School is on my mind!

First grade to be exact.  I can not believe the boys will be starting FIRST grade in September......or sooner.  And it is hard to believe we are starting a second year of homeschooling.  Before we started last year it felt like we had talked about homeschooling for many years.  Now it has come and gone!!!

This year is going to be so different I can just feel it.  My feet are wet so I know what I do or do not want to do this year.  Kinda know more of what to expect with the boys too.  Their age has a lot to do with it too. 

And the "school room".......WOW!  So different from last year. 
You can check out what it looked like last year here .  There is NO trace of school in the dining room this year.  It looks like a dining room.

There are a couple of reasons it has changed.  Through out the school year I would change things up now and then, but the boys and me changed our style of learning. We found we didn't need all the visuals like I thought we would.  And two we are putting our house on the market so it needed to look like a home not a "school room".  House on the market?  I'll save that for another post.

Anyway last week I ordered the boys' math curriculum which really got me thinking about school.  I am using Saxon Math for first grade.  So excited!  Have heard great things from lots of homeschooling moms who have used it before.  And I even have several friends who actually taught it as a 1st grade teacher.

Yesterday the manipulatives kit arrived!  When that brown truck comes the boys always get excited.    As soon as I opened it they Matthew was bugging me to get it all out.  I had all intentions of saving all of it for school.  But I did give in and let them look/play with some of it.

Matthew-"I can't wait to start first grade! All this stuff looks so interesting!"  He is super excited to start.  We usually do not start until after Labor Day, but............

It all fits in here!!!!

I am pretty sure we will start school much earlier than I had planned.  So needless to say I have school on my mind.  Just waiting on the teacher's manual and the boys' workbook and we can start math. 

I'll order their phonics curriculum in a week or so and then we are good to go!!!!!

Summer will soon be over and school will start!