New Books and a humid, hot, gray day

It would have been nicer had we had at least the slightest of breezes, but, the cards didn't play out that way. Summer is here it seems. We don't get much of anything resembling a breeze, or gently moving leafy tree tops around here in the summer. That's just the way it is. Humidity gets too high and I suppose that just suppresses the wind. Didn't know I studied meteorology, did you?

Ok, so in reality, don't place bets on my weather prowess. Still, it's a possible hypothesis isn't it?

New Books: our Paths of Exploration set arrived this morning! Ahhh, the book junkie in me is feeling quite satisfied right now :o)

I have a nice, tightly bound new Handbook of Nature Study. I have discovered the Reader's Digest North American Wildlife book. How we have crept along homeschooling without that beauty is beyond me. It's my new definite "must have" title now.

We have several other titles that will make a great addition to our homestead library here. I didn't see a dud in the bunch.

And somehow I totally missed that the POE texts were hardcover. Hardcover. We love the sturdiness of hardcover books here. Considering they need to last thru several children, hardcover is always what I try to search out. I never paid any attention to the main texts in the curriculum being hardbound. I'm over the moon :o)

I've already maxed out the ink cartridge printing student sheets, supplements for David and Emily that flow along with the week's work, Bible sheets, and a copy of the week at a glance checklist. We are doing over the binders we had for Nim's Island and other projects and if I can contain myself, we will start Monday morning. Most likely we will start tomorrow :o). I'd start now, but I suppose that is just a tad over zealous, beginning at nearly 8 pm, heh?

Our day will mesh like this:
Math lessons
main English lesson
Light for the Trail (Bible study)
Paths of Exploration...
We'll have copywork/dictation/narration work, reading aloud, word study, geography, writing (reports and creative), art projects/skills, country/state studies (we will tie in the Trail Guide to US Geography later with this).

I don't have a laminated world map. I'll have to get one at Books-A-Million next week. Wish we had done it -- Dewey was planning to take a World map and US map, place them back to back between thin plexiglass and seal them up so we had a true write on/wipe off map instead of changing ours out all the time. Oh well...we'll be ready to put one together now :o)
We'll be mapping the journeys, countries of origin and destination for Columbus. We have 6 weeks of his era, then off to Jamestown, the pilgrims and more!

I'm really enjoying the looks of the Paths curriculum so far. I think I've read pretty much the entire first volume since it arrived this morning :o) We like the flow of the Trail Guide to US Geography, aand this is rather similar. It's set up mainly for a typical 3rd-4th-5th grade run, but we will be tweaking (as usual) to include Jacob (8), KatiAnne (7), David (5) and Emily (almost 4).

The olders will also participate, with deeper work on the same topics in the history and science areas especially. We will find additional titles for them...any suggestions? We're looking for upper elementary and high school reading. Historical fiction is fine, biographies are better :o)

*Columbus
*Jamestown
*Squanto
*Lewis & Clark expedition
*Johnny Appleseed
*Daniel Boone
*Pilgrims
*Westward Expansion

And perhaps some thoughts on crafts/skills/projects for the olders as well :o)
You can look over the areas of exploration at http://geomatters.com