Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Beginnings: 2013-2014

So many things for the start of our new school year. 

First: we took an unintentional break. It was supposed to be a "light," summer that turned into an extra-light summer! I was just feeling lazy. I'm glad though now, especially as my oldest and I decided he would take on AP classes at home. 

My oldest M goes into his junior year, feeling positive he knows his calling. He self-taught himself guitar last year, and is very much into singing and songwriting. His goal, is to get into a college with a good music program, and hopefully with a scholarship. So while AP classes don't do a lot for advancing his career, it might be impressive on a college application. 

So our new schedule is for longer school hours for my oldest, but also breaks where we take "breaks" from the hard work. 

For M, he will be on a rotating schedule. He will do AP History three weeks, then AP Biology for three weeks. He will do Literature for three weeks (doing CLEP exam for literature to justify mommy-grades) then do creative writing for three weeks. He will rotate humanities and civics during the week, rotate French and Spanish during the week, and will do 15 minutes of Geography, and current events daily. Because of his goals, he will also use the school hours to study guitar and to study music history. 

A very full schedule, but he is my kid who actually likes to stay busy and is very much looking forward to this year. 

I'm planning on rotating subjects for my 11 year old and my littles as well. 

Not just that, but I'm excited most about adding something new. I always stress that we are not getting enough music appreciation in and art so every fourth week, we will be doing, Fun Fourth Week. During this week, we will do arts and crafts pertaining to what we learned. We will learn songs, and dances. We will also use Thursdays to attend the Zoo and take advantage of the free museums and do field trips. I hope this works out like I envision! I think this will be an opportunity as well, to my oldest to destress from his new workload. 

I'll be adding lots this week, sometimes two posts a day as I'd like to really keep track of what we are doing this year, as a sort of "yearbook." 

As usual I'll post either samples of what we are doing, or I might just list weekly what is going on. 

School starts August 26th! 


2 comments:

  1. I love your idea of a bloghop, so I popped over. I have an 11 and a 14 year old. I'll be checking back to see what you guys are up to!

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  2. Thanks so much Lori. My two oldest are 11 and 16!

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