Us...the long, required intro

A new blog.  I've been thinking about this for a long time.  I mostly want to write this blog for myself.  I think it will be a good way to keep track of my own thoughts and ideas.  What has worked, what hasn't, what I've chosen to use, what I haven't and why, how I've organized, what choices I've made.  I want to record what resources I have used each year, so that the next time I have a child in that grade, I have one place to go to.  If you know me, you know I have meticulously recorded this information somewhere, but it's handwritten, with lots of scratch outs and re-writes, and most importantly, not portable.  This blog will give me easy access. 

I am a big believer in not wasting your brain space remembering things that you could just write down.  I am a huge post-it note and google calendar fan.  This blog is going to be my homeschooling brain for me.

But maybe there are others that might benefit from my experiences, successes, and failures as well.  I love to help other homeschooling families.  Whether you are just getting starting, or you are struggling and need some inspiration or re-direction, please feel free to contact me and I will do my best to get you pointed in the right direction.  And if I ever do get around to writing that curriculum people have begged me for, you will find out about it here first ;)

A little about us for those us of you who might not know me.  I am a historian by trade, so my poor kids probably get a larger than normal dose of history and literature.  (They all love history still!)  My husband is an engineer, so he tends to favor the maths/sciences.  I have studied at Cambridge, taught college and AP classes, graded AP tests, and taught ACT/SAT prep classes.  I am much more comfortable with high school than preschool-ha! 

We have been blessed with 8 children, 7 of which we get the honor of raising and education, 1 of whom is in heaven and we miss on a constant basis.  2 of our children came to us by way of adoption from the beautiful country of Ukraine.  If you want to read more about our grief journey or adoption journey, I blog at hopeinthegrief.blogspot.com.  With 6 kids currently schooling, I have kids from high school through preschool, and a baby on my hip.  I have kids that learn in any style imaginable, kids that are gifted, and kids with learning struggles, kids that have attention issues, and kids that have a never ending focus, kids that do everything fast, and kids that do everything at their very own speed, kids that didn't even speak English the first 3 or 4 years of their lives, and kids that can probably speak English better than I can at this point.  I have art lovers, science lovers, history lovers, debators, and several to be determined.  I have introverts and extroverts.  I have kids that need lots of one-on-one, and kids that are extremely independent.  They keep me on my toes.

We are eclectic, classical educators from elementary school and up, and Montessorians for preschool and kindy.  I loosely follow the scope and sequence of the Well-Trained Mind from 1st grade onward, but I love to find resources that are challenging, hands-on, multi-sensory, and integrated to augment our learning.  I put lots of things together and rarely use a scripted or laid-out lesson plan.  We approach history and literature as one subject--reading lit that fits into our chronological study of world history, with unit studies thrown in to add depth to our studies as they show interest.  I encourage my kids to be independent in their studies as much as possible, so I favor curriculum and resources without a lot of teacher-involvement, and I teach them in groups as much as possible, so I favor resources that allow for multi-level teaching.  However, I am also a curriculum junkie, and I love to research all kinds of curriculum, even if it is something I would never use. 

I hope that eventually, you might find useful information here.  I plan on telling you about the curriculum choices we have made and why, how I organize, what I teach and which resources I use at each level, and even giving you tips about high school and college homeschooling.  If there is something specific you would like to me to address, just let me know.

And I would love to say I won't always be this wordy, but that would be a lie.