Good school day yesterday.  Trying to figure out what I'm doing with K/1 all year. Have reverted to workbooks, for now, just to have paper trail for my reviewer, since I haven't done a good job on the daily lesson planner. (It has things in it I never did; it doesn't have things I did in it...)

JD was so beyond the materials in K math.  What he likes to do in his spare time is fill up blank sheets of paper with solved addition problems.  So I am supposed to pull out the counting bears and have him create an AB pattern with two colors? He has been doing that for two years! Now he even knows the terminology! "Mom, I -made an A-B-B-C pattern with these beads!"

Where we are working at K level is on the proper way to form letters and numbers when writing them down.  He sometimes resists this, but I tell him how important it is. He sometimes says, "I'm never going to be able to do it that way!" But then I remind him about the pencil grip issue, which is a huge success.  In two months he went from fighting me to picking a pencil (or anything) up the right way and using it properly without even thinking about it.  And then when he realizes it he still loves to call my attention to it: "Hey mom! Look at how I'm holding my pencil!"

Current books:

MCP 1st grade math (Level A)

A Reason for Writing, K

A Beka Letters and Sounds 1 (1st grade level)

Since these are the areas I consider of primary importance right now, these are the ones I focus on during our "school time".  We also try to work in reading from the 365 Day Bible storybook. Don't know its exact title. We also get lots of unrecorded science and history. I need to get intentional about these two areas.

In my state, the law requires regular instruction in eight basic subject areas, even in K. Isn't that crazy?  Let's see:

Language Arts

Mathematics

Science

Social Studies

Art

Music

Physical Education

....uh, that's only seven....   I'm not sure if I am missing something, or if I have two grouped together in either Language Arts or Social Studies...  Anyway, I need to do a better job next year of documentation and filing.  I'm getting there this year on the filing of school papers, but I am not doing the lesson planner right now. Need to try to get the 2nd half of the year up to speed anyway.

I hope to do further reading on different schooling methods to figure out where we are going.  Here are the methods I want to read up on and decide between or learn more about and pick and choose:

The Well Trained Mind

Charlotte Mason

The Trivium/Classical Education

No matter which/what I choose, I know it will include living history.  Sometime I'll get back into Tapestry of Grace, but for now I really believe in the importance of focusing on the basics (Reading, 'Riting and 'Rithmatic), and I let the history/literature/geography-type topics be more interest driven. 

Well, I guess it is time to go work w/JD and stop talking about it!