Sayonara Summer

I cannot believe it's the end of summer.  What a summer it has been!  This has to be one of the hottest summers I can ever remember.  We are so thankful to Mother Nature for this cooler weather for Labor Day weekend!  It has really got us excited about the fall and everything that comes along with it!  Here is a little sneak peek into what we have planned.

This entire school year will be devoted to Oklahoma History and Geography.  Our entire family is looking forward to this one.  We will be covering everything from ancient Oklahoma through the OKC bombing.  I'm using the curr. from Oklahoma Home school.  I love it.  It is so thorough, self explanatory and fun!  This may be the favorite purchase I've made so far.  (and, it was inexpensive!)  We plan on making at least 1 (if not 2) field trips per month to go along with our studies.  I have ordered a TON of free travel brochures available through the state.  We've also gotten our people from OK history coloring book.  We will be starting with ancient OK this week, covering the Spiro Mounds people.  We made our first field trip yesterday to Woolaroc.  They had an entire room devoted to Spiro Mounds!  We have already learned so much, and we haven't even started!  We will for sure be going back several times to Woolaroc when we study various other parts of OK history.  Here are a few pics of our visit...

Here is BabyGirl shooting a gun.

Here she is throwing a tomahawk.

Here we are entering the main tee pee at the mountain man camp.

Here she is wearing a coyote hat.

Aren't we cute?!  ha!  He is wearing a coyote and I'm wearing a skunk.  (cuz I'm stinkin cute)

Beautiful view of a waterfall as we drove over a bridge.

This place truly is magical.  You can see what Frank Phillips saw everywhere you look.  The land is enchanting, everything about it.  Reminds me how lucky we are to live in this beautiful state.

Touching and comparing skulls.

Before we climbed the outlook tower.

Little Man had to climb up and down every single step on his own!

Entering the museum, beautiful mosaic.

For science we are covering one topic per semester.  For the first semester we will be studying the solar system, stars and nebulae.  I purchased a new study guide from AIMS.  It looks very interesting and combines the science with math.  It has an activity or experiment with each lesson, so she cannot wait to dive into this one!  For our second semester we will be studying the human body including various systems, then we will be learning about cells.  I haven't decided what we will be using for that, yet.

For math we are halfway through level C in Right Start.  She is totally "getting it" and loves, loves, loves the geometry we are currently working on.  I feel like we are finally making great strides in covering not only the basics, but much more.  I have learned so much while teaching her with Right Start.  The strategies are wonderful, and I wish I had been taught them at her age.

For handwriting we will continue with Handwriting Without Tears.  We're on our second year of cursive writing.  For spelling we are going to start out trying Everyday Spelling.  We'll see how that goes.  I've never found one I just *love*, but maybe this one will be okay.  Our OK History course has several spelling/vocabulary words we will be learning with each unit as well.  For our regular writing exercises we will be using the next level of Write-Away.  She loved using it last year!  It will include many forms of writing such as book reports, research papers, letter writing, story/play writing and poems.

For reading we will be going over all the suggested readings from our History, as well as whatever we find that looks interesting.  We may be starting the Harry Potter series again, using a Scholastic literature unit we found to go with it.  We'll see....don't want to pack too much in.  I have plenty as of right now with just our history reading and what she's doing on her own.

We are starting our 2nd year of music school this week.  She will continue have 1 hour music theory lessons twice weekly, and 30 min piano lessons twice weekly.  She is so excited to get back into class!  We truly love our music school.

We will be doing OK Communities for our Social Studies this year.  It is absolutely perfect to do right alongside our history!  We really lucked out with Nanny giving us this one!!  It also helps that Social Studies is one of her favorite subjects!!

We will be doing art lessons every other week, implementing them with our trips to the museums.  I'm hoping to be able to introduce some fun new techniques this year.

Another new thing we will be doing is cooking.  She will have at least one day per week (Wed) that she will have to pick out a recipe and make it on her own.  She loves it!  Last week I even had her half a recipe and she did it perfectly with no help at all!  I'm so proud of her working with fractions!

We plan on doing some sort of PE every single day.  While the weather is perfect we will be playing out, taking walks and nature journaling in the mornings.

Once a month we will be getting together with our local chapter of Roots and Shoots.  We will be focusing on 3 different forms of community outreach.  For the fall we will be helping the environment, for winter it will be the human community, and for spring it will be the animal community.  I'm so glad that we have so many like-minded friends that we can join forces with to make this happen.  It's never too early to introduce pay it forward.  I pray that we can make an impact in many lives with this program.

Little Man will also be participating in some weekly activities this year!  Once a week he will be attending story hour (the same one BabyGirl grew up on).  He will also be joining some good friends weekly at playgroup!  We started these a few weeks ago, and he is already loving his new routine!  Here he is playing on the big toy at playgroup...

And, here he is enjoying his snack.... :)

So...that's it.  Our next year in a nut shell.  I'm sure many things will change through the year, but I'm prepared to roll with the punches.  I've given BabyGirl an assignment notebook this year.  It has a page for each day.  I will fill it out each morning with whatever self-directed activities as well as chores that she is expected to do that day before free time is achieved.  Then, I will also write in what we do together during our one on one time during nap.  That way, she gets a simple view of what is expected of her, and I get a nice record book.  It's a win - win situation!

As we say sayonara to summer....here are the last few pics we have of our great summer of 2011.  Enjoy.

We said good-bye to Bubba Steven as he went off to college at OSU.  Way to go, Bub.

Petting our George...

Cupcake decorating party just because!

Finally, we lost one of the top teeth!!

Horse back riding with friends!!!

Saying thank you to "Maggie"

My babies chillin

New Park Day!!

My beautiful hand made banner for "We love mom" day.

A ssssssssssssneaky vissssitor outsssside our dining room window...

Welcome Seth!!

Sacked out after our "Summer" play date!!

Go Pokes!!!!!!!!!

Hope you enjoy every single second of this beautiful beginning of fall!  Until next time....