New Year, New Start

School officially began at our house last Tuesday. By Wednesday I was thankful for fresh starts! I had tried doing school with my four oldest kiddo's on Tuesday without laying the babies down for their naps. Big mistake. It was a chaos. Kait started her online classes and had a ton of questions, the other three were begging to start and the babies were, well...babies. By the grace of God alone, we made it through and managed to make it to the kids homeschool gymnastics class in time!!! Wednesday started school after the babies were laid down and school went as well as I could have dreamed! We switched from Sonlight to My Fathers World this year. I loved Sonlight, I loved the readers. However, last year we didn't accomplish as much as I'd hoped. In December we took a 12 day trip to Florida and in January we moved and by February my entire kitchen (and most of my main floor) was gutted. It was a very trying year for me as far as homeschooling goes. The word "successful" doesn't exactly come to mind. I really felt like we needed a slightly less intense work load this year. I felt like I needed to switch to a unit study-type curriculum to meet everyone's needs, and so we did. So far it is working wonderfully! The only down side I see to MFW is that you have to go to the library weekly. In theory it sounds okay but I know myself and we live in the mitten and winter with six little ones are brutal. I know I'd never make it to the library every week. So I decided to order a book recommended in the IG for each week. If we make it to the library frequently, great. If not, that's fine too. Each week, MFW recommends an exploration day. On this day the kids go out and explore nature. We also do any science experiments listed in our science book. Each week our exploration day will be on Tuesday. Tuesday mornings the kids have spanish at 10:00. A family friend will be coming over and teaching them spanish for an hour or so each week! Then from 3:30-4:30 they have their homeschool gymnastics class. I am excited to dig in to our curriculum a little deeper in the upcoming weeks. The girls are working on creation, which is super fun and Tristin is doing review work, necessary but I can't wait to get to the good stuff! We will be doing a bunch of projects and activities this year. I am looking forward to making lots of memories with my kiddo's this school year!