Home School Progress

Well, our schedule is well established and we are forming so good healthy habits! The favorite part of the day is when they each get 1 on 1 time with Mommy. They get a half hour each with me to do whatever they would like. At first I found this a bit difficult, just settling down to play whatever they wanted me to. I'm used to moving around and getting things done. But this has turned out to be a lovely time with each of the kids. Just chatting about what they want or playing what they want. I'm enjoying it - very much. We started ABEKA Grade 4 with Gates but I am finding it to be too much for her during the day. It's taking too long. So we are scaling back and taking a Charlotte Mason approach to Language Arts for the next few weeks. She'll be doing copywork, some dictation and more narration. She is my little book worm. I can barely keep her stocked for books. She eats them up (I think she gets it from me :). She's doing well with her piano too. We switched teachers and I am finding that Gates is doing much better, I think this is a better fit for her. She's been practicing daily, even when she is done her weekly songs she has been playing for enjoyment. I love listening to her practice her songs.

Grey is doing so well with some new approaches to math we have taken. He is adding 1 and 10 to a double digit number now with no difficulty! We're just going to stick with that for a while now. No rushing, working right at his pace and knowing that he WILL get it. He's doing awesome with his reading and writing. Such nice, neat printing he has. I'm hoping he'll like reading on his own too when he gets to that point. Grey just started piano lessons and he's doing so well with it. I think it's been good for his self esteem and I even think it's been good for his right/left sequencing and spatial movements. He's been listening to a fair bit of classical/instrumental music lately, he enjoys trying to figure out which instruments are playing and he is often right!

Now for the books for SL's Core 3+4 - both the kids are LOVING them. They are a great group of books. Reading time ranks right up there with 1 on 1 time during the day. They like to colour while reading and then enjoy a lively discussion about what we've read. I really feel like they're getting the meat out of what we read about - be it history, geography or science.

All in all the past few weeks have been relaxing and enjoyable. I love home schooling. I attended a great Charlotte Mason meeting and it feels good to hear from women who have gone before me, who have older children and I love listening to their ideas. It's good to have support for the type of life we have chosen.