On Your Mark, Get Set....... We are about ready to GO

Since my original start date I planned has come and gone, and I wasn't ready, we will be starting our school year on Monday, July 16th.  I have no doubt it will be a hard day for all of us.  This weekend is a HUGE truck show in Bloomsburg, PA.  We will be there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, getting our fill of the awesome rigs that people build, mud drags, tough trucks and of course MONSTER TRUCKS!  My family lives for this weekend!  I should be busy right now getting things together so I don't have to get up before the sun tomorrow to do it, but I just can't!

What on earth could take my mind off of getting ready for my favorite weekend of the year?  School.  Crazy, huh? 

I have to be honest here, as much as I love Intellego Unit Studies, I was having a very hard time getting myself ready to use them as my spine.  For me, they have a disjointed feeling.  I think it's the fact that they aren't written in a narritive style that we read to our children, they are written in a way that we should read it, find our own words and then present the material.  I just felt like I was stumbling over my own thoughts trying to figure out how to relay them to the kids.

Now, I have been really impressed with Baltimore Curriculum Project's Lesson Plans since I found them.  They are written to fit a classroom, but I'm ok with tweeking.  I'm not sure why when I tried them we didn't stay with them.  I think I tried them at the start of my horrible grass is greener kind of year that I wasted last year.  My kids really loved the activities that we did, I need to learn to listen to their hints more.  They also like some of the activities in the Intellego (they do not care for the "go read at this site" links, and I do not care for the links that lead to another lesson plan that I have to sort out).

I decided that I would make it the best of both worlds.  I am using this monthly lesson layout as my spine instead of the Intellego Unit Studies.  I will then line the IUS and the What Your __ Grader Needs to Know books up with them, add in some BrainpopJR, some Magic School Bus, and some of what ever other videos I find that will fit.  I will omit things we do not care for when we come to them when we are going through all the different activities.

I have lined up our first week (actually I have the first 6 done now).  I think we are ready to go on Monday, tired or not.  Maybe sitting around on the sofa with the laptop plugged into the TV will be just what we need come Monday morning ;)