After one of my classes the other day I was waiting for my husband at a local restaurant, working on my computer and eavesdropping a bit on a group of girls that were sitting behind me in a booth.

The girls were talking about their recent high school graduation and their first semester of college. They talked about the difficulty of the COMPASS test they took, especially the math portion. One said that the test had trigonometry and she had never taken any trig in school. I wasn't surprised at that as I hadn't taken trig either, and that was almost 20 years ago. What surprised me was what she said next.

She said that during her math classes her teacher graded only tests - no classwork, no homework, nothing else. She was failing and asked for some extra credit or some tutoring to help on the next test. She was refused extra credit work, however when the school had a fundraising drive the teacher offered extra credit to students who sold candy for the fundraiser.

So is this what is important to public schools now? Extra credit and tutoring isn't available to a student who requests it, but students who take part in fundraising get the bonus credit?

It makes no sense. Education just doesn't seem important anymore to some public schools.

I know I took a lot of time off writing, but with a new school year around the corner I've dusted off the books, printed off some planner pages, and got busy planning a new school year.

William will be starting 7th grade, but didn't finish all of his 6th grade work, so that's where we'll be starting come August 6.

For planning I am again using the Full Year Notebook System. I've used this system now for about 3 years and still love it. It offers the ability to plan the entire year in one sitting if you choose to do so. I like to split up the planning into 3 month increments. Since I want to be pretty flexible, I don't usually date the pages. This way we can have a plan but still be flexible when we need to be. If a day is skipped, we just pick back up where the planner tells us we left off the next school day.

We will have a 4 day school week this year. Fridays will be our PE/Family Day.

We'll start the day with science. We still have a year of Lifepacs
left, so we'll be finishing those up first. After the Lifepacs are finished, I'm planning to purchase the Apologia General Science curriculum. That will probably be around Christmas.

English and Language Arts is going to be divided into 4 "modules" based on the book Success in Reading and Writing by Lisa Lord. It's a whole language curriculum based on research by educator Anne H. Adams in the 70s. Public schools have used it with success and I plan to modify it a little and use it for homeschooling. Dh found the book at a book sale and it fit right in with what I wanted to do this year with William's reading and writing curriculum. I wanted something that would kind of merge the reading and writing lessons as well as apply the lessons to other subjects. I believe this curriculum is what I was looking for.

The first module is Research. This will follow science. For 30 minutes William will research any topic he chooses - either a personal interest or follow a deeper interest from another subject like science or history. Using a variety of research materials and techniques, he will decide on making a project - a powerpoint presentation, a chart, a poster, a newspaper article, a movie, a report, whatever he chooses - and will present it to me and his dad. We may also have him do a presentation for other family members.

After a short break we'll continue with math. We're still using Lifepacs as well as Math Mammoth for multiplication. We'll continue with these materials until they are finished, then we'll start on the Saxon 5/4 book I bought at a book fair. After the holidays we'll be using Math Mammoth again for division practice.

After math will be another Success module - Free Reading. For 30 minutes William can read any book he chooses. The point is to enjoy reading for pleasure. He isn't required to do any type of report or anything on these books. This is just to have pleasure reading built into the school day. The point is also to encourage him to read a variety of books.

After lunch we'll continue with History / Geography. Two days will be history. We still need to finish the Medieval History book we have, so that will be the focus until after the holidays. At that point we'll move to Ancient History - Egypt, Rome and Greece. I'm still looking for a good curriculum for Ancient History, so recomendations are welcome.

Geography will also be two days out of the week. We have a textbook, again bought at a book sale, called Heritage Studies. It goes over the geography of the Western hemisphere and teaches some map skills.

After history / geography we'll do another language arts module - writing time. I'm modifying the Success plan by using the Writing Skills book and use their ideas and lessons. While in this book, I'm skipping the grammar sections - we'll use a different grammar book - and just using the writing ideas portion. A writing assignment will be done every day with a paragraph due each week. The paragraphs can be on his choice of topic or may be one from the book. By the holidays he should be writing different types of essays, like example essays or process essays.

After another short break will be another language arts module - word study. I am again modifying the book by using Daily Grams as well as an Abeka language book I've had for about 3 years now and haven't finished yet. This will be the only module that will implement worksheets for language arts.

Typing will follow with about 3-4 lessons being completed daily. William will be using Mavis Beacon again.

The last subject of the day will be Health. I found a Health curriculum called "Health in Christian Perspective" at a book sale. It should be completed by the holidays and then we will begin learning Spanish during that time period.

I also start back to school at 3/4 time on August 16, so there will be times that dh will be working on school with William. That's why I like to make my planning and schedule ahead of time and make it as easy as possible for them to follow along and keep things going.

I will post more often as the school year continues. Right now we are still enjoying summer. We are taking weekly bike rides at a local resort area and just enjoying time together.