We survived!

We officially made it through the flood of 2010! Wow. I have been living here for 15 years and I have never seen so much water. It pretty much shut down the whole area. Roads were closed due to flooding, damage or the road was completely gone. We spent two sleepless nights of one tornado warning after another. Rain that just never stopped. And way too much time stuck inside a house with 2 bored, exhausted kids and a very restless American Bulldog.

But we made it and now I am ready for things to get back to normal. Don't know when everything will be back to normal since several of the main roads are still closed, but at least we don't have to hear the weather radio going off every 5 minutes.

On a good note I was able to spend the days searching and researching for our curriculum for next year. I have to say it is irritating trying to find anything other than Christian curriculum. Now, don't misunderstand, we have enjoyed some of the BJU curriculum. It is excellent. But I want my children to be able to read a science, history or reading lesson without the influence of Christian views. I believe and have always believed that religion does not belong in the classroom. I think the great thing about going to school and learning is to gather the information about the world, all the information, not just what someone wants you to learn, and to make your own choices based on that information. You need to know both sides of the issues, not just one. And that you are a better person for understanding the way other people live or believe, why they live or believe that way and not whether it is right or wrong but just different.

That being said I was so excited to find some great curriculum this year. For T and Poogie I finally found a secular science, Holt Science. I found it along with the all the supporting material including teachers manuals. From Holt publishers I also choose the history curriculum I will base their studies around. I plan on basing our literature read alouds and independent reading to go along with the time periods we will be learning about. I also want to purchase A History of the US from Sonlight since they will both be studying US history this year.

For T I only need a health book and maybe something extra for language arts. He already has most of the other subjects thankfully.

Poogie will be using Holt for science, definitely, and maybe history. I am debating between Holt and Sonlight. She will be using Sonlight for reading and read alouds. We will be using Saxon for math again, she loves it. And as of right now we will use Bob Jones for English, Spelling and Handwriting. We are comfortable using those and the content is very good.

Now all I have to do is finish out this school year, lol. We may be going way into the summer to complete everything, which I dread. Hopefully next year without having the YMCA cutting into two of our days a week we won't get so far behind in the fall. I hope:) Well I must go and surf the web for more curriculum. It's almost addictive!