What's new for 2012?

Hey all! Hard to believe it's the last week of the year 2011 isn't it? Remember in grade school when we had to draw pictures of what we thought 2012 was going to be like? I know that I was drawing us living in outer-space with cool hovercrafts to jet around in--think like the cartoon The Jetsons's! LOL!

But it's true...2012 is right around the corner! A new year for a new start...or at least a reboot for our school curriculum. Over the past weeks-really since right before Thanksgiving, I've really let our "schedule" just kind be in a state of eternal flux. While that works for some people, I've discovered that for our family it's just not the best choice. If I'm going to get everything done--well, at least MOST of what I want to get done--in a week, I need to have a better grasp on things.

So we are making a few changes for 2012...

The biggest change will be including more independent work for Little Britches. He can do sooo much with minimal instruction, so I'm going to take advantage of that by initiating a Daily Notebook. You can see most of the pages I'm using--since I downloaded Carisa's (1+1=1 Blog) wonderful Daily Calendar Notebook--but I am adding a few more in for us. I am going to let Little Britches work on this while I get his stuff for the day out and ready to go...I have it all in sheet protectors in a binder that he can just pull out every day and work on while I get things ready, or while I'm taking care of the Baby Britches in the morning.

Another thing I'm going to try is using the Daily Heart Report form that Carisa has also created...you can find it in the bottom right corner HERE. I love that it's like a report card for behavior--something that might really help me out right now. It's rough for us sometimes with my husband working away from home for 3 days/2 nights every week and it tends to come out in the boys behavior...so I'm hoping that maybe using this report card will help us out. I'm laminating it so we can just hang it up in the classroom for me to make notes on. I love the scriptures for each section and really think this might work well for us.

We are going to start back up with our Five In A Row curriculum...trying to do it 2-3 days a week--which means we'll row a book about every 2 weeks. Little Britches really enjoyed our past rows, so I'm just going to have to step up to the plate and stick with it. I'm going to do ONLY the lapbook things which I think will help him internalize what we are going over and just use the manual for everything thing else.

And some changes in store for Baby Britches too!! First off my hubby moved in the other school desk into the classroom for Baby Britches since we spend about 70% of our time trying to keep him out of Little Britches desk! Oh boy, he was so excited last night, he hustled in there and climbed right up into it. Then he patted his brothers desk, then his own with a HUGE grin on his face! Talk about making my life easier! Today he just played with toys and books sitting there the whole time we were doing lesson work!

And I'm going to try to put him together a sensory bin to play with during school time. I have so much bulk beans/barly and oats that I know I can *spare* some for him a container full. I will get one with a lid on it and pick up a few random cups/spoon/containers to put inside of it. Then I'm going to let him have at it during school time. I know he's going to have a blast!

Whew! So there are the biggest changes. I'm going to post pictures as we incorporate them...this week we're just finishing up the year with just random things--games, miscellaneous worksheets, writing, books, ect...that way I can start fresh next week with our  new schedule! Needles to say my laminator has been going in overdrive with me getting everything ready! Now I just need to get some more binding rings--I checked out OTC, but with shipping it's ridiculous...thankfully I found some on EBAY for less than the shipping cost of OTC!