Today was a good day, but I wasn't here for the schooling part. I was actually substituting at the high school.

However, when I got home I did get to spend time with the kids and their lessons. Kaitlynn was doing some addition and phonics work. It took awhile for the whole reading thing to catch on, but now it's coming really fast. We are using an online book that I downloaded and printed out. The book is 'Word Mastery - A Course in Phonics for the First Three Grades' (clicking on this link will open a .pdf file) and I like the way it works Kaitlynn through the words. She is picking it up pretty fast.  I also used some sheets from Edhelper.com. This site isn't free but it's cheap enough so that it's worth it.

Matthew did some reading in History. We studied a little about Ancient Persia and Cyrus the Great. He loves this time period and eats up every bit of information I can find for him. This site has a lot of lesson plans for ancient history study.

Kimberly took a history test over Thomas Aquinas and Saint Anselm. We are now using the Beacon Lights of History Series for her history study and it's working out pretty good. It was a little bit of an adjustment as it's more reading and in depth discussion, including a lot of narrative writing and essay type "tests". But, I am seeing a greater like (she used to very strongly dislike history) for this subject.

We are also using a completely free math program for her this year and the other two kids next year. It's from the UK, but besides being in metric, I love the program. It's called the Center for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching, or CIMT, (this link is for the year we are using). She tried to work out the lesson on finding symmetry in three dimensional polygons, but needed to wait until I got home to understand it. Geometry was my worse subject in school and now I remember why. Yuck.

Today was a good day.  How was yours?