Ruth Heller World of Language Series

Quite by accident, I recently came across a lovely series of language arts books. I wasn't even looking for a language arts curriculum, but saw these books mentioned on an Oak Meadow forum that I frequent and knew I had to check them out.

The Ruth Heller World of Language Series is a beautiful collection of picture books with each book highlighting a particular part of speech. There are eight books in the series:

• Merry-Go-Round, A Book About Nouns
• Mine, All Mine, A Book About Pronouns
• Kites Sail High, A Book About Verbs
• Many Luscious Lollipops, A Book About Adjectives
• Up, Up, and Away, A Book About Adverbs
• Behind the Mask, A Book About Prepositions
• Fantastic! Wow! And Unreal!, A Book About Interjections and Conjunctions

This afternoon I received the first four that I ordered.

I loved them so much that I ordered the other four tonight. (It helps that Amazon has a "buy three, get the fourth free" promotion going on right now.)

These living books, have beautiful, lively illustrations and are written in engaging rhyme.

Thing 4, who is a highly visual child, will love this series.

Who knew that grammar lessons could be so much fun?

One Year Down!

Our first year of Otherwise Educating is finished and we're well into our summer break. I had big plans to school over the summer, but so far those plans haven't materialized. Neither have my plans to paint two rooms and organize all my closets. Oh well...at least I'm consistent.

I learned a lot in my first year of Otherwise Educating. Here are just a few things I learned:

• Homeschooling is harder than I thought it would be.
• Greek Mythology is really interesting!
• So is Ancient History.
• I own the curriculum. The curriculum doesn't own me. (Many thanks to veteran HSing mom, Meredith, for that pearl of wisdom.)
• It's tough for some kids to hold on to a pencil for longer than five minutes at a time.
• When you realize the day is going downhill fast, it's ok, and probably even wise, to ditch school and do something fun. There's always tomorrow.
• A good network of homeschooling moms is essential.
  
• Making the bed is overrated.
• So is cleaning up the breakfast dishes before dinner.
• Time spent with my children is priceless.

While I'm enjoying our summer off, I am excited to get started next year. I have finally settled on all of my curriculum. I'm going to start seriously planning as soon as our new Latin and Language Arts programs arrive.

I'm really excited to start using our Oak Meadow curriculum. I'm hoping it's going to add some fun and creativity to our school days.

And just because I think all blog posts are better with a picture or two, here are a couple of pictures from our summer vacation.


Thing 4 at Space Center Houston:




Thing 3 as an X-Man: