Journey to Excellence

He has, generally, C's and D's on most of his schoolwork that involve worksheets, workbook pages and tests. But, he has straight A's on projects and labs. Remember this, Nicole! Remember this when you are teaching him next year. Turn his learning around by doing it in the way he excels. Get his mind and hands moving!

There's not much left to do right now. Later in the summer we will be gathering the remainder of our supplies, setting up the classroom upstairs and getting the books requested from the library. But for now, we are just going to concentrate on ending this current school year strong. My posts will be extremely limited on this particular blog, until we pick back up in our preparations. See you soon!

A project I have been needing to tackle for the past 2 1/2 years finally came to a head this weekend. With schooling Dawson at home next year, I needed to get our office supply closet organized! I had craft supplies and office supplies and scrapbooking supplies just piled in boxes and bags and sitting loosely on the shelves. I also had a three-drawer craft cabinet in the garage full of odds and ends. I bought several shoe box plastic tubs and labeled them. Then I took to moving all of my scrapbook stuff to the left side of the closet and organizing my supplies in the tubs and stacking them neatly on the right side of the closet, including all of the things in the craft cabinet. Now it's all neatly organized and in one place in our house! Ahhh!!! We are one step closer!

I got my Saxon Algebra 1/2 curriculum in the mail this week. I love Saxon math! And I love how it has a teacher's manual with the answers in it. And I love how it came with the test masters with problem solutions included. And I love that I got it all for $30 when it costs well over $100 for all three books new. (The used ones I bought off of ebay are in perfect condition!) Actually, I think Dawson will like going back to Saxon math. There's one lesson per day and it's easy to find examples if you're stuck. It's very predictable and builds on previous lessons, so lots of variety in the daily problems. I also found a really cool thing called Life of Fred that could make Algebra, Geometry and Trig, dare we say it, FUN! If we can get ourselves all caught back up with our Saxon Pre-Algebra this year, we might just give that one a try for 9th grade. Also, thank you to those of you who have sent me e-mails and text messages with homeschooling information and resources. ...

Being a frugal mom-type, and not wanting to pay full price for curriculum that I know nothing about, I set out to searching the internet for used curriculum. I was blessed to find A World of Adventure , used but in excellent condition, and purchased it for $61.00 (including shipping). I think the curriculum costs around $100 new. Then I ordered Saxon Algebra 1/2 (Pre Algebra) with the student text, teacher book and worksheets used off ebay for $34.00 (with shipping). I think all three texts cost considerably more. Everything else I plan to use will be from free websites. Then I'll just have the basic school supply costs, and extras for projects, etc. But that will all be spread out. Dawson and I mapped out how we will set up his classroom upstairs in a corner of our playroom. We have all of the furniture already (his computer desk, a desk for me, some shelves and an old-time school desk). We are going to purchase a bulletin board for scheduling, notes, unit decorations, etc. We...

On Friday I picked Dawson up from school a couple of minutes early so that he could help me take all of the puppies to the vet. The school counselor was in the office and was the person who actually called Dawson in his classroom to leave for the day. She didn't acknowledge me at all. No big deal, you say? Well, about a month and a half ago I made a specific appointment with this counselor about the problems Dawson was having at school. I asked her to take an interest in Dawson and start having weekly meetings with him to discuss his progress and to show him that someone at the school cared about his progress. I cried in her office. For several weeks in a row I asked him how his meetings were going with the counselor and he would say, "Fine. She asks me how I am doing and shows me my grades." I thought, "I do that." I don't know how long it's been since he's actually met with her. She apparently isn't meeting with him, and doesn't care. Becau...

I have searched high and low for other homeschooling bloggers out there who are using/have used A World of Adventure . I haven't been able to find any, or at least any who blog about it regularly. So, maybe I'll be the first. I would love to have a network of other moms using the curriculum so we could bounce ideas off each other. But, so far, I haven't found anyone. When school starts in August, I plan to post very regularly about what we are doing specifically in hopes that other moms might find the information useful.