Back to School

I really intended the main focus of this blog to be homeschooling, and I feel I have diverged from that long enough for awhile. So here's a post on what is happening with our homeschool.
I struggled for a long time with finding a planning method that would work for me. I'm not good at sticking to a structured schedule, although I enjoy creating them. I plan to use Ambleside Online's program as my core curriculum, and benefited from someone's suggestion to print their list of scheduled readings by week then check them off the list as we complete them. I also made a chart for the term on which to plan scriptures, poems and songs for memorization (one of each per week). Then I made up a weekly log, with the days of the week across the top and subjects down the left side, including AO readings, scripture reading, music practice, nature study, copywork, phonics, math, geography, etc. I have about 20 subject areas. I don't intend to do all of these every day, but they are all areas I would like to include in our homeschool, and this format provides me with a way to record what we do and make sure over time that we are covering the things that are important to me. One line is reserved to record time spent in outside play, to remind me to make time for that every day. I'm actually pretty happy with the way I have this set up; hopefully I will be as happy with the execution as with the planning! Aside from outside time, the only things I am committed to doing every day at this point are music practice and scripture study. Right now music practice is just having Lily play her review songs on violin, as she is not taking lessons at the moment. For scripture study we review our memory verse for the week and I read aloud. Right now we are reading in the New Testament; I usually read a section from a children's story version, then read the same section in the KJV Bible. Our memory verse right now isn't technically scripture, but it is something I feel is important and relevant right now. We are memorizing "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1995 (you can read it here). As you can probably guess by my recent posts, I am concerned about the social trends we are facing and their effect on families. The family proclamation is a good reaffirmation of what we believe about family responsibilities and relationships. Memorizing this is something of a long-term undertaking. Usually I just pick scripture verses that are meaningful to me and would be understandable to the children.