Life and Love Learning Center 2009 Plan

After an entire semester of trying to find our rhythm, I think we've made a few decisions about the changes that need to be made in our homeschool.

First, we've decided to start schooling pretty much year round, taking breaks as we see fit. Many of the breaks will occur in the spring and summer I'm sure, but they won't be required just because everyone else is doing it. This is something Hubby and the boys have been asking about for a few years. I'm not sure why I was resistant before but the point is I've now embraced it. W believes he will learn more and forget less with this system and he's probably right.

Second, we won't be diving much deeper into the realm of unschooling than we already have. We've always been fairly relaxed about our schooling but after several weeks of being ultra relaxed the kids informed me that it's time to get started on "real" school again. They actually said they "missed it".

The above revelations set the stage for Life and Love Learning Center's 3rd change...well it's not really a change. Let's just say we finally have a plan that might stick. All of this "ultra relaxed" schooling that we've done allowed me to observe that the days of our week really do have some rhyme and reason and I believe our homeschool will be much more successful if I embrace the flow instead of trying to swim upstream all the time. And so our academic focus each day will begin to look more like this.

• Monday-Missions and Exercise...Hubby has this day off so our plan is to get up and go work out together, come home and eat and then do one lesson in the missions curriculum, Teaching with God's Heart for the World. This is a one year missions focused curriculum that you can download for free. It includes Bible Study, Family Devotions, Reading, Writing, Geography, History, Art and Science. Since we're only doing it once a week it could end up taking us about 4 years to complete but I'm OK with that. W also has theater class on Monday night.


• Tuesday and Wednesday-3R's and KONOS...I've still not received my KONOS in a bag study on Africa and stewardship but this is where it will fit into our week. The boys and I are super excited about doing this. It's a 9-12 week study but again, because we're only doing it a couple of days a week it should last us quite a while.


• Thursday-3R's and Special Projects...W's been working on a comic book with he and J as the main characters and J is currently working his way through a birds of the world coloring book. On Thursday they'll be allowed to spend as much time as they'd like doing these kinds of things. This is the day W has vision therapy and so it makes more sense to have a lighter school day.


• Friday-Art and Enrichment...J is in an enrichment program on Friday and will be taking Art, Tae kwon do, and Choir. After the program we'll be getting together with 2 other families for a mini-co op of sorts. Each month we'll have 2 Friday's of art, 1 of cooking and 1 Friday we'll go on a field trip together. While J is taking enrichment classed W will probably be working more on his special projects or working through his Thomas Kinkade art curriculum.
  

So there you have it. It's a plan!