Gearing up for the start of school

Even though school at Casa De Galletti doesn't officially start until the day after Labor Day, we started ramping up for it this week. We are now doing about an hour of work a day, mostly maintenance work - double and triple digit addition and subtraction and reading.

This year we start doing the Pledge of Allegiance every morning - I've been teaching it to them in the car on the way home from the pool each day. Paul is going to do interactive learning with computer programs (we all really like the Edmark products for preschool and up) while I spend more time on more intense work with Giselle. I've got our curriculum workbooks and our science books w/CDs with more math and reading challenge CDs on the way. I've got my subscription to Enchanted Learning and Giselle is already familiar with the math printables on Math Fact Cafe and A+ Math. I printed out all 13 phonics books at Progressive Phonics (they were all free then) and there is Starfall too so that her reading can smooth out. I haven't worked out a schedule for our Virtual Field Trips yet although I will have them coincide with our geography lessons and there are several of us working on IRL field trips for the year too. The first field trip of the year will be next Wednesday since it's Homeschool day at The Bob Bullock Texas State Museum. All that's left is printing out the AISD 1st and 2nd grade curriculum and getting together with Marie and the other homeschoolers in our neighborhood to figure out what things we are going to co-op teach as a group.