Hey....It's Me!

Well hello! How long has it been now? Almost a month I think?

Oops :)

So what has Reese been up to? Let's see...the last post was about our September cruise (fun!) so in the past month, we have:

*Gone to Grammie's for a dinner with my cousins and their kiddos. Stopped by Pottsie's for breakfast on the way home & found a new favorite breakfast potato casserole.

*Visited the Ft. Worth Zoo for homeschool day. It started out as a very rainy morning, but it burned off about 2 hours into our day and the rest was nice. Luckily, Mommy is always prepared and had our Disney ponchos ready for the rain!

*Had a blast at homeschool PE each week. We've met at the park on nice days, at the rec center on rainy days...Reese is in a group of 6 & 7 year olds and they've spent the month of October playing group games. November takes us to a bounce house place for lots of fun!

*Reese visited the dentist and had his first cavity. Boo!

*Played baseball with our wonderful Coach Picquet from last Spring season. While our team may not have won many games, Reese has had a blast playing & I'm glad Coach came back again for the Fall. I'm hoping he puts together the team again in the Spring because Reese really meshes well with Coach Picquet & you can tell he likes coaching the boys! Our last game is tomorrow...if it doesn't rain!

*Saw Charlotte's Web at the Irving Arts Center. Love the prices, love the location. Their performances are always great, and this one didn't disappoint. I thought it would be fun to see the play at the IAC since we had just finished reading the book together for school.

*Traveled to Disney for a few days. Reese is *almost* tall enough for the last roller coaster in the entire park that he can't ride yet...Rockin' Roller Coaster in the Hollywood Studios park. He's got about 1/2 inch to go, and he was bummed he didn't get to ride it this time. We'll be back soon though, so maybe he'll have a mini-growth spurt between now & then and can ride!

*Visited two pumpkin patches, neither of which were the FM Pumpkin Patch. With all the rain we've had, I think there were only 2 sunny days when we could have gone, and both of those days were already full of things we had to do. So...this is the first year in about 8 years I haven't taken someone to the Pumpkin Patch!

*And, of course...SCHOOL! Reese has completed one of his readers and was very proud to put the certificate at the back of the book on the refrigerator! It is interesting to see his speed progressing, & I'm pleased his comprehension remains high.

Math is probably Mommy's least favorite subject to teach, and we tackle that first every day to make sure it gets done while we're both fresh! Lucky for me, Reese has grasped concepts like telling time, counting money, and addition fairly quickly. The only thing he struggles with is place value so we keep working through that. And lately he seems to want to read his numbers backwards ("36" is sixty-three) and that little skill is driving Mommy batty. But, again, we keep working through that and he'll figure it out, I know!

In History & Geography, we've been talking about ancient Egypt and mummies and King Tut...fascinating stuff for both of us! Did you know that King Tut's father's tomb has never been found? Reese declared that we need to travel to Egypt and find it :)

We also do a daily Bible study, handwriting practice, grammar, poetry & nursery rhymes, & other things thrown in here & there.

I am completely pleased with our Sonlight curriculum, and have started thinking about what we're going to do next year. The *only* part of our curriculum I'm not totally keen on is the Horizon Math program. It's just OK, but not something I really like...how it's laid out, how it jumps around concepts. I am hoping to attend a curriculum fair in the Spring so I can look through some other options for 2nd grade. Horizons Math, however, is one of the options Sonlight offers, so I can either choose a different program through Sonlight, or order something completely separate. We shall see!

So...in a (big) nutshell, that's what Reese has been up to! He is very excited about Halloween and trick or treating tonight. He's going to be a "Gold Scorpion Ninja". Mommy misses the days of cute clowns and piggies and pumpkins...but I know it comes with growing up!