10 Reasons I Am Excited About the New School Year

As I alluded to in last week's Weekly Wrap-Up post, it's getting to be the time of year when we know that in another 6 weeks or so, the school year will officially begin.  That means that I need to get serious about planning for the year.  Oh, I made general plans in the spring, but now I have to think about how I will put those plans into action.  This always makes me a little nervous, maybe because I'm more of an "idea" person and the follow-through is more difficult for me.  But nervousness and excitement can be two sides of the same coin, and in this post I want to concentrate on the reasons why I am excited about the coming school year.


This will be our 10th year homeschooling!  Wow!  How did that happen?!  We started out homeschooling in what would have been Swimmah's first grade year, and here she is in 10th grade (if she were in traditional school).  

This is what they looked like back in our first year of homeschooling.  Yes, Swimmah broke her arm that August.

And this is the three of us this past March.  It's harder to find pictures of the  two of them together nowadays.

Now that they're older, they work more independently.  I don't say this because I get more time to do my own thing (not that I don't mind that, too), but more because it's gratifying to see how they've grown.  I used to have to sit next to them and do the work with them, but somewhere along the way, they started just doing it themselves.  For the most part, anyway...

We are schooling year-round this year.  I have tried to do a year-round schedule for quite a few years, but this is the first time I've been able to carry-through.  In the past, we have had things like camp and vacations earlier in the summer that threw us off and I didn't manage to get us back into doing academic things until the public schools in the area started.  So this year, we will be able to take more time off around the holidays and when the winter doldrums set in.

Volunteering.  I'm hopeful that the girls will be able to continue volunteering at the nature center and the library during the school year.  It's a lot of driving for me, but it's great for them, 1. because it's good experience for when they need to get an actual job, and 2. because it (the nature center particularly) will help them either reinforce their desire to work with animals, or help them decide that they don't really want to do that for a living.  

We will be studying US History this year.  I'm excited about this!  It's a little daunting, too - how are we supposed to cover all of US history in one year??  I suppose we kind of started it last winter when we drove to Philadelphia, to DC, then to Monticello (then to Nashville, where the above picture was taken.  We were in Nashville for a wedding, though and didn't get to any historical sites while there).  I had originally planned to do the Philly-DC-Monticello trip the year we studied US history, but the trip to Nashville came up last year, so we decided to do it then.

They will both be using Math-U-See.  The last few years, I have been pulling things from various resources for Turtlegirl (Swimmah, too when she was younger).  She's ready for pre-algebra now, and I think Math-U-See will be the best fit for her.  It's been working well for Swimmah.

Reading classics with my kids.  Always a pleasure.

I just love Autumn.  It's my favorite season, and always has been.  I love the cool, crisp air and the beautiful New England foliage.  I love walking through the crunchy leaves, and going apple picking, and even the shorter days.  There's something very cozy and homey about having dinner when it's dark out.  My husband thinks I'm a little strange for that last one.

I'm blogging now, so I will have a record of what we've done.

And the 10th reason I'm excited about the coming year is...

A new season of Dr. Who!  OK, this has nothing to do with homeschooling, but we are excited about it, nevertheless.  We started watching the new (started in 2005) series last winter.  We streamed them all and are all caught up, but now have to wait until the season starts again to see any new-to-us shows.  Well, there's always all the shows from the 1960's, 70's and 80's, but they seem so hokey - especially the ones from the 60's.  The tenth doctor is definitely our favorite.

This post is linked to Top Ten Tuesday.