School 2014-15

We had a great first day of school today! Will already shared some photos on Facebook. I'll probably post more here another day.

I just went back and looked at last year's post like this. We did pretty well with my goals: we met some, we didn't meet others. To recap:

• Formal nature study--Not really. Nature notebooks didn't happen too often. But we did read nature books consistently during Morning School. (We've never had trouble with the actual outside time or observation; it's the recording that gets us!)
• Morning School--Yes! I would say that was the highlight of the school year for all involved.
• Handwriting--Yes. We were very faithful with it, and both Jaan and Raia made good progress. Even better, they now have a habit of writing a little every day.
• English narrations--Yes. We're almost to my original goal of narrating English readings in English and Russian in Russian. It's easy to slip on this, though. If they're tired (or if I'm tired), it's still all Russian.
• Individual work--Yes. They're doing well with this. Check lists helped, especially for Raia. For Jaan, just getting into a routine was enough; he doesn't necessarily work off a list.

Jaan and Raia finished AO's Years 3 and 1. It took us two years to get through them. Now we'll be moving into Year 4, Year 2, and Year 1 for Asya.

We are going to pick up outside involvement a little this year. In order to home school, it's very important for me to stay home, but we're going to add in more away from home than we have before. Jaan will continue with music, Raia will start music, both girls will take take art classes, and there might even be something for Bogdan, too. Almost all of that still lets me stay home, though. Everyone except Bogdan can go to their own classes by themselves. We'll see how it works out. Will this be too much busyness, or a good balance?

I'm going to try restructuring our mornings a little, too. I want to take an hour first thing, while Will is still home, to do 20 minutes individually with each scholar of mine. Then we'll have our Morning School together time. And then we'll continue on with everything else that still needs to be done.

And for new goals:

• Recording nature study--I bought spiral bound sketchbooks and scheduled in a time. All that's left is to actually do it....
• Reading--Asya in Russian, Raia fluently in English, Jaan happily in English. (Jaan already reads pretty fluently in English, but he doesn't enjoy it.) I don't think we need to do anything special here. Just keep moving forward.
• "Enrichment" or whatever you want to call it--In the past year we have not kept up with art, music, and poetry. We need to get back on that train. Mainly, I have to have everything ready in advance, or it falls by the wayside.
• Move along--As much as possible, this year I would like to get an AO week done each week.