It’s time for the
Not Back to School Blog Hop
over at Heart of the Matter! 
We’re on Week 1 – Curriculum . 

This year our learning theme is going to be US History.  We are going to use our Prize from Timberdoodle – the entire set of How to Draw the Life and Times of – The US Presidents. We’ll be recording our findings in the Notebooking Pages US Presidents from NotebookingPages.com . Anything that goes with US History, State Geography, State History – will be on the list – The Story of US on DVD, etc.  We just found out we get to review BigIQ Kids this year – and I am excited about their premium US State portion of the site! We enjoy playing 10 Days In the USA from Timberdoodle as well. As much as possible, our reading, writing, grammar, history and social studies will be from the unit theme of US History.

Our other big shift – is to go completely from Lapbooking – over to Notebooking.  I’ll post more about this later – (think Scrapbook vs Book Reports) – but to make the final shift – we got in on NotebookingPages.com’s Treasury Sale that is going on through August 12th – 15 months for the price of 12.  We already use their Bird pages and US President Pages, and now, as we come to a topic, we’ll have full access handy! I have enjoyed watching my Nature Notebooking Pages 3 ring binder grow over the last year. What a wonderful history of learning!

We are going to continue our adaptation of Work Boxes this year as well – we are using Tax Prep type file boxes, one for each son to keep his daily/weekly work handy and portable. Our “monthly” supplies will be kept on one small shelf, with the rest of our supplies in the classroom. (pictures during classroom week) When I get their first week completely set up – I’ll post how we make it work for us.

On to the Curriculum Hop –

Jon’s Workbox:

Daily Grams, Writing Tales, The Phonetic Zoo, The Put On Chart, American Presidents Notebooking Pages, How to Draw the Life and Times of : Presidents, Jump at Home Math, Drawing Textbook.

Nathan’s Workbox:

Mathmatical Reasoning Book 2, Algebra Survival Guide, Sentence to Paragraph Writing, The Write Foundation, Daily Grams, Spelling Zoo, Daily Mind Builders – Social Studies, American Presidents Notebooking Pages, Drawing – Presidents.

We will continue in The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide focused on the US, Writing Tales, English from the Roots Up, Squire and the Scroll (with Jon), Latin for Children, America the Story of US, 365 Simple Science Experiments, Janice Van Cleave’s Science books

A blurry look at our small shelf:

Join us over at the

and then stop on by

for the link up – Let’s Talk Curriculum – 2011/2012