More changes

I'm getting seriously burned out with the way I've been doing the homeschooling thing. I have a newfound respect for teachers who do this every day. Making lesson plans every week, printing out documents needed every day. It's no wonder I can't sleep.

Another homeschooling mom, World of Discovery, suggested doing unit studies and lapbooking. So I did some research. Find the right website, and they have the lesson plan all done out for you, all you need to do is get the book for the unit study and the supplies for the lapbook.

Next week, we start a unit study on America's White Table by Margot Theis Raven. Technically it's for Veteran's Day, but that's all the way in September. So since we have Memorial Day coming up, I thought it would be a good lesson for then, too, with a little tweaking.

I did have to do SOME extra planning additions, but that's okay. It's not ALOT. Next week we start on that book, plus learning about WWII. We'll be doing a lapbook for WWII as well, and I just got back from The Dollar Store with purchases of poster board, scissors, and a few other things. Yesterday we went to the library to get books and videos about WWII. I printed out resources like Germany's flag, Japan's flag, Israeli flag (for the Jewish aspect of it), and America's flag (starting with the original one first, next week sometime we'll do the current American flag), as well as georgaphical information on the primary countries discussed in WWII (mostly Germany, Japan, and the U.S., with a little Russia thrown in).

Yeah, I did some tweaking of it, but I used the base plan for my inspiration on the extras. The great thing about this is that a proper unit study can take at least five weeks to do. I've planned this one out to six (each week studying a different war), with the sixth week being special projects related to the lessons (like interviewing a Vet from WWII or finding an Aushwitz survivor to interview or getting together a care package for our current troops overseas). And once this unit study is done, it will be time for them to take their Summer Vacation with their Dad, which will give me six weeks to get a new unit study chosen and new supplies for a new lapbook.

Hopefully this will alleviate at least SOME of stress over getting things done and ready. We shall see.