Oh my.

I put off my curriculum choices for the Fall as long as I could… until the fourth of July loomed close, and I had a moment of panic that the summer was OVER and I HAD to decide already!

I’m all about agonizing over making choices… a fault of mine that I just LOVE!  I went back and forth between my options and all the pros and cons of each.

• A Blend of Different Curriculums… primarily Abeka
• BJU Distance Learning… aka Video classes

We basically did option #1 last year and while I think it was a success, I became very tempted with the lure of the video option.

Last year was definitely CHALLENGING with my two little men around doing their best to sabotage our school day.  :)

It was tough enough when the Davis Man was a wee babe and nursing often, but I greatly fear that the Fall will be even tougher now that he is all over the place and INTO everything!

One big Con of the Distance Learning was the price.  It was MUCH more expensive than what I would pay with option #1 since I already have some books and most of the rest I could probably find second hand.  Option #2 does have a payment plan though, where you pay something like 30% up front and then the rest split up over the next 6 months.  You do get a lot for that money too… all student books and tests, all teacher books, keys, and lesson plans, as well as the Bahama Mama Hard Drive.

When it came down to it, the Distance Learning ended up being our best option, and we decided to bite the bullet on the price.

Haylee was thrilled since after watching some samples a while back, she decided that was her pick.  :)

I don’t think big decisions like that should be left up to children, but I am happy that in the end we went with her choice.  Especially since this will be something she’ll be spending a LOT of time doing.  It helps this momma/teacher that she actually is looking forward to it.

I ordered everything last Tuesday, and was shocked when it arrived on our doorstep on Wednesday!

We all enjoyed opening up the boxes and checking out all the new books we’d be using this coming year.  It was very exciting even for Wade!  :)

I was very impressed with everything that was included and the apparent quality of it all.

That is a LOT of stuff.  Seriously. Teacher books are on the left and student books on the right.  I don’t know where I’m gonna put it all.  :)  I did tear out several of the student books already and have them filed and ready to be pulled each week.

I thought the book of punch out Math Manipulatives was pretty awesome.

It looks like sometimes the Math lesson will tell her to get out XYZ manipulative and use it to answer questions 1-5 or whatever.  To me that is fantabulous since not only is it a great resource to have, but someone has already done the work of showing where and when to use each one… which means… I don’t know… MAYBE IT WILL GET USED! :)

I am hoping too that the Lesson Plans will be low maintenance and easy to follow and keep up with. I still need to look over what all I will need to do each week.  I plan to follow last year’s plan of attack and look ahead at the week’s lessons, pull her needed papers and manipulatives, and sketch out her daily assignment sheets once a week.

It worked for me to do all that prep on the weekend most of time.  It just made it so much easier knowing everything was prepped and ready each day.

To help me plan the year, I printed off this 2011 calendar…

and then adapted this 2012 calendar to this…

{Feel free to right click, save to your computer and print for yourself!}

Much cuter, huh?

Less than 5 weeks until our FIRST DAY… August 15th!!

{That gives us three good weeks of school before we take our week long Disney break! Ah! I just can’t believe there could be LESS than FIVE weeks of summer left!  It just started!}

And only about 45 weeks until our LAST DAY of school… May 18th!  Ha ha!