Baby is Here!

We have been blessed with the early arrival of an adorable baby girl!
You can read more at this blog.

Finishing up School

Officially we are done with school!
Last week was rough and distracting so we didn't do a great job of getting stuff done. I plan on continuing copywork, phonics, and reading lessons throughout the summer and need to make out a rough schedule for that so that it actually gets done:)
We do have 1 more Shakespeare play to read but other than that we have competed all of the reading for Year 1 from Ambleside. We also finished up our read-aloud Pinnochio which we all enjoyed thoroughly. Next on the list will probably be Little House on the Prairie.
For this summer I'll have the kids join a summer reading program through the library and I'm going to try to get us out of the house to various free nature locations.

I have been contemplating how to go about implementing our schedule this next year and am leaning towards a 12 weeks on 4 weeks off schedule. This would have us taking off December, April and August and continuing with school through the other 9 months of the year. I think I'm just going to have to try it to see whether or not it works for our family. I like the idea of it I just know that July can be an incredibly busy month for us with 4 birthdays and swimming lessons etc.
At least I have a few months to decide:)

Utilizing Yahoo Groups for your CM Homeschool

I am continually amazed at the amount and wealth of information that is available through the internet these days! While I have not even begun to tap all of the resources listed through Ambleside Online I have found even another outlet of amazing information through YahooGroups.

I highly recommend searching out these groups as well as using the Yahoo search tool to find other groups you might be interested in. I found several just by typing in "Charlotte Mason" and "Ambleside".



Here is a list of the groups that I have joined:

AmbleLore

Ambleside_Online_Curriculum

Ambleside_Year0

Ambleside_Year1

AmblesideOnline

AO_HEO_Schedules

AOArtPrints

AOCopywork

AOLessonPlans

AONarration

AO_Timeline

CharlotteMasonKindergarten

Charlotte_Mason_Friends_in_(your state)

cmason

CMcurricula

CMforMomsofMany

CMseries

understandingcharlotte

This may seem like a lot but not every group has a ton of activity and I always opt for the daily digest emails so that my inbox does not become too overloaded. I usually just scan the titles of each digest and if I'm interested in a particular post I click on that link. Also, I rarely post on these, mostly just glean information from others and utilize the files sections. The FILES are where I have found many wonderful treasures. Not every group will have files to access but a lot of them do and they are well worth your time to investigate.