Now that it's cool again...

My house -that is, not outside. (I wish it were cool outside, then we wouldn't have been dying these past two weeks as we were waiting for our a/c to be fixed.) Anyway. Now, I've been trying to prepare my home and life to begin homeschooling Diego this fall. 

As many years as I taught in "real" classrooms (more on this later) and as many years as I was home-schooled myself, you'd think this thing would be a cinch.  But it's not.  Home-school curriculum has evolved tremendously in the 20+ years it's been since my mom started homeschooling us.  Back then, I think all anyone in the home-school community had heard of was Konos.  There are more options now.  A lot. More. Options.

But, I'd heard rave reviews about My Father's World, and after taking a good look at it and going to two of their sales rep's seminars, I was convinced (and excited to give it a whirl). For those of you who are counting, Diego just turned four and so technically isn't due to start school for another year. (Actually the state of Kansas doesn't require most students to be in school until 7. Crazy, huh?) But I've decided to give it a try this year because Diego knew his uppercase letters before he turned two and has always seemed to take a real interest in reading and this way if I mess up royally he's not ruined for life.

My Father's World is only supposed to take 1 to 1.5 hours at the Kindergarten level and I figure I should be able to handle that. We'll soon see.  In the mean time, I'm gathering books that I'll need throughout the school year (where did my copy of Ferdinand run off to?) and writing a few weeks of lesson plans (the state of Kansas requires a hard copy, so I might as well begin to write all I plan to do down) and work on our school calendar (there's only 28 weeks of lessons in this curriculum but Kansas doesn't have a set amount of days or hours for Kinder so I'm not too worried).

Things I am excited about:

• Lots of new books and lots of integrated science that is simple enough for even me to understand. (Science is my weakest area.)
• Weekly themes like: Sun- Jesus is the light of the world. (Just like the sun.) And Moon- I am the light of the world. (I should reflect Jesus' light just like the moon reflects the sun's light.) How cool is that?
• Being able to schedule school around our life events like: a new baby, holidays and Jesse's school breaks.
• Getting my playroom reorganized and turned into a school room.

Things I am nervous about:

• Getting my playroom reorganized and turned into a school room.
• Having enough time to teach on Wednesday which is filled with BSF and my job as director of  the Wednesday night kids outreach ministry.
• Making myself get up at a consistent time and back on a real schedule.

Okay, home-schooling veterans, your turn to sound off: What is your best piece of advice for home-schooling success?  Would love to hear from all of you!