It's the mo-o-o-ost wond-er-ful t-i-i-i-me of the y-e-e-e-a-r!

When doorbells are ringing and UPS men are bringing new books for our school ye-e-e-a-r!

These are what came yesterday. Over the next few days, more goodies will be arriving. I'm so happy to see that big brown truck stop in front of my house every few days!

Here's some of what I've ordered, and what I'm currently "piecing together" for our upcoming schoolyear. (I've put a complete list of links by grade in my sidebar.)


Besides some of the novel studies he'll be doing this year, I've decided to incorporate some more "fun" things for literature for my sixth grade son this year. When I was in China in the spring, he stayed with a friend and made a wonderful Lewis and Clark lapbook. I could tell by the way he showed it to me (and in fact, he wanted to get it out yesterday and look through it again) that he really enjoyed making it and learned a lot from doing it. We've done similar projects before, but when he was really young, like first grade. And he doesn't even remember doing it! So, why not do more things like that now, when he's got even greater dexterity and art skills,can do more of it on his own, and will remember more? Veritas Press recommends History Pockets: Moving West book for a history supplement. Since it seems sort of "lapbooky" I decided to pick it up. While I was shopping on Amazon for that, I looked through a few of the Literature Pockets, which I thought looked like fun. I picked up the Non-fiction one, as well as Fiction, Tall Tales, and I already had Caldecott Winners in my filing cabinet. So, for literature this year, in addition to the novel studies he's going to do, I'll incorporate some of the Literature Pockets. The Veritas novel studies he's doing include: Fahrenheit 451, Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. We will also be reading aloud as many of the other Veritas Press grade 6 literature and history selections as we can. They are all so good! My daughter will be reading the secondary books for Omnibus I (semester 1 and semester 2). If we begin to get bogged down, I'm planning to bring in some of these Sonlight titles, too. So many books, so little time!!


For history, we're coming to America this year! We are continuing with the Story of the World series because my son really loves not only the way it's written, but the mapwork and activities as well. (I found a chart which combines SOTW 4 with the History of US books here. With my added focus on American History, I decided to order the Drive-Through History: America DVD's which I thought looked like fun, and I like that they focus on character. I decided, since he loved the lapbook so much, that I'd do some of those this year with both of them. I figured if my son liked it, then my scrapbook-happy daughter might get a lot out that type of project, too! I ordered the Colonial Life project pack from Homeschool in the Woods to get us started. As soon as the Revolutionary War Pack is available, I plan to order that as well. I also want to do lapbooks for the Civil War and World Wars I & II, too, but I'm deciding if I want to order those or make them up myself... Bethany (my textbook lover) has chosen Holt's Call to Freedom as her main history text, which I will be supplementing with Hakim's books and Veritas if I feel it's called for, and of course the lapbook/unit studies will help to get the textbooky taste out of my mouth!

I know. It's a lot. That's how it is for me every year. "Oh THAT looks like fun, and wouldn't we enjoy that? And, we've always done this, so I want to continue with it..." It's fun to get it all out and see how it all fits together! So far I've done our school calendar, deciding when our days/weeks off will be (that I know of!) and dividing the main books/spines out evenly over the 36 weeks. Now I'm looking specifically at when we'll try to do certain units and I'll begin writing lesson plans after that. But more on that later. Today was my link-fest. :)

Enjoy the season!