New school year, new approach...

Greetings fellow homeschoolers!! It is once again that time of year where the leaves begin to change colors, the air is crisper, and we prepare to embark on another 10 month homeschool journey! This year we will be embarking on preschool learning with our son and some basic tot learning with our daughter. For any homeschooler out there you know when I say that it can take some time to really get into your teaching groove and figure out what works best for everyone. Previously we had been planning out our lessons week by week, which led to time consuming hours spent trying to keep up with what we were going to do next. Well we are excited to announce that there will be some BIG changes this year in our approach for planning out our school year. Thanks to Preschool Palace we were able to outline our entire year based on her 10 month curriculum ideas. You can purchase her entire curriculum if you want, we opted to use this as a "model" of how to break up our learning over the year and cover more topics at once.

To go along with our new curriculum I decided to invest in a planner to break down every lesson plan, which days we choose to homeschool, and get a more structured year. I honestly cannot say enough good things about The Ultimate Homeshool Planner that I came across on Amazon. It honestly covers everything, a break down by year, month, week, and even has a weekly bible section that plays into having our faith play a larger roll in our homeschooling.

 Here you can see the weekly section focusing on a weekly prayer, accomplishes and evidence of God's grace we have witnessed throughout the week.

 Here is a breakdown of our monthly plan where I can write down our themes, what we are focusing on learning and then can break down lesson plans for each day.

Lastly, just a breakdown of our entire school year! Honestly it looks like such a short period of time when you look at it. This really helps us keep on top of extra curricular activities that we are a part of each year and plan our school year accordingly.

Not only have we changed our curriculum, our planning, and the amount of days we are choosing to homeschool. But we have also decided to revamp our learning areas for the new year! Here is a peak at what we have completed so far:

Have no fear! Not everything has changed completely, there will still be plenty of crafts, learning games and sensory ideas ahead. We are just so excited to kick off this new homeschool year and cannot wait to share with all of you our journey! Check back with us next week to see how we kick off our new year exactly with new "not back to school" traditions and breakdowns of our entire month, week by week!