Excitement in our lives since February:
We got a new pony. Her name is Roxy. She's very sweet and follows you around like a little dog. She also is small enough that the boys are more comfortable getting on her! She is Final's "pocket pony", much to Final's chagrin.
Then we had our windows replaced... all of them. Most walls in this house have at least one window, which means almost all of our furniture had to move to the center of the rooms. In the meantime, we were also removing two large bookcases to get ready for a piano (we'll put in a custom bookshelf structure over it that my dad will build). So I had a lot of books in boxes. As I said, chaos. The new windows look great though!
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| New windows on left, old one on right. |
Tornado Boy and The Brute had a little run-in with each other, racing to the kitchen from different directions, trying to get to the van first. Tornado Boy lost that race...
My friend and I went to Memphis for the Greater Homeschool Convention. It was a fun girls-only trip, and we were both able to recharge. The convention was smaller than last year. Not sure if we'll go back next year or find a different one. I like going, but I imagine the better speakers may not come back next year. Plus a lot of the speakers are more "world view" type speakers instead of "homeschool" speakers. I go to church and read my Bible for my "world view". I'd like to learn about teaching reading, writing, and math when I go to a homeschool convention. ;)
And finally, about a month ago, my husband went outside to go to work and found this:
Our truck had self-ignited in the middle of the night, causing smoke and heat damage to just about everything in the garage. My van was parked next to the truck and had lots of pieces melted on it and some engine stuff damaged. It's running now, but has to go back to the body shop to take care of the corroded metal (which is all over, inside and out!). On a good note, it now has a new timing chain, water pump, cam shaft sensor, belts, motor mounts, and other such things. We were able to find a new (used) truck to replace the old one, and that's how the family has gotten around while the van was out for several weeks. We are BIG fans of detached garages now! Thankfully, the garage was well sealed, and the fire smoked itself out. It could have been a lot worse if we'd opened a door earlier.
That's what we've been up to the last several months. So our end of year progress:
Tornado Boy
Math: Finished through the Decimals unit of Singapore 4B. We'll do the rest this summer, then start 5A when we're ready. We've also been working through Beast Academy 3A and Life of Fred Fractions.
Reading: Tornado Boy has been reading, reading, and reading some more. We recently started Sonlight Core D with the Advanced Readers, and he's reading those faster than the schedule, so I don't think we'll have any trouble keeping up with that! He's also tracking his summer reading for our local homeschool group, and his goal is 10,000 pages. He has read almost 3000 in the first 1 or 2 weeks (I forget when it started - ha!), so I think it's definitely a doable goal in 8 weeks. Last year, he won for his age group with just 3800 pages. He certainly loves to read!
Grammar: We've kind of bounced around based on my mood and what I felt like Tornado Boy needed at the time. We are definitely staying with KISS Grammar next year. I've also been throwing in some R&S English 3 for the written grammar exercises. With KISS, he truly understands the parts of speech and how they're used. He analyzes real sentences. And even when we took a whole month off from it, we came back and he remembered what predicate nominatives, predicate adjectives, and direct objects were. Pretty impressive! We kind of let FLL3 fall by the wayside, not because I didn't like it, but because I've been using KISS for the teacher-intensive stuff and R&S for the more independent work (give him an assignment to go off and do on his own).
Writing: I think I've slacked off here the most the last several months. My last post in February had us at week 17 of WWE2. We have now finished week 21. Oops! I've really been a slacker in the narration department in general, and I intend to hit narrations hard this summer to get us back up to par. He's usually good at narrations, so I don't think it will be a problem. On a good note... My child who would say his hand hurt when copying ONE sentence last year can now copy 6 sentences with no pain whatsoever!!!!! Hooray! He's still absolutely terrified to write originally, due to perfectionism with spelling, but we'll work on that next year.
Spelling: We did several lessons of Apples & Pears and liked it overall, but we've kind of moved back toward R&S Spelling. The reason? It gets done more easily. Recently, he's been getting more independent with his work, and R&S has been easy enough to say, "Go do this," and he does it. I've also started putting the word lists into Spelling City, and he enjoys doing that too.
Read-Alouds: We've done pretty well with read-alouds, especially since starting Sonlight. I can't remember what all we've read, unfortunately. :P
Bible: We did very well keeping up with the "Daily Bible Reading" schedule my church put out up until about 3 weeks ago. Now we're hopelessly behind, which is why I dislike daily Bible reading schedules. I feel icky getting off schedule. So we're just plugging along through Acts right now. We have also done several lessons in Bible Study Guide for All Ages and really like that. We'll plan to continue it in the next year.
History: I think we got somewhere in the 20s in SOTW2 before switching over to Sonlight Core D. We've now done about 4-5 weeks of Core D and are loving it. It's US History, first half. We've learned a lot about Native American Indians, both North and South America, as well as the early Spanish settlers.
Science: We're somewhere in chapter 2 of the Apologia Astronomy book, which is funny, since last update (again, in February), we were in chapter 1. :) We've watched lots of Mythbusters and done our science kits though, plus read various library books.
The Brute
Reading: He is halfway through Map 5 on Reading Eggs, doing very well with that. He is also plugging away through Dancing Bears. Confidence is coming, slowly but surely. He said to me one day that he could only read "baby books", and he was sad about that. I showed him big boy books that he was reading, and that perked him up. He's not really ready for real readers yet. He can sound out a lot of words and is starting to recognize them more quickly, but he still can't read a sentence and comprehend it. We'll get there. He's "K" next school year.
Math: This is where The Brute has started to really take off! He has about 4 or 5 pages of Singapore Essential Math K book B left to go, and then he'll start 1A when we start back up (in about a month). He's totally ready for 1A. He is adding and subtracting with ease. His concept of place value is rock solid, up into the ten thousands. He can skip count by 2's, 5's, 10's, 100's, 1000's, etc. He can even add some easier 2-digit numbers mentally, like 30+31. I can't believe that 6 months ago, this child could hardly count past 10 and had NO clue about place value or adding or subtracting. He's a totally different child in the math department! He's even started saying, "Let's fly!" when I pull out the math book, and he means skipping stuff that he already knows. :)
Handwriting: We're practicing making decent circles, but haven't practiced a LOT. Obviously, his numbers are great, given how much he's flying through the math workbooks. ;)
Mischief
Reading: He just finished map 4 of Reading Eggs today. Yes, he's really able to read a little bit. He'll be 3 years old this week! He's not picking up books and reading them yet, and I don't expect that to happen for a good while yet, but he is able to sound out a word, blend, find a word that you say, and even spell a CVC word. Craziness.
Math: Tornado Boy has started teaching him math. Of course, he's teaching him the multiplication tables. :) One day I asked Tornado Boy what 3x3 was, and Mischief said, "9!" I was quite shocked! The next day, I was showing The Brute 3x2, and Mischief said, "6!" Ok kid, stop scaring me! Mischief does not actually know what multiplication is. He's just memorized a few facts that big brother has taught him. I figure he'll have all his facts for the 4 operations memorized before he's 5, and my work will be done! :P
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