It's our Summer Break!!!!

Yep, that's right.  We were too stressed out and since we were finished with Kindergarten work, we've called it a year.  Last week was very laid back and this week is our first official week off.  We began painting the classroom on Friday night and hopefully tonight Gabe will get the trim painted so that I can begin putting it back together tomorrow.  I read some great reviews on Homeschool Tracker last week and decided to try it out.  I bought a 30 day trial and have put most of our lessons in for June and some for July even.  It schedules them and allows you to bump them forward when life happens.  I am loving it so far. 

We plan to start back to school in June but have a trip planned for one week.  We are going to go with Dad to a Pastor's Conference type thing in California.  While out there, we hope to visit the Monterrey Bay Aquarium and King's Canyon National Park.  These are a few of the places Gabe and I visited when we were there in 2001 and I know the boys will love them.  I'm counting these as field trips and will be including those days in our attendance.  That's the great thing about homeschool, family vacations count as attendance in school! 

Last week the boys decided that since they don't get report cards to get money for good grades, they need a prize for finishing the school year.  They don't choose a little prize either.  They are both on us for a NOOK!  They tried to sell us on the idea by telling us about the school work that they can do on it (educational aps) and the great books that they can read while traveling this summer.  A few days later, Levi decides to finally tell us that he just wants it so that he can watch Netflix movies and play Angry Birds.  Anyways, I have no idea if they are going to get their wish or not but I know that I've been wanting a NOOK for about 2 years now so maybe for Mother's Day I will finally get one.  I've been saving up B&N gift cards to buy one and almost have enough, but if I got one as a gift, I'd have lots to spend on books.  I'm such a dork!  The reality of it is that none of us are very likely to get our own NOOK but we may get a family one for us to share.  I can see where this would be a great asset to our school. 

One last thing that I am looking forward to this month is the Scholastic Book Fair.  I got the flyer yesterday along with a few coupons too.  I am a total Scholastic junky and at the book fair, all of the books are supposed to be half off.  We are far from deprived in our personal library but we always need new books.  We are really into non-fiction type books right now and I love that I can add the paper back books to our work boxes so easily. 

Once I get our classroom back together, I plan to post pictures of our shelves and classroom.  We've stepped away from Montessori but there are still many hands-on lessons on our shelves.  We've moved to a few textbooks but we use the workboxes, puzzles and manipulatives as suppliments to the text.  I believe that this makes the material more interesting and personal for the child.  So far, it is working well with my boys.  They both love learning and get excited about so much.  I am excited about our break and getting back into the classroom in June.  Year 1 was wonderful but I know that Year 2 is going to be even better!!!!!!!!