We are finally home from our epic, twenty day vacation. It was supposed to be a bit shorter, but Hurricane Irene had other plans. I could go on and on about how great the trip was, but I will try to sum it up in a few sentences. Riding the train for nearly thirty hours together was AMAZING. I cannot recommend train travel in the US enough! I had only ridden trains in Europe before and was repeatedly warned away from Amtrak. Those naysayers were WRONG. We are now huge fans and will continue to travel that way in the future. Sadly, the hurricane ruined our plans for a return train ride home, and we ended up flying back. New York City blew the kids away, and we all (except for Husband) want to live there. New Hampshire was pretty, and we had a great time visiting with family. It was terrifyingly white, with no visible diversity, at least where we were. Maine was lovely, and the kids had fun visiting their grandparents. As beautiful as New England was, I found that it didn't hold a candle to the extreme gorgeousness of the West. That trip to Yellowstone has left us with the pull to move out there.
So, now we are back home and beginning another non-traditional school year. The public schools started on August 8th here, which is insanely early. Our official start date is the 12th, only because that's when we left on our highly educational vacation. Otherwise, I would have waited until after Labor Day, like civilized people! Today, while Tropical Storm Lee drenched the yard, I made my annual Amazon order for the year. Even though Grace is now officially a student, our costs went down!
Websites:
Since January, I've been paying IXL for access to their math program, which I still really love. I added Grace as a student, which only cost an additional $1.73/month. I now pay slightly less than $14/month for math. For the first time, I upped my Spelling City membership to premium, which allows you to list up to five students. That cost $24.99/year. I was fine using the free membership last year, but now that they've added Vocabulary City, I wanted to access the entire site.
Books:
I ordered each of the older kids a workbook in Geography and Science, both by Spectrum. I was happy with Kathleen's from last year. I am not at all a workbook driven kind of teacher, but the topics were interesting, and since there is always a chance that the kids will want to attend a traditional school for high school, I figure that it can't hurt to have them be a little familiar with the type of school work assigned in traditional schools. Grace is getting a Kumon book of writing first words because I used it with Alexander and liked it. I also got a National Geographic book of historical mysteries that seemed intriguing. It struck me as the perfect jumping off point to interest the kids in world history. My Amazon total was $53.
Our first order of "school" business next week will be creating scrapbooks/journals of our fabulous vacation!
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