don potter – Pollywog's Place Blog

It’s that time of year again for us… time to get the next school year planned out. We finished up our 2022-2023 school year back in April and I’ve been busy gathering supplies and making schedules as I coordinate with everyone for vacations, holidays, and special trips that we have planned.

Last year was a bit of a whirlwind as everyone got readjusted to life at home. We also had another little one join us mid-year and that made things very interesting and kept me on my toes… he will be with us again this year so we can’t wait to see what the year will hold for everyone.

It is SO TEMPTING to take a few months off to just focus on this house but I know from past experience that this doesn’t go well and that it takes FOREVER to get a couple of the kids back into the school routine. You can read more about last year’s curriculum and routines HERE.

We had switched to Living Education Books from Master Books for our Language Arts and Math and we absolutely loved them but I decided to go back to some of our oldies but goodies books that we already had on hand for this year. We still have the Living Books and I may decide to switch back but I really wanted to try to simplify things just a bit. I also found some great workbooks to go along with these older books so I’m curious to see how they work out. If you want to see how we liked our curriculum from last year then check out this post HERE.

One of the biggest changes will be that little Ma’am will be joining us at the table for some of the lessons that she can participate in… she loves school and we try to include her as much as we can. I also have another post with activities that we use for little miss last year.

I’m also super excited to be using more of a Charlotte Mason-style approach this year. It’ll be interesting to see how everything plays out and how the kids react to this new method of learning. You can look up Simply Charlotte Mason on YouTube for lots of helpful information or check out their site for TONS of FREE resources and helpful tips! I’ve recently some more wonderful FREE resources at DonPotter.net.

Note: I’ve had to recently update this post to include this wonderful FREE site of Charlotte Mason-style curriculum lesson plans for grades K-5… go check it out HERE!

We have a wonderful all-in-one printer that we use to make copies of the work so that we can use/reuse the books/materials multiple times which helps to cut down on the cost of books every year. Our old one lasted for several years so we just bought an updated one to replace it. We also try to stock up on school supplies when they go on sale and/or on school tax holidays to help save money. Check out this post for essential supplies.

Please note that it is not necessary to purchase any of these materials to give your child/children a good education. We happen to have a lot of them on hand already and many of these we have been able to find for FREE or discounted prices online or on our local FB groups. You can also find lots of used books on eBay, thrift books, and Amazon. Your local library often has many books on various subjects that you can use for lessons too!

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