Posted in School

We've had such a busy week that I am just now updating my blog at my husband's suggestion.  One of the best things I did this week was to add in some projects to my daughter's Switched-on-Schoolhouse (SOS) Language Arts curriculum.  I didn't realize there were extra projects to assign until I was eliminating her spelling quiz assignments (she is a natural speller but detests those quizzes).  There were 4 projects I could assign for unit 3 - one of which I could design myself.  She has almost completed the first one, and she has really enjoyed it for the most part - making up a 10-word dictionary.  She was given a list of words in a made-up language and had the job of alphabetizing them and defining them however she liked.  She even went so far as to include which part of speech each word was - something the assignment did not require.  The other two projects I assigned were a book report about a folk tale of her choice, and a creative writing assignment about pets, for which I thought she could talk about her Nintendogs if she'd like.  Last night I finally got around to ordering the Science and History SOS curriculum - she'll start the science as soon as it arrives, and we'll ease into the history after she's done a unit of 2 of the science.

Shiller Math has been a delight for all of us.  My daughter skipped math one day last week but then zoomed through a number of math lessons the next day - completely enjoying learning new geometry concepts like parallel lines and parallelograms, as well as learning about probability with coin tossing and rolls of a die.  Her lesson today was way easy for her, as she's already understood and applied the concepts taught - addition with carrying. 

My 5 1/2 year-old son, however, watched very attentively as we used the manipulatives to complete the problem and then was quite anxious to try it himself with numbers of his choice.  I was happy to allow him the opportunity after going over his scheduled lesson for today - a review of rows, columns, and tables.... one of the items he needed more practice on according to last week's review test.  He actually did quite well on the test, only missing about 3 items - though missing them pretty completely.  The other concepts we'll be working on again are giving rules for number patterns, and determining which item in a group does not belong.  Overall, I'm pleased with each child's progress in math - they're both learning new things and reviewing material they're somewhat familiar with, though I skip lessons I know would bore them to tears because they could do them in their sleep. 

Over the last couple weeks we've also been reading Understood Betsy, one of our Sonlight read-alouds that we didn't get to last year.  The kids are both enjoying it, but it's been especially good for my son, who got to learn about sundials today and consider what the world was like before we had all our modern conveniences such as microwaves and electric stoves.  Once last week, he even insisted on reading several sentences from the story aloud by himself instead of just listening to me read.  He has made such wonderful progress with his reading. 

Today I noticed he was reading quite quickly through the McGuffey Eclectic Primer we have, completing it in a very short time.  I had been thinking that it was time he had his own big kid Bible (not just a Bible storybook) - and I found out the kids were both supposed to be taking their Bibles to Awanas anyway.  So tonight I sent him out with my husband to choose his Bible at the Christian Bookstore.  He was so anxious to read tonight's passage from the Bible during family devotions, even though he had to ask how to pronounce several of the words and needed some of them defined in order to understand what he was reading (he has a NKJV version).