Status report

Sigh. Normally I like Fridays. But, this Friday signals the end of our off week, so I'm a little glum and unready to head back to "normal." ;) Before that happens, I figured I'd do a little check in with how things are going on the homeschooling front...

I'm just going to go through the list (copied from my initial post this school year), adding my notes in italics:

MATH
- Art of Problem Solving, Algebra
- Life of Fred: Fractions, Decimals & Pre-Algebra 
- Beast Academy 5A, 5B (plus 5C and 5D if they get published in time)
- Math for the Gifted Student: Grades 5 & 6 

So, for math this year, I'm splitting the boys up. I've tried various combinations of this over the years but decided last year that they're using each other as crutches too much so am separating them this year. :) Asher will be working on algebra with me (using the first item there--I've used it with Noah and like it) and Micah will be reinforcing middle school math mostly on his own (using the last three). I'm not married to this plan, so we'll see if this is still what we're doing in a month.

So far, so good. It's not either boy's favorite, but we're plugging away just fine. :)

LANGUAGE ARTS
- Wordly Wise, book 6 & 8
- Reading Detective
- Don't Forget to Write
- Caught Ya: Grammar With a Giggle 
- self-selected reading 

Since we're "done" with a formal spelling curriculum, I switched to vocabulary (Wordly Wise). I also added in a reading comprehension dealio (Reading Detective). For that, I'm starting with the Rx workbook because I like how it tackles one specific thing at a time. Once they finish those, I'll see where things stand. I've not really done anything specific to reading after having taught, well, how to read (aside from lots of talking about things) but am realizing that maybe we need a bit more focus on that.

For writing, the main goal this year is to actually do it. ;) I found this book (Don't Forget to Write) at a used book fair and like that it simply has a collection of favorite lesson plans from classrooms. I'm going to pick and choose which interest us from the middle school portion of the book. I'm *hoping* that the less structured approach will be more likely to keep our interest. (We didn't do a good job of following through with any of the writing programs I tried last year, for various reasons.)

For grammar, I took a look at my long term plan and decided that next year is the year to really push grammar. (You may recall that with Noah I decided that grammar in general is very often just repeated year after year with not much new being introduced. So. With him, I waited until just before he started high school and hit grammar pretty hard for a solid year.) In the meantime, I'm planning to try the Caught Ya plan and see how that goes, just to keep up some practice and such. (The approach is similar to things like Easy Grammar...just a sentence or two a day that needs correcting. But, Caught Ya follows a silly story, making it much more entertaining.)

And, for reading, we'll continue with required but self-selected reading. Boys each need to read at least 600 pages per six week session on their own time. Usually they end up reading much more than that, particularly since I offer an incentive of $10 per 1000 pages. :) There are a few books for history that I'd like us all to read...I'm toying around with whether to read them aloud or have each boy read a copy of his own.

Hooray! The big news here is that we actually DID all the things I set out to do each week!! Seriously. That's huge for us. :) I'm pretty happy about that.

SCIENCE
- The Story of Science: Aristotle & Newton
- How to Teach Nutrition to Kids 

I feel like we've really covered middle school science already, both formally and through life. This year, then, I'm just reading from the Story of Science books...as they're fun and educational. I like that it offers a different perspective by telling the history behind the science.

Further, and especially since Micah continues in his self-directed cooking instruction, I'm going to cover nutrition. :)

Also, we're going to do Science Olympiad with a local group. I'll add more about that when I know more about that. 

So, nutrition continues to go fine. We even did food logs to prove to the boys that they're not eating balanced diets, lol. Science Olympiad is also good. The boys continue to work with their team:

Clockwise from the top left: Asher working on optics, one of the calorimeters Micah and his teammates made and use in food science (I believe they named this one Joey), Asher and Alexander working through a timed Fast Facts challenge, and Cora and Micah working with Karen on food science. (Kicking myself for not taking pictures also of Asher and Ocean starting construction on their first glider for the Wright Stuff event!)

I feel like we're finally finding our groove with Science Olympiad--sorting out what's required and what we can manage each week. Given that, we're shifting gears a wee bit and making this the bulk of our science curriculum for the year...will set aside the Story of Aristotle and subsequent books for another year. :)

HISTORY
- creating our own timeline for early modern & modern times
- supplementary readings, including Shakespeare 

Last year we worked through ancient and medieval times, creating timelines and picking out significant inventions or people or buildings or battles for each time period. We'll continue that this year with the next two time periods. 

So, we ended up using this first session to review our ancient and medieval timelines from last year. Added to that, I started reading biographies from each time period to the boys (using this book, and this one, and these). I also read five abridged Shakespearean plays to the boys and they enjoyed them more than they'll admit. ;) I'm fairly happy with the readings, as I feel like they help bring the material home to the boys. 

GEOGRAPHY
- Around the World in 180 Days 

This is another used book fair find and I'm pretty happy with it after our first day. We'll take a continent each session (our sessions are roughly 6 weeks on, one week off). Within that, there are lessons on geography, history, religion/culture, and important people and books.

This is working just dandy. Our first session ended up being Africa, and we enjoyed the review on geography and wrapped up with watching Invictus.

PE
- Karate (twice a week throughout the year)
- Karate demo team (1-2 practices/week plus roughly monthly performances) 
- swimming laps (once a week) 
- gymnastics (once a week for just Asher)

Um, yeah. We've got physical education covered. ;) 

Still all good.

ELECTIVES
- Signing Online program to learn ASL
- US government (unit study) 
- cursive 

We're continuing our pursuit of learning sign language. Through a homeschool buyer co-op, I found this online curriculum and am pretty stoked. It nicely lays out lesson conversations, offers additional vocabulary and quizzes for retention. I know there are LOTS of resources out there (and many for free) but needed the structure of this so as to avoid becoming overwhelmed.

This is fabulous! The boys and I are thoroughly enjoying learning ASL...works great for my kinesthetic learner, too! The lessons are a good length and we try to review everything before starting each new lesson.

This US government thing is part of my "grand plan" to cover what I'm calling "skills" throughout the year. For this first session, I'm covering US government. Later plans include things like personal finance and household chores. I don't have any specific materials for this since I'm not planning a full course (that will be later during high school). I figure my bachelors in political science and Duke law degree and masters in public policy should do the trick, lol. 

Going well. About half way through my planned scope, I happened upon a site called iCivics.org and am quite happy with the resources found there. We have just a few more weeks on this topic and then I'll figure out what will be next.

In an ongoing attempt to improve handwriting, I've got just a simple cursive workbook for each boy to work through. This year, I'm also requiring more written responses through geography and reading comprehension and vocabulary and such.

Surprisingly, this is going well, too. The boys don't love doing the cursive workbooks, but they do it and their handwriting is definitely showing signs of improvement. Yay!

OPTIONS (one day a week enrichment program)

We just started our eighth year of Options and continue to be happy with the program and the opportunity for boys to see their friends regularly. 

The boys continue to enjoy this one day a week, classes seem to be going well, and Micah earned the role of Prince Charming in his drama class's winter production of Cinderella!

And that, I think, pretty much covers our homeschool plan for the year. Whew. 

Yup. That's my status report after one session. Seems good. Feels busier than I'd like ideally but good. I'm working on remembering the purpose behind our homeschooling and not getting caught up in comparing ourselves to the Joneses (as happens from time to time, lol). Overall, it's still working for us. :)