Getting Ready for Bigger - Take 2!

My second born is starting Bigger right now.  We have made it through one day of the guide in the last 5 days.  We are intentionally going slow, getting use to everything in the new guide while starting to enjoy the summer.

My son will be using the guide as written this year, working through the Emerging Readers (he has completed the Early Readers Bible and is working through the Beginners Bible now), doing Rod and Staff 2, and Cheerful Cursive.  My oldest has ahead in all these areas, so it will be a little different feel!  He is not as strong of a reader, but his fine motor skills are probably stronger than hers now.

Learning from when my oldest went through the guide, we are using two binders this time around. We also have a composition book for grammar, a file box and index cards for vocabulary, and we will add a composition book for dictation probably (he is currently just doing spelling on random pieces of paper, but I would like it more contained soon).

For the binders, the first is for science.  I have two sections in the binder, one for labs and one for notebooking.  The dividers have pockets, where I have placed enough pages for the year (hopefully).  Then there are enough page protectors to put everything (placing pages back to back).

The second binder is for everything else - timeline, history notebooking, poetry, and projects. For the timeline, I printed the grid from the Facebook group again.  This time though, I printed it to make a little booklet.  I then hole punched the pages and put them in the front of the binder.  For history notebooking, I have it set up just like science with the blank pages in the pocket of the divider and page protectors behind.  The poetry section is actually being reused from my oldest.  It has two poems per page in page protectors.  We use dry erase markers to mark rhyming, syllables, etc. as they are covered in the guide.  It is nice to have them reusable that way! The final section is blank page protectors for any projects, geography, etc that are done on regular sized paper (that we want to keep).