Heart of Dakota Progress Report

I just thought I'd check back in with a bit of a progress report on the Heart of Dakota curriculum we're using. We're still loving it. It's totally taken the stress out of homeschooling for me. No more worrying about working out balanced lesson plans, about "covering everything," about "doing things in the right order." I plop open the book, and we go.

L likes the lessons, and the book selection. He's whizzed through the Frog and Toad books. He seems to enjoy the relatively short length of each subject each day. He doesn't seem to fizzle out before we're finished like he sometimes did when I was making up our lesson plans.

In  short, this is the most fun we've had at school in ages. Also, I sort of hate to actually say it, since things can change at any time, but for the first time in a while, I sort of feel like I have things under control here.

In typical fashion though, I'm going to tinker with the plans just a bit.

Instead of doing the HOD plans on Fridays, I have plans to start making Friday sort of a themed day some weeks, just to keep things fresh. We'll be picking a topic, and running with it on those days, reading relevant books, watching related videos, doing projects. This essentially amounts to what I was doing before, just on a much smaller scale. I figure some weeks I'll pick our Friday topic, some weeks I'll ask L what he wants to learn about.

This will in turn cause the Heart of Dakota curriculum (which is based on a 5 day week,) to last a little longer than a year, which should be fine, since we started it at an odd time anyway.

Mini Bedroom Makeover

When we first moved into our house, just over three years ago, it seemed majorly important to hurry up and paint V's bedroom. (I was seven months pregnant with her at the time.)
L started asking when his room was going to be painted, and well, after the baby was born, we just kept putting it off indefinitely.

A before view of his messy room.

This past weekend, my sister took the kids for about 24 hours, and we decided to surprise L. My husband and I spackled, and sanded, and painted, and painted, and painted. We put the room back together, framed and hung some new Super Mario posters, and were about to die with anticipation.
We weren't sure he'd like it. He'd made it abundantly clear that he wanted his walls painted bright red, and we went in a whole different direction, dark blue.



After.



The result was fantastic. He said he loved it, and that it was the "best day ever."

The room looks better too. We replaced the dingy, flat, non washable paint, with kid friendly, washable semi gloss. (Frankly I prefer less shiny, but I'm practical. It's a kid's room, it has to be  washable.) Next on the to do list are some new curtains. I've already picked up the sheets, now I just have to fire up the sewing machine... (Using sheets as fabric is a lot cheaper than buying yardage, if you buy the sheets from somewhere like Ross. I'll end up with two sets of 100% cotton curtains, plus a couple of coordinating pillowcases for $23 this time around.)