Organizing My Scrapbook To-Do List

Once upon a time, my scrapbooks were all caught up. Really. It was January of 2005 and I was working on December 2004 pictures. I don't think you can get much more caught up than that. However, I obviously rested on my laurels, because as of now, I am still working on 2005 pictures. A few things contributed to that.

- We began homeschooling in January of 2006 and my free time was no more. :)

- My Creative Memories consultant stopped doing monthly crops. I got most of my work done at those crops, so that really hurt.

- When I did start scrapbooking again, I was in a group with a Close to My Heart consultant. We did a kit with a specific theme each month. So, I would need to find something like Christmas pictures and would often choose the most recent Christmas, skipping many, many months in between. I was officially working out of order. (ack!)

As the pictures piled up (figuratively, as they were on my computer), I was getting more and more overwhelmed trying to figure out what I had and had not scrapped. When I get overwhelmed, I mentally shut down, so I knew I had to get a handle on this. I knew the only way I could was by a lot of (compulsive) organizing and list-making.

The following is what I came up with. It is working marvelously. I know exactly what needs to be done and am getting so much more accomplished.

First, I organized my photos in iPhoto. I had them sorted by year, but I took it a couple of steps further and organized them by month and event.

I did screen captures of this and printed it out. I needed to be able to sit down with my scrapbooks and mark off what had been done. I pulled out my scrapbooks (one for each kid and the family album) and started the somewhat laborious process of figuring out what I had done and what I was missing. The only thing that kept it from being extremely tedious what the trip down memory lane I took as I went through the finished pages.

Since I needed to know what pictures I still needed to print, I had to go through all my pictures. I put the photos in envelopes, sorted by date and category.

From there, I made the following spreadsheet. The categories (events) are the same ones that are in iPhoto.


Then, I started working on my chart. Items highlighted in blue are finished for each album they belong in. A box with an "X" means it is done for that album. Boxes highlighted with gray still need to be done. If it is highlighted in gray in the photos column, that means I need to have those pictures printed out. I also have a column for journalling that needs to be done (a lot still does!) and a place to put any ideas I might have for those layouts.

I've done this up through 2008. It was a lot of work and may seem like too much to some (most?) people. However, I no longer have that feeling of being overwhelmed by the confusion, and that makes it all worth it to me. And, hopefully somebody out there will think I'm not so crazy and this might actually help them. :)

Planning for Next Year

I've been thinking about next year's curriculum quite a bit over the past couple of weeks. I thought I'd write it all down so I can remember my thought processes. I also try to find as many things used as I can, so I give myself plenty of time to do that.

Note: Robert will be in 7th grade next year. Ruthie will be in 6th.

History - As much as I have loved using Tapestry of Grace for the end of our school year, I've decided that I just can't justify the cost. Our money is just not going as far as it used to. (I'm pretty sure this is a common problem everywhere.) I'm going to have to cut expenses somewhere and TOG just does not fit into the budget. So, I'm now looking at Sonlight Core 6. I love the book choices of Sonlight and we already own most of the books for this particular core. My only hesitation is the speed at which Sonlight moves. We'd be covering the Ancients all the way through the Reformation in one year. Wow! I would probably slow it down, spending at least 1.5 years covering this core.

Grammar - We started Rod and Staff English 5 a few months ago and we'll continue with that. We only do grammar a few days a week, so we probably won't finish it until February. We'll then start R&S English 6. I have tried other things for grammar, but I just love how R&S is set up. I also know it's very rigorous, so I'm comfortable using it below grade level.

Math - This is a tough one. I have really liked CLE, but my kids' grades on tests and quizzes this year have been very low. I feel that they really need more one-on-one instruction. And, while I am very good at math, I'm not so good at explaining it. So, I am probably going to switch to Bob Jones. I like their teacher manuals a lot and it's what I need. Since Robert is behind in math, I'll be able to put both of them in Grade 6 math and teach them together (which will also save money). The following year, Robert should be able to move into pre-algebra. Ruth can either do Grade 7 or pre-algebra, depending on how strong I feel she is in the concepts.

Science - Robert will be moving into more serious science. I have enjoyed using Bob Jones science this year, and he really likes the look of Life Science. However, it's very teacher-intensive. So, if we can afford to do the DVD (or their new online) classes, we will go that direction. Otherwise, he'll do Apologia General Science. I honestly think he would enjoy either one, so I'm comfortable with those choices. Ruth may do BJU Science 6. I'm not sure about that.

Literature - Well, Sonlight has plenty of reading, so that's covered. I'm going to try to involve the kids in some casual discussions of the books using Sparknotes, and possibly some Total Language Plus guides. I'm also looking at how logic-stage literature is covered in The Well-Trained Mind.

Writing - We're going to continue with IEW. I'm going to use the IEW Ancient History-Based writing lessons. We'll also do written narrations and notebooking.

Bible - We're going to do something wild and crazy here and just read the Bible for our curriculum next year. :) I might try to find a one year Bible for them to use, but I'm not sure. Since we're studying the ancients, it makes sense to start with the Old Testament, so that is what we'll do.

Composer and Artist study - We'll continue with the Ambleside Online rotation.

Art - A friend and I are going to do Meet the Masters together. We'll get together once a month or so and do art projects. (Actually, this may impact our artist study, too. I'll have to take a closer look at it before deciding about that.)

Music - The kids will continue with private lesson instruction and homeschool orchestra.

