We had a really great week school-wise!
Have I mentioned 38 times that the oldest finished her English? She actually finished it last week, but I'm still so delighted, I had to just throw it out there one more time! Hold on a second while I do one last happy dance for this!
Okay, I'm back.
She is moving right along with math as well and I believe will be finishing that at the end of the month. She's at a pretty easy stage for her in math right now - I guess it's an intro to geometry; whatever you do at the end of sixth grade math, so she's breezing through. I need to happy dance again that ever since long division was mastered, math has been a much happier place at our house. Fractions and decimals weren't nearly as big a deal as long division, so all in all, it's been a happy math year for her. I have to giggle though. She was all excited to be about finished ... and then she saw that the next curriculum is here waiting for her and we'll be going directly to it when she finishes this one. Silly girl, thinking she was going to get a break from math! We've been homeschooling long enough that you'd think she'd know better than that by now! :-P
We're in a weird place with the middle one. She is doing very well in all of her classes also, but I'm curious as to how many other people have kids who score between 90 and 100 on *every* spelling test and yet will write papers *using those same words* and spell them incorrectly? I'm not sure what to do about that. We've enjoyed Bob Jones spelling, but if it's not transferring from the spelling tests into regular writing, then I think we need to re-evaluate. We've been doing a dictation based spelling for the oldest and I think we may try that with the middle one as well.
She is doing fabulous in her reading and English classes, and I am very proud of her. I always think of my oldest as a junior member of the grammar police, but now I'm starting to suspect that the middle one may be as well. Woohoo for the grammar police!
Math is also going well, and I have to happy dance for that too! Same thing as with the oldest - once we got past a specific hurdle, it's gotten much easier.
History --
We are hanging out in Greece for the next few weeks. I'm a little unsure about who is learning more - them or me. It amazes me how much I didn't know about Greece. We're reading about Archimedes. Um ... should I be ashamed to tell you that I had no idea who that is? Well, shame be banned because I'm reading a whole book about him. (I love the read alouds that are part of our Heart of Dakota curriculum!)
We just recently finished the book of Esther and watched "One Night With the King". I LOVED hearing the girls critique the movie based on their knowledge of the book of Esther. Very awesome to realize that they really are learning a lot!
Science --
We finished our birds study in science, and I can honestly say "GOOD!" I wasn't really loving the bird study, but the girls seemed to enjoy it. We're moving on to plants next, and to be honest, I'm a little less than excited about that too. I'll try to hide that from the girls. I had to laugh when I told them that Monday we would be starting plant life. The middle one said "Good! Maybe we'll learn not to kill tomato plants!" HMPF! Kill tomato plants? Me? Let me just show you my tomato plant:
And so that's it for our week! How was yours?
I'll be linking up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers today. Check them out to see what all of the other weird, unsocialized homeschoolers did this week!
2 comments:
Looks like a good productive week. I am definitely learning a lot myself through our History curriculum (TOG).
Spelling...I have the EXACT same problem with my youngest. She finished her Rod & Staff spelling curriculum last year with a 97! Yes. That's a 9 and a 7 together...as in almost a 100% for the entire year. Yet, she spells terribly in every day life! I get asked how to spell "when"...among other simple words. (I also loved BJU spelling) This is how spelling has gone for the past 4 years. Isn't the definition of insanity "doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result"?
So, I decided that this year I had to do something different,and so far so good. It is dictation like you mentioned. We are using the Institute for Excellence in Writing- "Excellence in Spelling". It is totally student driven. She listens to a cd and does spelling completely on her own. I think she is making improvements. We'll see.
Good luck! LMK if you come up with something that works like magic.
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