Monday, August 23, 2010

Week 1 Easy Does It...

Our first week of lessons was low key. Some much needed rain moved in and made for a cozy week of reading and brainstorming ideas. Monday brought a head cold that is typical for me this time of year. I blame it on the change of seasons. Regardless, I was forced to lower my expectations and thus had a very relaxing week of easing back into everything.

I am pleasantly surprised by Quinn's math skills. We did very little review this summer and took more time off than previous years. I gave him some very difficult multiple step math problems that even I had to think about. He did them all correctly and quickly. This is a breath of fresh air for us. Here's praying that it continues.

I can tell that I will need to supplement Evelyn's assigned reading. Sonlight schedules the first literature selection as A Lion To Guard Us for the first two weeks and then Pocohants and the Stranger for the following two weeks. She read them both in one day.

Poor Quinn has found his first two literature books to be "incredibly boring". His first was Mother West Wind's Children and the second was Vostaas White Buffalo's Story of Plains Indian Life. Luckily he has some exciting reading on the side. He has blown through the first few books of the Percy Jackson series and The 39 Clues and has polished off the few remaining Hardy Boys books that he hasn't read. I am blessed to have avid happy readers. It really makes everything else so much easier and more exciting.

Don't get me wrong. We have our own areas of struggle. Quinn's spelling, although vastly improved from previous years, is still light years behind his younger sister's. And Evelyn, well I can't think of any academic issues for her, but she can have quite the snippy attitude lately and can be a very difficult little sister.

Overall I am optimistic that this year will be one of significant growth academically, spiritually and physically for ALL of us. Yes, that includes myself!

I didn't snap too many pictures this week. But here is one of Evelyn in her favorite reading spot. Penny is used to it by now.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

New School Year

It has been a happy yet full summer. So much fun was had. We took a great family vacation to Acadia and had awesome weather. Quinn spent a week at New England Frontier Camp. It was his first sleepover camp. Evelyn took part in the theater camp at a church on our street. They did the musical Rescue in the Night. We ventured to Six Flags, the beach and spent many hot afternoons at Cunningham Pond. And we aren't done yet! In fact the best beach days, in my opinion, are after all the school kids have gone back to their buildings! September has many more hot days, great parking and few crowds. I can't wait!
That said, we will probably start easing back into some lessons soon. We generally don't take quite so much time off at once. This enables us to have three day school weeks through the winter when the kids ski, take spontaneous time off when we need to or feel like it and we don't have to spend a month reviewing everything the kids have forgotten from the previous year. Plus we can start slacking off the moment the spring buds begin appearing in late April. It works well for us.
I haven't formalized all of our curriculum yet for this year. I do know that we will be doing Sonlight Core 3 history and read alouds. Readers will be a compilation of books pulled from both Sonlight and Veritas Press. Math will be Singapore with a little Life of Fred and Keys To... thrown in for older ds. We will be concentrating on the first few units of IEW and continuing our poetry list from IEW Poetry. I will be continuing Spelling Plus with my older non-speller but am considering getting Phonetic Zoo for my younger/natural speller as she is more independent anyways and could use more challenging spelling words. I have a large list of favorite art blogs that I pull great art projects from but my older ds also will be continuing Complete-A-Sketch volume 2. He prefers more technical drawing. DD will be doing soccer and dance and DS wants to join the swim team. They both ski throughout the winter. We will be studying the book of Acts at CBS and I think I have decided on using L'Art de LIRE for french but who knows. Many loose ends to tie up! If anyone has used L'Art de LIRE and has any comments about it that would be great! I will post more when I have figured it out! Happy homeschooling everyone!