A Fresh Start~ Calendar Board Update

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I love the start of a new year.  I always feel energized and ready to jump into my life at full force.  I think it stems from the fact that we took nearly 3 weeks off of school. We were very much ready for more structure and a regular schedule again.

Last night as we were putting the kids to bed, my husband asked if they were ready to start school.  My daughter gave an enthusiastic “YES!”  She is always so eager~ until we actually start doing a little work.  My son said: “yes and no.  I am getting kind of bored, so I would like to do school, but I also really don’t want to.”  My husband laughed and said: “I feel the same way about work!” It is the same way I always feel at the end of summer break, too.

I love the feeling of new beginnings, starting fresh.  I  love to set new goals for myself and my family. I love revamping our school goals as well. I spent the past few days printing, organizing, planning, and laminating.  We started back up today and it went well.  We added a few new things into our school day and the kids really enjoyed what we did.

For the new year, I created a new Calendar board.  The old one didn’t pass the test of time and got a little dry part way through the year.  I decided to freshen it up and put things on it that we need reminders of, to help us reinforce things we are already learning.

On our Calendar board we now have:
Date cards from Mama Jenn
Virtue cards from We Choose Virtues
Weather Chart from Confessions of a Homeschooler
Sight Word Cards from Education.com
Calendar Connection Cards from 1+1+1=1
Phonics Cards from Step Into Second Grade
Moon Phases from the Visual Dictionary Online
Address & Phone Number chart from Confessions of a Homeschooler
Skip Counting Cards from Homeschool Creations
Spelling Words– I write the words for the week on a note card to hang on our board
Artist prints– I printed & laminated prints from the artist we are studying and put it on our board.  We’ll change the print weekly and the artist monthly

I used page protectors cut in half and taped on with double sided tape.  I also used adhesive hooks to hang the cards on the bottom & top with rings.

Along with our new calendar board we have started a new Scripture Memory System from Simply Charlotte Mason.  I am excited to get started on this wonderful system!  The Simply Charlotte Mason site has printable cards as well as dividers.

The dividers are:
Daily
Odd/even
Days of the week
Numbers of the month 1-31

Each day you work on a daily scripture until it is memorized, then you move it back a slot in your box to odd and add a new scripture to the daily spot.  Then each day you work the new one and each odd day you work on the old one.  You continue moving the scriptures back a slot as you memorize.

When you have all of the slots filled you will work on them in the following way:
Today is Wednesday January 2nd, I would pull the scripture from the daily slot, the even slot, the Wednesday slot and slot number 2.  I would work on my new memory verse and review all of the past ones to keep them fresh in my mind.  Each month you would eventually review all of the scriptures you have worked on (except the months that have less than 31 days- put your easy-to-remember scripture verses in the 31 slot).