles, games, and more.

I should have just started out saying that we are having fun with every subject. Critical Thinking/Logic is no exception. We’re burning through a bunch of Prufrock Press books, good thing they’re inexpensive! Again, we also enjoy puzzles and games for this.

As for art, we don’t get to that every week, but when we do we thoroughly enjoy ourselves.

Both mom and daughter started Getty-Dubay Italics handwriting, but I’m not sure how easy it is to just be able to convert to a new style. We’ll chug along and see how it all pans out. After being all excited learning to type/keyboard this spring, we haven’t practiced that yet this summer. I can definitely see she needs practice, so we’ll have to start that up again. I want to see her blogging on her own again!

Satori continues to write like a maniac. Last week we ran out of blank books and she started freaking out, escalating to sheer terror yesterday. We made a few homemade books, but she started up a huge list of stories she was antsy to get down on paper. We both breathed a big sigh of relief when our big Rainbow Resource order arrived this afternoon, with 20 blank books! Also in the shipment was an ITBS Grade 2 Test Prep teacher/student book. I am curious to see how she’ll do in such testing situations. For Grade 3, we have to start taking this test for Colorado state requirements, and then every other year after that. This will be nice practice for that test, which she won’t have to take until two more years.

Apologies for the long post with no pictures, this seems to be one of those rare instances.

Looking back at last year at this time, it seems we’ve made tons of progress!  We look forward to what the upcoming year brings.

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