The Conference

This weekend was our homeschool conference! I love the conference. I used to attend alot of workshops and look forward to the day when I can do that again. The past two years I have only attended the book fair and purchased cd's from the workshops I wished to hear. ( I am actually listening to one right now!)
I wrote recently about how I was revamping our school. We are switching from Unit Studies to Charlotte Mason method. We are very excited. There is so much to learn. I have a few cds and am currently reading a few books about how to implement it to my children. I am so excited. I am nearly finished planning out my school year for next year.
At a used curriculum sale I purchased several great books. I am reading Charlotte Mason Companion- by Karen Andreola and Charlotte Mason Education by Catherine Levison.
I was so excited to get these and haven't stopped going through them over and over again. I also managed to get the Artistic Pursuits book I wanted, English from the Roots Up (which will be our Latin). I also found our language curriculum (Language Lessons for the Very Young-for Claire and Noah, and English for the Thoughtful Child: for Amber).
At the conference I bought our history curriculum. We are using Mystery of History volume one. This will go through the History of the world from Creation to Resurrection. It is small lessons with activities like maps and timelines, and we will add living books to this with narration. I went with this history curriculum instead of Story of the World only because it gave a stronger emphasis on Christianity. I like SotW, but want to teach the kids about History along with the timeline of the Bible. It makes the Word of God seem so much more alive to learn what was going on when Jonah was in a whale, or when Daniel was in the lion's den!
I bought an Apologia book on botany for fall and winter. (We will grow plants indoors). I decided against the summer water creatures book only because we are in the process of buying a house, aand we have a missions trip in June. So with moving and leaving my kids for a week, I'm thinking I will probably not want to write myself and stick to a summer curriculum!! We will still do nature studies and things liek that, but not anything to rigid.
I also bought Spelling Wisdom from Simply Charlotte Mason which combines spelling, writing, and dictation. I did NOT purchase our math program yet for Amber. I am pretty sure we are going to use Teaching Textbooks 4 for her. Claire and Noah will continue with Singapore Math since they seem to do very well with it.
Those are going to be our core subjects, but we will also implement poetry, art study, Shakespeare, Nature Study (both along with and apart from Poetry in the Park), composer study, and piano. I am also wanting the 3 to memorize a large number of Bible verses. It will be a much busier school year since Noah will "officially" enter Kindergarten. I feel that God has led me to this and I know that He is able and willing to give me the strength, patience, and wisdom to implement it all.