Halfway through phonics!

Last week (Thursday, to be exact) marked the halfway point of Caleb's phonics program. I am very impressed with how well he is doing. I had struggled a little deciding if he was ready. He likes being the baby. But he is very diligent & he has great memory retention. We're both having trouble with doubling up the phonics lessons, but I'm finding ways to keep him motivated through both lessons. I am allowing him to take a shortcut - each lesson contains a story that is supposed to be read through twice. I'm letting him skip the first reading & go right into the Q&A style second reading. He is doing a fabulous job!

Jimmy is having no problems with doubling his math lessons. He balks a little about doing the worksheets, but I think that is more because he would rather listen in on Caleb's phonics lessons. Jimmy picks up new math concepts like he'd already been doing them for years. I have to be careful to make sure he's using correct format (like in how he carries numbers in a horizontal addition problem, so he'll borrow correctly in a subtraction problem) because he tends to be able to do stuff in his head. I am having flashbacks to my own math teachers growing up. "You have to do the easy problems this way so you'll be able to the harder problems later."

For his birthday, Jimmy got an NIrV Bible - New International Reader's Version. It's the NIV made easier-to-ready for the 6-10 year old range. Jimmy isn't the best reader, I thought, but it would be a great place to do copywork for now. Well, Mr. Prove Me Wrong struck again! After his first stint with his new Bible during quiet time/nap time/reading time (whatever you want to call it), he came up to announce that he had read Matthew, Luke, Proverbs, and something else Old Testament that I can't remember. We thought he was lying or exaggerating... but then he gave us examples that were in those books! Now he reads along in his NIrV while I read their Psalms reading for school from the NLT. This whole thing got me rethinking where his reading level truly is, so we checked out some chapter books from the library. He read them all in one nap time & told me all about what happened in each one. Guess we're moving up to the next age group shelves in the library!