Wow, I didn't think it had been a year since my last post. Guess I'm a little behind! I will confess - my initial thought had been to write up posts describing the weeks since & post-date them. Then I have to confess my second thought - "that's way too much work." So you'll just have to take my word that we've done some pretty cool learning stuff in the past year. We finished last summer with a great time learning Chemistry (great 10 chapter textbook with experiments), History (put together a timeline using our Jesus Storybook Bible, a wonderful Christian history website, & youtube; it's amazing what you can find on youtube), German (watched Muzzy German level I to keep fresh), copywork (Jimmy's least favorite activity, by the way), and a wonderful catechism lesson book (36 lessons that introduce catechism Q&A's along with stories that help explain them).
This past year, we read our FIAR books (Caleb had B4FIAR, Jimmy had FIAR v.2, then we merged at the end of the year to a combination of both) with their lessons, memorized the Bible verses we did last year (the ones that started with each letter of the alphabet), and continued the catechism lessons we started in the summer. Jimmy worked on Saxon grade 1 & improving his handwriting (by copying our weekly Bible verses). He started reading from our Distar reading lesson book (the one that didn't work for us before - I just had him read the stories from the second half of the book to help him build confidence). He is becoming more & more comfortable reading. I even caught several Dr. Suess books hidden in his bed for a little naptime reading. lol Caleb has been working on letter recognition through a homemade phonics boardgame. He can move up each space by correctly identifying the letter's name. If he gets it wrong, he gets a "roadblock" (aka toy traffic cone). He gets 4 roadblocks per game, then it's over for the day. Jimmy had been using the phonics game to help his reading skills (starting with phonics sounds, then moving to combination & words), but he's much more interested in reading from books now.
For extracurricular activities, Jimmy went back to German school in a K-1st grade class. Once again, we got fantastic feedback about his language skills. However, we did get some negatives about his impulsive behavior. We're working on that. In the spring, Jimmy & Caleb had soccer lessons with Kiddie Soccer. They had a blast, even though poor Jimmy was the oldest in the group by far.
I had plans for doing more History & starting introductory Biology this summer, but our plans got derailed. Randy was offered a permanent job where he had been consulting, and they offered us a relocation package. So we took off several weeks from school in order to prepare the house. (Thankfully, my own consulting job slowed down at the same time, freeing up even more of my time.) We're using the rest of this summer to finish up last school year's work. The house is still on the market, so we might have another "break" during the actual move. I am considering using our lighter summer work to get us through that time. It will all depend on when our house sells & when the closing dates are scheduled.
That wasn't a very long post to catch you up from a whole year, but that's about it! I'll post again soon with our plans for the upcoming school year. 'Till then, keep learning!
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