Up too late: the year's plans, et. al.

I think I could probably title all my posts "Up too late," actually...

Alrighty--so I'm trying out Blogger because I like how I can put links in the margins and all that (although I haven't looked around enough yet to know exactly how to do it), but I'll x-post all of this w/ livejournal.

We've been trying to "do school" over Dave's break this summer, with some success. We're being kind of haphazard and lazy about it, but some stuff's getting done nonetheless. Dave's taken over math, and we're going to try to keep that up when he starts back to work, too. So, at any rate, we're a few weeks in to the new year, and it's going pretty well. I'm trying not to think about Dave leaving and me trying to get things accomplished with Gus running loose, though.

I need a little sidebar about what stuff we're using! With links! But it's basically more of the same this year, as my kid turns out to be Susan Wise Bauer's dream pupil in many ways...so mostly Well Trained Mind suggestions, with some variations, but not as many as I expected. History is Middle Ages w/ Story of the World. Earth and space science w/ lessons I cobbled together myself. Finishing First Language Lessons...we'll probably be done with the first book (level 1 and 2) by Christmas, and then we'll go on to the third. Singapore for math with some Miquon and lots of games thrown in. And some critical thinking/logic books that I have, plus Poetry Fridays.

We're also doing homeschool co-op on Tuesdays, which will be more science and history (sort of a general overview this year), plus Spanish and art. I'd be just as happy without the science and history, really, since we're doing it on our own (some of the people in the co-op are using it as their only science and history), but I want Ari to do the group thing and maybe even get used to talking in front of people. And I'm glad we'll be doing the art there--the place where he took classes the last 2 years has gotten terribly expensive, so we're not going back this year, which means he's losing the drawing class he loved. My friend Di Linh is planning to hire a Spanish tutor to come to her house and do small group classes, so we'll do that (probably for all three kids) if it materializes. And then more gymnastics for Ari, and I need to get Milo in some sort of sport. I might just wait until spring and do soccer. Or maybe karate. He'd be unbearably cute in a karate uniform. Then there's homeschool park day with the same people as co-op one day a week, and that makes our schedule as full as I can stand it. I want to stay home two days a week, but that never seems to actually happen.

And here I'd like to do a weekly update with pictures of stuff we're doing. But I've said that before, so we'll just see what happens.