First Week of Schoolness (Week 1, August 17-21, 2009)

In a not well thought out spur of the weekend decision to begin school NOW as opposed to the first day in September as in the days of old, we began our school year in the garden patch. Towards the latter end of the week of August 10th, the kids were getting a little buggy about school starting and with the amount of work to be done in a whole year; I just could not wait any longer. The schoolroom (our dining room) had been organized with all of last year’s stuff pulled and the new curriculum placed on the shelf. What better time to start school than now!

Monday, August 17, 2009 was our first day and once again I some how manage to front load the week as I do every year. Why oh why can I not balance it out better? We did finish our week with most every assignment completed and graded and here are the highlights.


Marco? Polo! Tales of a 4th Grade Something

Rutabaga has made it to fourth grade. (And my spell check helps me realize that her name is spelled wrong all over this blog!) She’s very excited to be in fourth grade. Well—except for the part that she has much more work than her sister. Lots more work. Her syllabus has her complete her schoolwork in roughly 3 hours and her sister in 1 hour. She does not like this. It is unfair. It is just plain unfair. And like the kind schoolmarm that I am, I apologize that she feels this way and urge her to do her math.

Oy! Math! I love math. I love it with a passion. Why I didn’t major in it and go all the way to a PhD and be the guy on NUMB3RS in real life, I shall never know. (Okay—I do know, I just love television production and went to school for that instead!) I am NOT the best math tutor. My philosophy is shamefully—“this is how you do it. See, easy peasy!” Only, some people aren’t built that way. The problem with Rutabaga—she’s built like me. She CAN do this math. But it is her LEAST favorite subject.

My heart is broken on this revelation. However—I tell her, she doesn’t have to like it to be able to do it. And clearly she CAN do it. Her mistakes are just silly ones. On one math page for example, she got 2 answers wrong for not being able to read her own handwriting. I check the “work” when the answer is wrong and not once, but twice on the same page—due to her lack of love for the art of math and equal disdain for handwriting, she added wrong b/c she couldn’t read her work. But by the end of the week with extra tutoring, by jove she is getting it. This double digit multiplication can be a bear. But she gets it. We just had to practice extra hard with properly lining things up so we don’t mistake a number in the wrong place and remember to write our numbers neatly.

The beauty of homeschooling is this: We don’t have to march on forward with math and burdening her with new information while she has to still process the old information. We can pause and work extra. And all will work out in the end.
My other silly moment this week with Rutabaga was my attempt to set a reading goal for my voracious reader. She reads: A lot. So I thought I was being generous at the 150 book reading goal for the year. HA! Let’s just say that she will beat this goal by the end of September at the rate we are going. She reads for leisure and we have lots of living books we read with our curriculum. Needless to say, this is just further emphasis on my inability to do quantitative “guestimation”. I can calculate it given the proper information, but I cannot “guess” to save my life. We will be updating our reading goal to about 500 books for the year and I still think we will be able to beat it.

Additional subjects for my 4th grader: Bible and Catechism, Latin (the subject in which I purchased the incorrect teacher’s manual), Spelling, Science (using Abeka’s 4th grade science), American History (with a small little lead in with Marco Polo and the Vikings as we make our way to a more detailed study of the start of America than we did last year.), Florida, Poetry, and Writing using Writing Strands (so far—I love this workbook!) as well as English using Intermediate Language Lessons by Emma Serle.


First Grade: Learning to Read

Butternut is on her way!!! We began the Scaredy Cat Reading Program last year with our letter sounds. We finished Kindergarten with the start of Scared “A” (known as the “short” A in other phonics programs). She really enjoys this program especially the games. She is beginning to read Easy Readers with some assistance and can’t wait to read as well as her sister.

In Math—she began her first grade math book last year and got almost halfway through it. We are continuing to learn addition and soon we will start subtraction. She is also working on telling the time.

The rest of Butternut’s curriculum will include Bible and Catechism, Poetry, and Handwriting. I am amazed that she remembers her poems from last year. I wish there was more to say, but 1st grade is a pretty basic curriculum. The rest of the week, she entertained her brother and played with him while Sarah was hard and work.

Alfalfa Sprout: The Language is Coming!

Sprout had a language explosion since I last wrote. His words are coming in! This is truly amazing! However—before anyone says “See, I told you he would talk!”—there is a very obvious way that he speaks and he still requires speech therapy. The good news is—as long as it isn’t late at the end of the day, he will attempt to copy words. He cannot speak in sentences at all—once in a blue moon he will do a two word combination. However—we can get him to copy a sentence word by word. This is progress!

With help—he will say “ay I-ee a oo-wa oo-wa ease” . He says it one word at a time after prompting. Can you tell what that is? It’s “May I have water please?” With the language coming in, we can now comfort the pediatrician that we are simply dealing with a speech issue and not a more serious concern.

We are very proud of Sprouts progress!!

Activities
Rutabaga: Piano (with Little House of Music’s, Miss “G”—she’s amazing!); Guitar (with “Arts of Praise”), Voice, Dance, Gymnastics and we may throw in a little bowling for fun.

Butternut: Violin—she just LOVES her violin, piano, voice, dance, gymnastics as well as a little bit of bowling.

Alfalfa Sprout: Mommy and Me gymnastics—pretty much climbing on things and learning some tumbling.

We are very excited this school year and pray that we stay on schedule and enjoy what we are doing.



--Cucumber