The goings on

This week has been basically dedicated to getting everyone back into the routine, washing the sky high pile of laundry accumulated from yom tov and getting organized for this season of "mommy schooling".  It's been  very hot this week, hopefully the summer's last hurrah before the coming rain season. As the result,  there's been plenty of opportunities for indoor activities such as rearranging furniture, cleaning up, cooking and doing art projects together in between  other things.  I've been rereading some of my teaching and homeschooling books.  I like to do that from time to time, because as children get bigger and their abilities, skills and interests change and develop, some subjects and projects which before were not relevant suddenly become relevant  so we can try learning and doing new things.  The plan for now is to continue to work on phonics, mental arithmetic, writing practice and elementary grammar, as well as more geography , looking at maps and globe, plenty of art and other projects and of course read read read about all kinds of things. We are thinking of starting music lessons for the big ones too.   I'd like to also start doing some more formal learning with the younger set , they would probably really enjoy it and feel very important.    Meanwhile, here are a few interesting things I've discovered  that might be of interest.
budgethomeschool.com - lots and lots of interesting stuff for all subjects
artprojectsforkids.org - a ton of art lessons and projects, great when you need a project to do in a hurry
myaudioschool.com - I haven't had the time to look at this site extensively but it has some interesting history and science stuff
handwritingworksheets.com - you can make your own worksheets for handwriting practice on this site
There are many audiobooks for children online and quite a few sites that are free such as librivox.org , gutenberg.org and booksshouldbefree.com that might be interesting  because they have a lot of children's classics in audio but obviously parents have to prelisten to everything to make sure it's appropriate. 
I'll be writing about some of my favorite teaching resources soon, as well as our family favorite picks for good children's books.