Getting Ready: Part 2

Ok, here we go:

I am so excited this year! I found a homeschool blog that I LOVE and she has a homeschool store that I LOVE. I bought her handbook, Love to Learn, and found many good ideas I will be using this year! Very helpful book and worth the price. She breaks down each grade and has recommended books for each subject. Some programs she has written herself! She is a veteran homeschooler; been at it for like 20+ years, so I trust her judgement and wisdom. I called her store and asked what would be a good book for my kids' ages for US history and bought what she recommended. I love it. (far left in picture below). I also bought and LOVE the book 21 Rules of This House. It is just what I have been looking for. Things like "when someone is sad, we comfort them", "We do not make uneccessary messes for others" and so on. It comes with illustrations for each rule for the kids to color and a master list of all the rules to hang up. I can't wait to start this! Next, I have wanted a book JUST for Seth, my only son. It is easy for me to do girly crafty stuff, but my poor son needs something just for HIM. I have seen this book before and finally bought it. This is filled with "boy stuff". We are also going to be using the "Wee Sing America" cd for music day, which will happen once a week or more.

Math: Saxon for Seth and Sasha. I ended up finding someone with the 1st grade Saxon program they were trying to sell, (didn't work for them) and I also got the manipulatives from her, all for a great price. We will be reading from the Book Of Mormon readers, but Sasha is ready to move on the regular scriptures. She will be doing Rod and Staff for grammar, just like last year.
I am doing Explode the Code for both Seth and Addie for phonics since it goes along so nicely with the Happy Phonics program I just bought.

I also bought a journal program for each child. They write in it each day and illustrate it. If they misspelled any words, they go on a spelling list that they work on all week. It is just very organized and I NEED that this year. The journal program was also written by Diane Hopkins, whom I have mentioned like 100 times in this post! :) I might want her autograph someday.....she is quite the lady!

I decided to get Diane's Student Planner Program for Sasha. It basically maps out her daily, monthly and yearly goals academically and spiritually. I have been feeling like I need to push Sasha harder and think this will help me with that! :)

This is my new phonics program I bought from the mom I mentioned above. Her program was mentioned in a list of top phonics programs. Which is saying a lot since she is just an ordinary homeschooling momma from Utah! Very neat!! Anyways, it has a lot of games as you can see and I am so excited to use it! It took me a long time to cut it all out, but it is done and ready to go. All my kids can play the games, which is a bonus. I will report back after we have used it for awhile. It looks so fun and way better than the program I used last year with Seth. Sorry, Buddy. This year will be a lot funner!

Well that is all for now, I do believe! I have one more thing I am doing that I will post. I need to get them laminated first!!!!!