Tales of the perpetually planning...

How many other homeschool moms out there take months to figure out what you will be using, and then take what seems like months to figure out how you'll implement it? It can't just be me. :)

We've had some changes in our school year already, and it just started. We choose to homeschool year round so that we have the freedom to take breaks when we need them (which, by the way, works out to every 7th week and all of December!) This means that we are already in the swing of our year. Or should be in the swing of the year. We thought we were having a class, then decided to join a new group, swiftly found ourselves in a new portion of the old group, and all felt like we were doing some strange version of homeschool hokey pokey with all of the changes.

Things are finally settled!

We are a second-year Sonlight family. I Sonlight! We're excited because we'll be using Sonlight's Core 100 American History In Depth. But.... I can't leave well enough alone. History is full and rich, and in order to fully and richly enjoy it we really need to dive in. Deep. Before any of the Sonlight purists out there tell me I'm adding too much, my kid is in heaven with this kind of challenge. Plus, we'll be splitting it into roughly two years. I say "roughly" because in an effort to teach her how to be more self directed I am not scheduling out each week. Instead, I've put together the listing of materials to be covered in the "unit" and will chat with her each morning about what she wants to accomplish that day. My hope is that it will ease her into being able to do this on her own over the next year or so. I'm guessing that it will take us approximately two weeks for every one Sonlight week, though I fully expect that we'll dig in and get dirty a few times in the year (meaning that we'll follow rabbit trails and spend extra time camping out in the subject.)

Long story short... I need more than a few weeks for subjects like the Civil War and Exploration. I also want to have time to add in world history to the batter. What's history without a broad world view? We didn't get where we are by ourselves! (For my homeschooling buddies - we have always taught history from a classical approach so the idea of not including world history has me baffled. But, this core with Sonlight is just too good to miss...)

Some of the resources that I'm adding include:

Diana Waring's written and audio materials for both Vol 2 Romans, Reformers, and Revolutionaries and Vol 3 World Empires, World Missions, and World Wars.
Streams of Civilization Vol 2 based on the subject/timeline

Teaching Company's Early American History dvd set (this guy is the best!)

Various movies and books

My Audio School (fab website for free goodies)

We're tossing in projects based on her interests, beefing up the papers required by Core 100's LA program, and throwing in some geography from the Diana Waring materials to compliment the geography portion of Core 100. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. We still enjoy read alouds, so we'll be using some of the heavier required reading in this fashion.

For those new to Sonlight please don't take this to mean that Core 100 isn't beefy enough. It is. I just know my kid. :) And, for those using Sonlight, if you want specifics on how I am integrating it, or even what weeks I'm using each resource I'd be glad to share. So far I have the first three weeks figured out. Now, to finish the rest of the 18 that I think we'll cover (and then the remaining 18 that we'll cover next year!)

Thank goodness she'll be taking science through our homeschool group. One less thing to plan. :)