Posted in School

I've changed my homeschool focus from my 7-year-old daughter to my almost 6-year-old son.  My daughter is doing most of her schoolwork on the computer with Switched-on-Schoolhouse at the moment, and that seems to work most of the time.  My son, however, is too young for the program (starts at 3rd grade) and craves one-on-one time with me anyway. 

We made a tremendous language arts discovery with him last week - he's spelling at about a mid-2nd grade level.  His reading seems to correlate quite nicely with his spelling level.  While he enjoyed doing a little Spelling Power for a few days, I think he's already tired of it, and I'm considering letting him drop it for a bit since he's so far ahead in this area.  (My daughter has essentially tested out of spelling, having passed the 11th grade test in Spelling Power - I've eliminated her spelling lessons from her computer Language Arts curriculum.)

My son finished the first ShillerMath activity book a couple weeks ago and started in on the 2nd one, but without much gusto.  Instead he began begging for his Bob Jones Math 1 workbook, in which he whizzed through pages of basic addition quite quickly and with great enthusiasm.  After a day or two of that, followed by a day or two of working all the rest of the math pages in his Jump Start Kindergarten workbook, he lost interest in doing any math.  Again, I'm considering letting him take a week or so off from formally studying math, knowing that he's also ahead in this area. 

Yesterday we started reading through the geography section of What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know.  He has especially enjoyed learning about the continents and loves to trace them from the book onto blank paper. 

He let me know that he wanted to do some formal science study as well, by pulling one of our Sonlight science books off the shelf.  I was hesitant to let him start with the Sonlight 1 science, knowing that it had been 2 years since I did the Kindergarten Science program with him and his older sister, so I suggested we go find the K science books from the basement and work through those first.  He readily agreed, and though I was going to be content with just reading the pages together with him, he told me he wanted to do the activity sheets as well.  I am not following the Sonlight lesson plan but have decided to simply go through one book at a time with him, starting with the Usborne First Children's Encyclopedia, most of which we never even did with his big sister, since we followed the 4-day schedule, and most of it is only included in the 5-day schedule.  He has been learning a lot, and it's been great to confront the evolutionary viewpoint of the book head-on with him.  Today his older sister snuggled up next to us on the sofa, begging to see the book while I read.  I kind of like teaching to my younger son. 

He also mentioned he'd like to do Story of the World, so I may also be pulling that down for him.  In addition, we're throwing in a few Five in a Row books and activities, all of which have been met with great enthusiasm so far. 

Our homeschool time is limited, since we use only the first hour of my toddler's naptime for Mom-led education.  Mom needs to have some rest after that, or no one's happy.  Hopefully after these 2 baby girls are born (in 2 months) and we all get used to them (another 2-3 months), I'll be able to devote more of that "naptime" to school with the older two.