The First Month Back

I haven't been able to give a weekly update of how school has been going, so I figured now that we are in the second month of school I should probably go ahead and do that.

When we started back in September, Arianna was in 3rd, Audrie in 1st, and Seanan ... well, he's just in Tot School.  But if you ask me his schooling takes WAY more time then the girls.  He is soooo busy all the time .. but I'll get back to that in a bit.

I decided to start the girls back a little slow, but not too much.  This past summer we didn't stick with our "themed" or unit study week's so I really wanted them to get back into it quickly.  So we started back right away with math (of course) and both reading and Grammar.  After about a week to two, the girls were back up to speed and ready to get going with history, science, and everything else we do.  Some may hear our list of subjects and think. "That must take forever." Or "Why do they do all that" but  the children really love all of it and when we miss any part of it, they ask why we missed it.  I think that's the best.

I also wanted to make sure we started back with our history and science because we were finishing up what we didn't get to at the end of last year since we did more of a relaxed style of homeschooling over the summer.  I am happy to say that today we finished our science from last year.  We'll be taking a week off before beginning again with Christian Kids Explore Chemistry.  Arianna is VERY excited.  They both love experiments.  We are still plugging along in our history, but we are getting there.  I'm hoping to stay on track and not get behind this year.  Here's to hoping. ;)

For Arianna, she is still working on handwriting.  She's in book D of her Italics Handwriting Series and doing much better.  The recent lessons have made her font size be more of a regular handwriting size instead of the 1" size you start off with.  I think it's making her remember the way to make the letters better and because it's all in italics cursive, it's neat and legible.  That's a plus in my book.

In her math we have changed some things.  Mainly that dad is now teaching her lessons to her in the morning most days before he goes to work.  Some days when she has reviews or practice pages and there's no new lesson he won't "teach" anything, but otherwise he's the math teacher full-time now.  Right now Stephen is working with her on money.  She just finished doing some simple multiplication and division.

Audrie is loving school.  She has 2 math books (one is from Singapore, and the other is a Kumon book) and does one page at least in each, per day.  Then she has her own handwriting book.  She recently finished Book A and started on Book B.

The biggest and BEST change is that she is finally beginning to read!!  I could not believe it when we finally got to a lesson and she was able to have all the bit and pieces we had been talking about for so long click and have a sentence come out of her mouth.  That was exhilarating!  We are now somewhere between lesson 35 and 40 in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading.  I am so very proud of her and she's proud of herself too.

As a family we all do history, science, PE, and Latin.  We also add in music, art and nature study when we can.  We also do Bible devotion and a Bible and character lesson for the week.  We have already memorized the fist 20 books of the Bible and even Seanan knows some of them.

Seanan is my best student as well as my hardest to deal with.  We try and get anything that needs quiet when he's napping, which lately hasn't been as much as it used to be.  During the morning I am usually able to have him doing something at the table with us as the girls work on their books.  He sings along when we do our Latin and knows almost as many words as the girls do.  He has also memorized several verses for church - which is his Bible lessons - now that's he moved to the next class.

I think that is all for now.  As you can see we've been busy.  If I don't give a weekly update I hope to catch you all up to how we are doing next month.  Thanks for stopping by (and be sure to check back for all the giveaways coming up!)