“Back” to School

“Back” to school is always an exciting time. As a year-round homeschooling family, I find it important to be intentional about making this time of year special for the boys- and mama! Back to school is a way for the children to mark the passage of time and its a time of renewal. For Mr. Man, moving up a number is a big deal. This year is extra special because Monkey officially joins brother in the ranks of “big”. So, how do we make this time special? Of course, I take advantage of the sales and renew our supplies. I go through the children’s clothes and donate all the things that have become too small. We are sure to take the obligatory first-day photo. My husband thinks I am insane, but its a mom thing.

All summer the boys have been excited to see the ever-growing stack of new curriculum. We’ve made some changes this year and are excited to dig in. We’ve added a lot of reading books to our shelves over the summer and will be doing a lot more notebooking this year. At the moment, The Bad Guys series is one of our favorites. I’ve also added quite a few in the way of non-fiction, including the Who Was/What is? series. I’ve also worked on adding some fun thematic days into our plans and we will be focusing more on Science and Social Studies this year.  We will be trying out the Masterbooks’ curriculum including God’s Design for Life, Math Lessons for a Living Education, My Story, and Language Lessons for a Living Education. Monkey will start out using the curriculum from Lifepac, as well. These are complete changes from the curriculum we did last year and we’ll see which we decide to continue forward with. I did decide to bring A Reason for Handwriting back into the mix because the boys were getting very lazy in that area.

The boys are excited to have their own assignment boards. This helps give Mr. Man a visual and helps him transition between activities. We will also be implementing a new incentive activity that will, hopefully, eliminate some of the whining I hear when I say the word “school”. Since Pokemon is currently THE thing in our house, the boys will be collecting Pokemon eggs. Each egg contains a Pokemon which they can add to their book as they try to “catch them all”. To earn an egg the boys will collect tokens by doing schoolwork without whining and following the newly implemented Family Rules. Tokens will go onto their token boards and can be traded in for a Pokemon egg when they have ten tokens.

The Bean boys are definitely looking forward to new adventures. What do you do to celebrate the beginning of a new school year? What are you most excited for?

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