Week 17

We are finishing up Week 17 of our Sonlight Core 1 curriculum. In Science, we are talking about our water system & the water cycle...how water gets from outside to your sink faucet. Very interesting stuff! We currently have saucers of water in various locations to see which evaporates faster, and we also have 4 petri dishes growing germy swabs from places on our bodies to see what will grow.

In Math, we are continuing to work on adding 3 numbers, double-digit addition, memorizing facts, fractions, skip counting, greater than/less than, equal/not equal, counting money, telling time, graphing, patterns,...whew! At the beginning of the year, I did not like our curriculum much (Horizon 1) but I have come to really like the spiral learning technique & the constant review Reese gets daily. I didn't' think we would do Horizon 2 next year, but I am starting to think I may stick with it. Reese has been doing really well with it, and it seems foolish to change if it's working.

Our History & Geography talks have gone from Egypt to ancient Greece. We started reading Greek Myths this week & Reese is fascinated by the stories! Yesterday, we read about Odysseus, the Trojan Horse and the Cyclops. Some of the stories are pretty gory (sticking a stick into Cyclop's eye to escape the his cave? Heck yes, Reese loved that story! ) We are reading a cute book called Usborne Greek Myths and I like how the stories are compacted down in to two-page versions. I have reserved a big stack of Greek myth books from the library & will pick them up today so we can read a little more in-depth about the different myths. Another favorite is King Midas & The Golden Touch.

We are using Handwriting Without Tears to work on our letter formations & I have been so very happy with this program. I like that it has given Mommy the "language" to help make letters properly. For example, for the number 8, I had been having Reese just make two circles because I could NOT figure out how to explain the figure-8 shape. Well, HWT explains it like this: "Make an S and go back home". Duh. Seems so common sense, but I couldn't think to explain it that way! We are almost finished with the Yellow book (I think that's book 1?) and we are going to move onto the Blue book (Book 2?) in a few weeks.

We do daily reading & comprehension, grammar work, & creative writing activities. We also have a Bible study from our book Leading Little Ones To God that we do about 4xs a week.

We are also going to begin Explode The Code 3 because Reese has caught onto pretty much everything phonetic very easily, but the silent -e at the end of the words is not sinking in. So I'm going to pick that up next week along with the Blue HWT & start incorporating that into our mornings.

On Fridays, Reese has AGAPE homeschool PE classes. He has done gymnastics, bounce houses, & played group games, and this month he begins karate followed by a month of ice skating. I have also been happy with this program, & he seems to have fun for the hour of PE.

Let's see...what else...I think that about covers it. We work for about 2.5 to 4 hours a day, depending on what we have that needs to be covered...

That about sums up our year so far. We start Week 18 on Monday and will keep plugging along! We have 36 weeks total, and I have us finishing the first week of June as of now.

Random Pictures From The Past Few Weeks :)

Working hard at homeschool....
Family picture, Thanksgiving 2009

Jessie, Reese, & Austen, Thanksgiving 2009

Brothers!!

The Christmas tree is decorated & we're excited about Christmas!

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!

Reading To Mommy

I meant to post this last week, so now I'm catching up! Reese reading:

Power Rangers Can Read Too!

One of the things I adore about this age is the progression of learning to read. We worked on Saxon Phonics K last year, & this year we are using Sonlight's phonics program.

I can't tell you how proud I am that Reese is reading. And I'm even more proud that he's comprehending what he's reading. Even when it's choppy & I don't think there's any way he's making sense of the sentences, he can answer my questions about the story.

AND...it's pretty cool that you can dress like a Power Ranger for your school day :)

Homeschool: It Works In This House!

OK, so I can't take all the credit for this one. We're starting Week #4 of our Saxon K Phonics program and are just starting to blend letters together. I think the accomplishment below comes from the Reading Eggs program online. However he got here...check it out. His first book read all by himself. I'm beside myself :)