Looking forward Looking Back.

I haven't got any pictures sorry. The camera has been quiet.
Well I have got one. It's a token gesture. But he is cute eh...hanging out in the empty woodshed. Erro has settled into this house like he never lived anywhere else.

We have two weeks to go for the year!
Connor finished his grammar for the year today so that gives him a little more time to spend on other things as the end of the year screams up on us. He is working hard to try and finish his maths book by the end of the year. He is learning his latin vocabulary and working on his explorers study.
Jordan is also working hard to finish his maths by the end of the year. He will have done two years maths this year so that's great work! He is working on grammar and on French which will not be complete until early next year. And he is enjoying learning about the Tudors.
We have dropped handwriting and formal writing for the rest of the year.

I'm busy planning for next year.
Science we will be doing Chemistry which will be very interesting and I'm making my purchase list for books at the moment. I think we are going to have a lot of fun with it.
CSIRO run a science awards program called Crest that children work through to learn more about the scientific method and conducting their own investigations. We will be joining that next year and I'm sure we will have some interesting and fun things to post here.
History we will be studying Early Modern (1600-1850 approximately) So I'm making my purchase list for that too! We'll probably need more bookshelves to store all the new purchases. Every year I find history so interesting that I wonder how we can top that. Then I start looking into what we will be studying the following year and get excited all over again. History is fascinating! The Australian Governments new National Curriculum will make world history (not just Australian history) compulsory for every year of school. You won't be hearing any arguments on that front from me. What a great idea!
Most other subjects will continue on from this year.
Reading related to history
Writing in addition to our normal writing work we will be doing a 6 week course together; Brave Writer Kidswrite Basic .
Both boys will be starting vocabulary study by looking at the classical roots of our modern words.
Jordan will continue with French and Connor will continue with Latin
Jordan will be doing an intensive period on Socratic Logic at some point in the year.

We have at least 2 camps with other homeschool families planned. One busy with lots of activities and one relaxing with friends. We are also looking at a camp for our teens to get to know each other better. The boys will be going with Richard for another boat camping trip on Gippsland lakes.

We will have time next year to go to homeschool group every week. And we are in discussions to get a regular teen meet up going which is exciting for Jordan.

Then we have cricket hockey gymnastics sailing etc. And we are pondering the boys joining cubs/venturers and we need to get them into a new junior brass band. It's a busy life!

So lots of planning going on. It's fun to look forward.

At the same time I am looking backward over the year that has been. When I'm stuck in the nitty gritty each day it can be hard to see the big picture so it's great at the end of the year to stop and look back. It's encouraging to see how far the boys have come. I write reports for 2 reasons
1/ For us. To encourage us and remind us of what we have acheived and what we need to work on
2/ For the Dept of Education (or whatever they call themselves) They don't ask for anything from me but at any time if someone should decide that I'm not educating my children and decide to report me I could be investigated. For this reason I like to keep records to show. I feel quite comfortable that we are fulfilling the requirements of registration and that the childrens education is sufficiently rigourous so I make sure I have the means to prove this should I ever need to.

Of course when the boys were at school report time was rather exciting. They excitedly brought their reports home for us to read and then shared them with the family to show how great they are doing. Report time is a bit anti-climactic when Mum writes it. So if you would like the boys to share their reports with you please ask. I'm sure they will enjoy sharing what they have done this year.