And We're Off!

We started school this week. We went a few weeks into June this spring, so I could start late in September. It has been interesting getting things going again. There is no real "schedule" as we just work around Little Misty and Noodle. I haven't pulled out the workboxes yet, but hope to for next week. This week we did a "preview" of our curriculum and did one or two lessons from each source. Here's a rundown:
Math-U-See (Alpha, Beta, Gamma)
History of Our World with Story of the World activities
REAL Science
Artistic Pursuits
First Language Lessons
Michael Clay Thompson's Grammar Island
Write Source
Orton-Gillingham for reading
Books for sure (there will be others): Alice in Wonderland and Little House in the Big Woods
Handwriting practice books
A friend of mine divides her year into weeks and terms, and I like that. So this week is Term A, week 1.
I am really liking Math-U-See and the History of Our World. The others I haven't gotten too far into (at least for this year).
Today, Mr. Man wrote a paragraph ALL on his own. Last year, he would tell me what he wanted to say, and I would write it. Then he would copy the paragraph. This would result in LONG sessions at the table of him not writing and me cajoling. Today, the same thing was beginning to happen when (Eureka!) I told him to just write down what he wanted. We had already gone over the elements of paragraph. I let him go. It was amazing. We also didn't worry about spelling AT ALL. It was amazing the things he wrote down. That was a great lesson for me- let him do his own work!