Homeschool planning

Brace yourselves, I'm about to head into full on homeschooling planning mode. I've already begun collecting a pretty decent pile of books, and I have so many ideas swirling around in my head, that I know it's time to start writing them down. I'm starting earlier this year because I'm doing a lot of planning. I only have one of my three co-op classes planned, plus I need to do our own school schedule. It's a lot in my head that is going in a lot of different directions. I may have to put off some of my reading for a while. 

So for our own homeschooling, we are going to be doing Ancient Rome (which you probably already knew, and for which L. is very excited) and a unit study on earth science combining geography. This last one is kind of amorphous in my head at the moment, but I'm getting a lot of ideas from the books I've checked out. It's going to be sort of an all-about-the-earth unit study. My thinking is we'll start with the core, work our way out to the crust, take a look at earthquakes, volcanoes, and things (which will also thrill L.), then move onto more types of land forms and biomes. Over the years, we've done bits and pieces, but most of my younger people were quite a bit younger and don't remember. This way we'll put it all together. I also found a series of books which teach you how to draw the continents and countries of the world freehand and from memory. They look pretty cool and I'm excited for them to arrive. I'm thinking that we'll start with working on this instead of handwriting each morning. 

I also have quite a few ideas, mainly based on my reading of The Extended Mind, for making new types of activities for R. These are still simmering in the back of my brain and will be the last thing I create. I may also incorporate some of the ideas for H., too. I can always tell when I'm not yet ready to tackle something because I find it difficult to explain it. 

Then, I really need to work on my classes on Memory Palaces and Creative Collaboration. I have now come across other interesting things since I came up with these classes, so am feeling as though I'm ready to do the actual planning. Our co-op meets for two semesters of twelve weeks each. Twenty-four weeks of forty minute classes just isn't a lot of time, so I imagine that my biggest problem will be fitting things in. 

So that's what's in my brain for now, and since I can only really write about what I'm currently thinking about, get ready to hear more about Rome and biomes and creativity.