I was reading over at The Homeschool Post and found that I was nominated in the vlogger (video blogger) category!  Thank you to everyone who has voted!

The voting is open until Nov. 18th at midnight if you haven’t checked it out.  There are so many wonderful blogs listed in each category.  Over a thousand all together!  I’ve been having a great time reading new blogs tonight as well.

CurrClick is having a Trunk or Treat Sale, lots of great curriculum’s are 75% off!  And as a bonus there are 8 freebies hiding on their site!  When your logged in explore the site looking for the trunk image.  Click on it to find your free download!  I had fun looking for mine and we will surely use many of them!

The sale ends at midnight tonight!

Nominations for the 7th annual Homeschool Blogger Awards are open!

Categories are:

• Best Homeschool Mom Blog
• Best Homeschool Dad Blog
• Best Blog Design
• Best Photos
• Best Crafts, Plans & Projects Blog
• Best Family or Group Blog
• Best Encourager
• Best Current Events, Opinions or Politics Blog
• Best Homemaking or Recipes Blog
• Best Teen Blog
• Funniest Homeschool Blog
• Best Special Needs Blogger
• Best Vloger (video blogger)
• Vest Variety
• Best Thrifty Homeschooler
• Best Super Homeschooler
• Best Nitty-Gritty Homeschool Blog
• Best New Homeschool Blog
• Best Homeschooling Methods Blog
• Best Homeschooling Nature/Field Trip Blog

If you have blogs you love to read that are published by homeschoolers head on over to The Homeschool Post to nominate your favorites!  Click on the banner below.

Our routine might get some tweaking this year.  But this is basically how it’s been working for us.

Get up, dressed and have breakfast.  After breakfast we do morning chores.  This is washing the breakfast dishes, starting some laundry and getting the table reading for lessons.

Dh does Bible study with the kids.  Then we do map time.  This is something dh started doing with them last year.  We have different maps on our living room walls.  He started teaching 1 country at a time last year, adding a new 1 each day.  The children now know a large number of countries, all the continents, oceans and provinces/territories of Canada.  These get reviewed every day, they love seeing who can get the answer first.

After that we head out to the table and start math.  This is followed by our LA activities, copy work, spelling, grammar.  Then we will take a snack break while I read our FIAR (Five in a Row) title.  After that we’ll do the FIAR activity for the day.  Then read about what ever country we are currently studying and do an activity with that.  I have been using Galloping The Globe along side FIAR and it’s a wonderful complement to each other.

We take a break for lunch and after that read our science or history section.  Then do any activity or copy work relating to that.

That is about the end of our formal lessons.  Most of the time we are finished by noon or just after.  The afternoon is saved for crafts and nature studies.  We also have family reading times in the evening.  We are currently working our way through the Little House On The Prairie set.

A few of the goals we will be working on are…

Dd8 will be working on memorizing her multiplication facts, neater hand writing and learning cursive.  She also would like to learn to sew.

Dd6 will be working on phonics and reading fluency.   She also would like to practice knitting more.

Dd4 (5 this fall) is learning to read.

Dd3 & ds1 are to play and have lots of learning fun.

I try to keep our goals in mind as I pick out curriculum and put our lesson plans together.  I will be doing a detailed post soon on how I keep our records and lesson plans.  I’d hoped to have it written up by now but a summer flu bug has hit our house.

Basically I have a planning binder that I’ve put together.  Here I keep a paper copy of all my lesson plans, reading logs etc.  I also use Homeschool Tracker + to keep records and grades from the work we have completed.

One problem I’ve always had is how to organize all the work sheets, activities etc that we do.  Last year I finally found a system that works great for us.  I stumbled upon a blogger that used a milk crate filing system.  The folders were organized by date and in each folder that weeks lessons were placed.

There is a little more to it then that, but I will explain how I do it very soon.  I’m hoping to start setting up this years file system this week.

Normally we school year round.  This year I decided to take a summer break.    We needed the extra time to work on the gardens, renovations and just enjoy the summer.  Last year was an unusually cold summer, so there wasn’t nearly as much work in the gardens to do.

I’ve been looking over our curriculum and thinking about making some changes.  Most of what we have been using works very well for us.  We love unit studies and hands on learning.  One area that has been tricky is spelling.  We’ve tried spelling workbooks such as spelling workout and CLP spelling books.  We just aren’t fans of workbooks and I don’t find the children learn much from them.  I’ve also tried the Natural Speller.  Its a great  book but just doesn’t suit our needs right now.

I recently stumbled on to All About Spelling.  I think this will be a much better fit for our family!  Its hands on, using letter tiles to build words.  We use Math U See and the hands on method had worked very well for us.  All About Spelling teaches the phonograms in a logical order using site, sound and touch.

I’m also going to try using this as a reading curriculum.  They have made some lovely readers that match up with the phonics lessons.

I’ve enjoyed reading all their samples online and browsing through the videos in their forum.  I ordered the first few levels and reader.  They should be in this week and I can’t wait to see them.  I’ll do an updated post on what we think of the materials once it arrives.

Grab your copy this week as CurrClick changes the freebie each week.

Handwriting For Reading: Nature