We start school tomorrow morning. I’m ready. The urchins have been alternating all day long between asking if they could watch TV and asking for a snack. I’m ready for some structure and scheduling and plans and . . .

Let’s play school for a while. I’ll get tired of that eventually, too. But for now school days, merry old golden rule days, sound really appealing.



Around the World is the theme for Semicolon School this year, and our first week’s theme is Maps and Globes.

Here’s the basic plan for this week:

Music:
Antonio Vivaldi—Four Seasons
Mission Study:
1. Window on the World: Missionary Kids
2. WotW: Children of the Streets
3. WotW: Gypsies
4. WotW: Navahos
5. WotW: Refugees
Poems:
Spectacular Science—Lee Bennett Hopkins
Science Theme:
What Is Science?
Nonfiction Read Alouds:
The Book of Where, or How to Be Naturally Geographic–Bell
Fiction Read Alouds:
Mr. Popper’s Penguins—Atwater
The Boy Who Sailed Around the World Alone–Graham
Picture Books:
Mapping Penny’s World—Leedy
Somewhere in the World Right Now—Schult
How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World–Priceman
Elementary Readers: (We won’t read all these this week, but the sixth grader and the fourth grader get to chooose one each. Brown Bear Daughter chose Open Your Eyes, a collection of adventure stories, and Karate Kid chose Ghost in the Noonday Sun, a pirate story.)
Windcatcher—Avi
Ghost in the Noonday Sun—Fleischman
Open Your Eyes–Davis
Other Books:
Wild Places (Usborne)
Maps and Globes—Knowlton
Games of Many Nations–Harbin
Movies:
March of the Penguins
Eight Below Actually, we already watched this movie, and I thought it was a good family movie, It’s about dogs and Antarctica, even though I’m not an animal person (how many times have I written that?), I really enjoyed the movie.

In addition to this list of resources, we’ll be doing math (Miquon and Saxon) and grammar (Dailygrams and Easy Grammar) and handwriting (cheap practice books). And we have a family Bible reading and prayer time each morning. And soon they all start outside classes at co-op and dance and drama and piano and karate and Spanish and an English/history class for the tenth grader. If that sounds way too busy, it is, but we don’t ALL do all those things, and I do have eight children after all.

Oh, I almost forgot I have to send two of them to college next week. Yes, we really are on the school bus road again.