Our School Plans - Revisited and Revised

We have had a slow start - but we are finally officially back to school! I wanted to repost our plans for the school year, since I have greatly revamped them after some soul searching conversations with a few homeschool friends whose opinions I hold in high regard :) The major change is, I am going back to keeping them both in the same history period. This is a little bit of a let down since I spent a good many hours creating a fun and exciting plan to study Ancients with the little princess - but oh well, I guess that can wait a year or so and then I will have it ready to go when we need it! I will post that plan next week for anyone who might find it useful. Ultimately, I do not think it is practical for me to try to keep up with so many history periods, especially when the other two reach school age. So here is a look at my revised school year.

2nd grader
Christian Studies:
Old Testament Children's Bible Reader (she will read these aloud to me or her little sisters)
various children's lives of the saints books
Let the Little Children Come to Me

Arithmetic
Math on the Level - we are just beginning with this, and I am really liking it, so hopefully things will go smoothly, even though it does require more work from me.

English Studies
Yesterday's Classics - First and Second Readers - she is loving these
Explode the Code - book 4 and maybe 5 depending on her pace
The Sentence Family - I am teaching this at a once a month co-op - the first lesson went great and I think the kids will really enjoy it
Copywork - poems for poetry book
I have decided NOT to continue with SWR with her - instead we will focus on ETC and when she is ready move into Spelling Wisdom for copywork and spelling practice.

History
Colonization and American Revolution - books to be posted later :)

4th grader
Christian Studies
Golden Children's Bible
Memoria Press Christian Studies I
Forty Saints - lives of saints, memory verses and copywork included in this

Arithmetic
Math on the Level - and Singapore if needed

Latin
Lively Latin

English Studies
Classical Writing - Aesop - we played around with this last year, but I finally feel ready to teach it properly so hopefully we will get through it early
The Sentence Family - with the co-op

History
Colonization to the American Revolution - Time Travelers series - these are so much fun!

My favorite purchase for this year so far is Developing Linguistic Patterns through Poetry Memorization (fancy name for a poetry memorization program :) I will post a review on this next - but suffice it to say, it is a big hit in our house right now.

I am in the process of selecting our artists and composers for the year, I will post those when I have decided for sure. We are learning art technique at our co-op using Visual Manna as the core, and I will continue doing Atelier with the kids and my nieces & nephew.

Also, a note about science. We are currently reading Among the Pond People, and for now I am going to stick with that. As the seasons change we will be doing some tree studies, and in the spring focus on plants and butterflies, but for now I am just enjoying reading aloud the stories and letting the kids illustrate them. We have also become more consistent with our nature notebooks and nature walks.