We are here. This will be our first year of homeschool (2nd grade) and we will definitely be using an eclectic approach to start. Its very tentative now that we are doing this and he may have to go back to school, so I will be using more structure than I would if I knew we could homeschool for the duration, in which case we would be much more unschooly. For the time being however, I am designing a curriculum based on my state's scope and sequence for second grade. I am borrowing from Charlotte Mason: we will keep nature journals and start a book of centuries, and I am learning more about this philosophy, which resonates with me. I am also interested in aspects of classical education, and investigating Thomas Jefferson Education. I plan to try different approaches and see what works best for my son. I have not bought any curriculum thus far, have been making my own lesson plans from library books and internet sources. SO far, I have finished planning the science lessons to go with the state standards for the entire 1st quarter (mostly forces and simple machines)...we will be investigating much more than i imagine the schools would, but this is still "lite," and I feel quite sure we will unschool quite a bit more science. I have also planned character studies for language arts: we will begin with the children's book of virtues, for which I have quite a lot of lessons to go with, and also I have printed George Washington's rules for civility and decent behavior which I plan to use for handwriting practice, among other things. I need to get a little more organized on the history. I have a unit on inventors which I have supplemented and am thinking to kick off with that, adding inventors and inventions in our book of centuries, but then moving backwards and starting with ancient man and then early civilizations. I really wanted to start US History, but ds thinks it would be better to "start at the beginning." Maybe we will just begin with prehistory and call the inventors unit science, although we will enter them in the book of centuries. I am considering purchasing Singapore Math, or possibly some other math program, but am unsure yet which program looks right. I have a lot of field trips planned for geography; we will be studying our area, which includes the 2nd largest river delta in the states as well as the gulf of mexico. I also have a computer science unplugged course I downloaded for free that looks really interesting and right up my son's alley, and also plan to have him start learning typing and wp skills. There will be music and art as well- dh will begin teaching him guitar and also we have a recorder that he wants to learn to play. For art, I have picked up some neat books to mess with, and we plan to try some animation, maybe clay animation if we can. I also have the lending catalog from the Natl Gallery of Art, and if I can obtain a slide projector will check out some stuff for appreciation as well- otherwise, to the library we will go.