Happy New Year!

Wow, I am SUCH a lazy blogger. Has it really been over a month since my last post? December always goes by in a blur, and this year was no exception.

My "baby boy" turned seven at the beginning of the month, which of course, seems just impossible. We spent the day at EPCOT, then celebrated with his friends that weekend. And once all the celebrating was complete, it was almost time to jump into our "12 Days of Christmas" which we do leading up to Christmas since that's when all the fun activities are planned around town. This year, we saw the Nutcracker and a holiday show at the Rep, learned about Holidays Around the World at EPCOT and enjoyed the "snow" falling at Celebration. We baked Christmas cookies together, took a drive to see holiday lights and enjoyed holiday movies at home - all fun activities, but my favorite part, since Jim and my mom were able to join us for many of these, was just all being together.

Though I never intend to take a long break from schooling in December, we just seem to fill our days in other ways. And for a few weeks, I'm feeling like that's okay. This week, we'll be easing back into school mode. A major classroom overhaul is first on our list, and our schedule is lightly filled with activities. The kids will be working on their props and costumes for Odyssey, I'll teach one of the final co-op lessons in our money unit and Noah will be attending a Lego playdate with the new homeschool group we recently joined.

Next week, we'll dive back into curriculum with a few specific goals for January. Rather than spending my holiday planning our spring schedule, I decided to extend our first semester through the end of January and take this month to play February - May. Noah will be wrapping up a language arts project and our cars unit, and Ava will be doing some work on numbers, reading and writing (which she began showing interest in recently).

We'll also be wrapping up our money unit this month, which means the full lapbook and lesson plan will be available for download here soon. I'm pacing myself with new units and plan to spread out the two I'd previously planned for spring. As of right now, I'll be working on an Animals Around the World unit for the spring which will incorporate science and geography. Since we have our Disney passes again, I'm envisioning trips to both EPCOT and Animal Kingdom being a big part of this one. I'd also wanted to put together a unit on Great Inventors, but I'm learning to pace myself and think that I'll be saving this one for the fall.

Right now, we are gearing up for the Odyssey of the Mind tournament in February. Once that is done, our co-op group will be working on a play on the history of Florida for the remainder of the school year. We may also be doing a follow up to our money unit by letting the kids start and run their own business if there is enough interest among the group, and Noah is going to be part of a new Lego league.

Since June is also a busy month for us, we're planning to wrap up by the end of May. In July, we'll be doing some art intensives with the co-op group and a mini-unit on European geography/history at home. It looks as though August will be taking us to Germany for a bike show (my husband's business) with potential travel to Switzerland, Austria, France and possibly England before or after. I'm certainly keeping my fingers crossed that it all pans out because the kids are already talking nonstop about seeing the Eiffel Tower and taking the "underwater train" to London.

And on that note, I'm going to go enjoy the last few hours of "vacation", get to bed early and hope I wake up energized to start a whole new year!