I think that's it. I'm happy with how it's shaping up. I think it's going to be a good year.

Spring Break Plans

We are taking Spring Break next week and I am so excited. We're not doing anything spectacular, but we do have a few fun things in the works, and I have quite a few things I want to accomplish. I'm listing them here for my own record-keeping purposes

- spend the day with a friend
- take pictures of kids in bluebonnets
- go to the Houston Livestock Show (depends on $$)
- work on taxes
- plan out TOG Year 3 Unit 4
- go shopping for some new clothes for me and Ruthie (maybe Robert, too)
- watch lots of movies
- read lots of books
- scrapbook with my sisters
- go to the dollar movie (assuming there's something worth seeing)
- finish stripping the wallpaper in my bathroom
- do some decluttering
- get Robert's legos organized (again!)

A mixture of fun, friends, family, and work (sorry, couldn't think of another "f" word that would fit). Sounds like a perfect week to me!

Civil War Study

We just finished our 3-week Civil War study with Tapestry of Grace. I thought I'd share some of the things we used and some projects we did during this study.

Mapping of the Civil War battles. Rather than have individual maps of the battles, we did one large map. I enlarged a Knowledge Quest map at Kinko's and glued it to some foam core board. We have made small flags (glued to toothpicks) to mark battle locations. The back of the flages are noted with the name of the battle site and the date. The flag shows which side won the battle.

You probably notice that my Confederate flags don't look like what most consider the flag to be. While searching for images to use, I came across this article. (Yes, it's a wikipedia article, but I found it confirmed here.) I had never heard this before, so I found it very interesting. I chose to use the first flag (with 13 stars) of the Confederacy and not change it, just for the sake of ease in reading the map.



(The kids are pointing to the white flag I made that marks the location of Lee's surrender to Grant.)

Our read-aloud was Across Five Aprils. When I decided I wanted to add some discussion of this book, I went looking and found a free study guide. We did not do any of the assignments, but I did use the questions for discussion purposes. I had never read this book before and it is excellent.

Another project was creating a wanted poster for John Wilkes Booth. While looking for examples to show the kids, I came across an online wanted poster generator. We had so much fun with it that we used it for our project.


We then got silly.


We enjoyed our Civil War study and we all learned something. It's a brutal, ugly part of our country's history, but it's important that we know about it so we can better understand where we are now.

I still have a few things I would like to do, but I haven't posted in so long that I wanted to go head and share these. If we get around to them, I'll post them later.

Tapestry of Grace Week 19

We really enjoyed our first week of Tapestry of Grace. So far, so good.

We studied Manjiro,


the opening of Japan by Commodore Perry,


and President Millard Fillmore.


We also covered the Opium Wars in China as well as the Taiping Rebellion. Whew! That's a lot covered in one week, but it really didn't seem like too much.

Ruth learned a bit about Chinese brush painting from this book. She made this picture of a dog from the instructions.


We will be adding writing back in next week, so hopefully we'll have some notebook pages to share then.

Idealess? Really?

Ruth attends enrichment classes once a week. This week, they asked the students to write a poem. Ruth loves to write, so this would not typically be a problem. However, they gave them a form to follow that has fill-in-the-blanks. Ruth does not like being told what to write. At all.

So, she ended up writing a poem about how she couldn't write a poem. I thought it was pretty clever, so I'm sharing it here. I've underlined the prompts she was given.

Idealess

Whenever I'm asked to write a poem,
Whenever the teachers ask me to play with prose,
All night I think, searching my mind
A mind like an empty slate!

Late into the night I work feverishly
Why don't the words come easily?
Whenever I write a story, it's like a faucet turned all the way,
And they dance across the page.

By Robert Frost
By Emily Dickinson
By Shel Silverstein
By Robert Louis Stevenson
My deepest respect for them all.

Idealess, indeed.

It Must be January Because...

I'm making changes again in our homeschool. I don't know what it is about January, but it always brings about a need for change. I've lost enthusiasm for what we're doing and feel the need to shake things up.

This year, I've decided to give Tapestry of Grace a try. I know, big change. What's funny is that when TOG made the decision to go digital, I basically gave up on it, and was pretty vocal about it. However, my pull to that program has never gone away. I was looking at it last week and saw that Year 3, Unit 3 fits in perfectly with where we are right now. I thought about it for awhile and finally decided that I would not be able to let go of the idea of TOG until I had actually tried it. If it doesn't work out, we haven't lost anything. If it does, I've found something that quells a lot of my fears about homeschooling my kids as they get older.

So, I did it. I am currently working on scheduling out the next 9 weeks. I've decided we're just going to do the 3 R's next week while I finish up the planning. Then, the following week, we will dive in.

I've read Harmony Art Mom's method of using TOG in a more Charlotte Mason fashion, but for now I'm just going to use it as written. I will tweak it later. I'm afraid if I try to tweak it now, I will just get overwhelmed. I am, however, taking her words to heart and being very careful about not selecting too much from the options.

One of my biggest questions was what to do about Ruth's Eastern Hemisphere study. There's no way to do both. She has been doing some of the American History readings we've had this year, so she's up-to-date on that. I've decided to shelve the Eastern Hemisphere study for now and have both kids do TOG. It would be very easy to finish over the summer or even as a slowed-down side project next year.

I'll keep you posted on my experiences. I am very excited about this and hoping it's a good fit for us.