A new start

A new school year is upon us! It is the Thursday before school starts, officially for the public school kids around us and really for us as well since we tend to follow the district's calender.
The last few weeks have been exciting in our household. Boxes have been arriving filled with books and other sorts of things. I love that Alec is getting excited about school. (that never used to happen) Yesterday was a particularly exciting day for everyone because this arrived:

If you are in the market for a microscope for your home school, this is a great one! Super heavy, sturdy construction. Reminds me of the microscopes we used in high school science class. Inside of 30 minutes from opening the box I had it all set up and we were looking at the prepared slides that it came with. First up was the honey bee mouth parts, very interesting (and a little creepy), then intestines and parts of a stem and leaf. All so very interesting.

Today I am working on our lesson plans for the first few weeks of school. We are using a new science and grammar curriculum this year. (still on my quest for a grammar program!) We are really excited about the science program. I purchased Apologia from Sonlight.com so we'll see how it goes. Alec did good last year, we learned about the periodic table of elements. We used "Elements & The Periodic Table, What things are made of" As well as some flash cards I purchased from an Usborne rep. by Basher Science, and of course we watched Bill Nye videos as well. He created his own giant periodic table of elements (drew pictures to represent each element) and an element discovery time line.

So that is all for today. It's time to get Cole ready for meet the teacher night at his school and TKD right after. Enjoy the last weekend before school everyone!