Homeschooling on the Brain

I'm sitting down today and going through our curriculum so I can order books for the coming school year.  We are actually enrolled in a Catholic school - a distance learning program.  We have a Consultant who oversees our education and who documents our testing, and semester grades.  We use a classical curriculum which divides education into stages called the Trivium.  The goal to teach your children to think - "the art of learning."  It organizes learning according to the maturity of the child's mind into three phases; Grammatical, Logical, Rhetorical.  For more on classical approach go here.

What I like about our distance learning program is that our lesson plans are clear and concise.  This year we worked from a teacher planner which organized everything into specific assignments on the numbered days of our week which saved a lot of work.  It was nice especially for Kaye who is becoming very independent and has a natural affinity for organization.  For Cee it was nice for those little checkmarks she loves and which bring her much pride.  

The girls are very interested in the books that will be their school life for the next year.  They get very excited when the boxes arrive.  This is also the expensive part of homeschooling but at least it comes in one big (expected) chunk.  Looking forward to the time it is all organized and ready.  After I order I need to box up and file their books and notebooks from last year.  I can't bear to do it when Summer starts.  I'm much more motivated now.  I'm slowly getting excited about a whole new year with three.  Did I just say excited?