How I prepared for 2012-2013

For those that asked, yes, last year we started Sonlight D. It was so confusing to me. I could not figure out the big binder. Couple that with the fact that boybarian 4 was barely reading and I was one overwhelmed momma. Then something really cool happened. Other home school moms encouraged me to keep going, to not allow myself to become a slave to the big binder and schedule. And then, something even better happened, Sonlight revised their guides. I know for many the changes were not a good thing, but for a newbie Sonlighter- they were exactly what I dreamed of. I took advantage of their 50% repurchase discount. We already owned all the history books, read-alouds, and readers. We did not get very far last year and because American History has so much to study, I really don't mind starting back at the beginning. Yes, we had a couple of read alouds to find replacements for and I added in some different readers for boybarian 3.

The Sonlight forums also gave me the encouragement and ideas to make Sonlight hands on. It provides us the perfect balance for our 2 totally unique boys. One is the bookworm with a photographic memory and the other only learns by doing. I thing I've finally found a way to make Sonlight work for us, which is what the company encourages.

So, I spent the summer getting us ready for our new school year. I made 36 file folders to correspond to our 36 weeks of school. Any papers we need for that week for Art, Science, Bible, Math enrichement, etc. are in the corresponding weekly folder. I wrote on the outside of each folder exactly what extra supplies we might need for that project. All our timeline figures are divided into envelopes inside the appropriate weekly folder.

And here is a picture of where we keep it all. That big drawer on the bottom right is my file folder drawer. I love that we can just shut the doors and just like that... school is out of sight.