Homeschool Review

With less than 60 days left in this school year.....

Rylan:



Language: He's finally reading chapter books, on his own, because he wants too. He's re-reading all the Magic Tree House, currently going through some of the Magic School Bus, used his quarter he brought to the second hand shop today to buy a Scooby-Doo chapter book...not the best literature....but he's reading, and that is all I care about now. He's also reading an abridged version of Treasure Island right now. We've not done much in the way on language lately. The extent of his work right now is a 3rd grade skills CDrom- today he learned about helping verbs and being verbs....so I call that good.



Math: The one subject that is going really well. The boy can't remember addition facts, or subtraction facts for that matter.....I mean he can add and subtract up in the millions, but he uses his fingers....but he is whizzing through the multiplication....he's up to 8x8 and has them all memorized. We use Mastering Mathematics, which included a bunch of fact games and he's learned most of the 9's playing that too. Within the next month we will be moving on to mutiplying by a 2 (3..4...) digit number.



Other: I'm going to clump these together. We haven't done a ton of science and SS this year....we did our peanut unit and geography unit. We've done some on aviation and read a lot of biographies. We do a lot of natural science just living life....and they own a lot of toys that involve magnetism and electricity. Plus they will get their fair share of plant science since the growing season is almost here.



Cale:



Language: I have been going slow...I haven't done a lot of teaching but he's reading. Pretty well too. He's reading books Rylan read last year in first grade, so I am happy. He is a bit of a I-am-not-doing-it-just-because-you-told-me-to phase so I am not pushing it. I have him set up with a book log- read 100 books and get a huge ice cream sundae of his choice (Rylan too). Pizza Hut wasn't incentive for him. His writing is coming along too- for awhile he was writing sentences for his terrible back talking habit. Didn't do much for the back talking but did wonders for his handwriting. He wrote an illustrated a little book called The Cat Jumped. And he really likes writing random 1-2 sentence letters to family and his penpal.

We haven't done too much with math lately either. He finished the K math workbooks I had for him long ago. He can do all the K skills. I haven't chosen a new math program yet. He's not ready for fact memorization or anything like that. He is definately my artistic child. And I am thinking math and science may not ever be his thing, so I am choosing carefully and hopefully I can find a program that suits him.

I finally decided to try a unit for each of them from Moving Beyond the Page. I have been thinking over this purchase since October and have always talked myself out of it. I have yet to be happy with any of my curriculum purchases, so I am cautious. But I bought one unit for each that will go 9 weeks- the end of the year- which will mean less stress for me and more productive days. I am really hoping I like it since it would make next year's desicions easier.