{I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because someone actually corrected my sloppy use of an end-of-sentence preposition the other day, and I was crushed. Never. Again. <– and Ok, they don’t like the use of my periods-for-emphasis either.}

A friend posted on Facebook, “I need to get started lesson planning. Do you do it a week at a time, or what?” I replied, “I have absolutely zero motivation to lesson plan unless it is July. And then I do the whole dang thing at once.”

Thankfully, it’s pretty easy when you use an *amazing* curriculum like I do. Ambleside Online has everything laid out by week, and I just have to tweak it to fit our book choices (and add current music/art selections) and then determine what we do each day. Even that wouldn’t be as important if I didn’t have more than one or two children doing school.

I’ve been hunting the Internet waiting for back to school sales, and hit Walmart last weekend when they were still setting things out. 🙂 i bought a package of pencils at Costco. I ordered from paperback swap, used book sites, and Amazon of course. They offered me a free trial of their prime membership and boy have I used it! I still get most public domain things free for the Kindle, and maybe one or two paid books that were considerably more expensive in paper form.

Beautiful!

Another Facebook user posted how happy she was to be done ordering for next year’s school, so she could sit back and enjoy the rest of the summer. I laughed as I typed, “I’m about done also, but instead of relaxing we get all excited and start school early!”

An Ambleside user posted (on the amazing new forum) some printable bookmark schedules. I got a little crazy with my scrapbook paper and my laminator and set the girls up to have a bookmark for almost all of their paper books.

Custom Bookmarks!

Once again I’m in complete awe of how we get to learn. I’m actually sad for text book students stuck behind a desk all day, who miss out on this amazing and rich education (that is not to say my kids know they have it as great as they do. 🙂 ).

We usually start around the first of August only because I have it all together by then. I’m ahead of schedule this year so we’ll see what happens.

To organize I got a stack of five craft project boxes from Costco. I think they’re intended for scrapbook paper, but I think they’ll work great for keeping their work/pencils/kindle/whatever together.

Thankfully no two chose the same color.

I have one for me, one for each of three – THREE! – girls (and one for actual scrapbook paper). That’s right, Organique will be six in September and wants to learn to read. Gulp. [I can’t believe I actually began this blog just before I was pregnant with her. Wow.] So I have a box for her and I’m planning a year 0 or 0.5… Learn some reading, begin to narrate Aesop, nothing heavy. Miss Pleasant will probably be in the mix there too.

Year almost-1. I had to make a bootleg copy of the Penny Primer from TATRAS after wearing out the first one.

I’m still using the schedule and checklist I posted about last year, and in fact AO now has the same chart format available to download right from their site!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone far, far from my neglected MacBook.