When did the years start going by so quickly? When I was 13, the distance between me and 18 seemed epic and endless. Then yesterday I had a baby,* and in fewer than two weeks she’ll turn 5. The day after that, she’ll be a kindergartner. Gather ye rosebuds, I’m feeling old. But this isn’t meant to be about me and my feelings. I was going to tell you what my kindergartner is going to be doing this year, schoolwise.

Five in a Row
We started the “Five in a Row” curriculum last year, and we’re going to use it again this year. It covers language arts, science, math, social studies and art, with projects based on a different book every week. I like the rather loose structure — we rarely do every suggested project — and Poppy still loves to read the same story again and again and again. It’s a good fit for us. We did all of Volume 1 and part of Volume 2 last year. This year we’ll finish Volume 2 and most likely get through Volume 3, too.

Spanish
I’d love to have the homeschool version of the Rosetta Stone program, but I found the standard program deeply discounted a few years ago so that’s what we have. Poppy loves to use the computer, so I think this is going to be popular with her.

Handwriting
Poppy can write most of her letters without help, but she still isn’t terribly consistent. We’ll be using Zaner-Bloser’s kindergarten manuscript book to help amend that.

Health
Poppy specifically asked if we could learn about how the body works this year. I don’t know that I’m ready to tackle Anatomy classes just yet, so I decided we’d do Health instead. She really enjoyed the Horizons preschool workbooks, so we’re going to go back to them for their Health 1 program.

Bible study
We haven’t done any sort of formal Bible study before this year. I wanted to find something the four of us could do together, and I was hoping “Character Building for Families” would be just that. Once I got the book and looked it over, though, I realized that there was little chance that Pete would sit still for the discussions. Rockford, Poppy and I are going to be tackling these in the evenings after Petey’s gone to bed.

Art
The “Five in a Row” series does include art projects, but I we’ll also be doing some artist studies and projects from Mary Ann Kohl’s “Great Artists” books.

Physical education
Poppy wasn’t all that enamored with her dance classes this year until the recital. She’s a major ham, though, and she’s very enthusiastic about taking ballet again now that she knows there’ll be an audience involved eventually. So she’ll be taking a ballet class with other homeschooled kids once a week. She’s also going to be playing soccer starting next month.

Extracurricular
Do Girl Scouts get a discount on the cookies? I hope so, because Poppy will be doing some Scouting this year, too.

And little Pete? He isn’t going to be entirely out in the schooling cold. I’m going to try to do some very light preschooling with him this year, following the letter-of-the-week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. And he’ll also be tagging along to most of his big sister’s activities. Ah, the trials of a younger brother.

*Not really. Hyperbole!