What I've Been Up To Lately

 I have been extremely busy the past month or so.  Along with trying to re-organize my home to contain more dedicated daycare space, I have also been working on planning and purchasing for home school and preschool this year.  I'm trying a new method of lesson planning planning this year, thanks to my daughter's suggestion.  I need a schedule that is more flexible than writing everything out on a calendar planner.  She suggested putting every assignment on its own 3x5 card, then just giving the assignments a week at a time.

 We're using Tapestry of Grace this year for the first time.  The Lord dropped this one in our laps a couple weeks ago when I was given three of the four levels for free - levels 2-4!  I had been planning to use Sonlight Curriculum, and I'm sure I would have been pleased with it, but since this one was given to us and is extremely similar, we're going with it instead.  I purchased level 1, and now I won't have to buy any other main curriculum - ever.  Each level contains four different learning levels and all that you need to know to teach them - lesson plans and all.  There are a lot of other books you need - most of the learning comes through reading regular books.  But I already own so many of them that it just makes sense.  We are such book people anyway.  This seems like a perfect fit.  Anyway, back to the planning.

I'm in the process of writing out every single assignment for each subject for the entire year.  The white cards above are Tapestry of Grace assignments (we're studying ancient civilizations this year - level one of this curriculum covers from Creation to the fall of Rome).   The orange cards at the top are Math-U-See.  I left them unlabeled as to the year because all levels have the same numbering so I can use this same set of cards every year.

 For science we're using Apologia's "Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day" which is a Zoology text.  These cards are yellow.  I will be using green cards for our language arts program - which will combine Tapestry of Grace assignments and The Phonics Road to Reading.  By the way, if you are looking for a phonics program, the Phonics Road is amazing.  I understand all the rules to spelling and such now thanks to this program.  Not cheap, but well worth the expense.

All this planning is taking a million cards, but I figure it's worth it.  If we take care of them, I should be able to re-use these assignment cards forever.

 I've also been going through my cupboards and organizing things better.  My daughter and I started this project in the Spring, but only got the top cabinets done.  My goal is to have nothing other than the coffee maker on the counter.  So the mixer is now put away instead of on the counter.  The box is for recycling. I love recycling everything I can, but I hate not having a good place to keep it, where it will be both out of sight, and neatly contained.  I have a recycling trash bin under the sink for aluminum and tin cans, so this will be for cardboard - empty cartons and boxes, newspapers, and milk jugs.  I anticipate taking this to the recycling center every weekend.

I also re-organized the pasta cupboard.  There were a lot of storage things in the cabinet before - a slow cooker I never use (love my big crock pot) and lots of canning jars, and such.  I'm very happy I finally got this project done!