It just occurred to me that I never did an end of the school year update! We ended about a month ago and I have been so tired that I haven't felt like updating anything. So I'll give a little update on each child's progress this year.
Anna: My little sweatheart completed Sonlight's Core 3/4, which is mainly just reading good children's books. She enjoyed her special reading time with Mommy each day and has been begging to learn to read. I have kind of started her on the 100 easy lessons book, but either she's not ready or she needs another method. She knows all of her letters and sounds so we may just skip that book and use Sonlight's LA for Kindergarten next year, which worked better for Ben. We also did some preschool math workbooks and games, like Mighty Minds, and she is VERY good with numbers and math concepts. She will be working through Sonlight's Core 4/5 next year and the Primer book in Math-U-See. We're also working a wee bit on handwriting. Right now she copies pre-printed letters and does pretty well. For summer school, she is working through the four-year-old books for Think it Through from Discovery Toys and she just finished the library reading program.
Ben: Oh my, did this little guy grow by leaps and bounds in kindergarten! He was very resistant to learning to read and found it quite difficult, so we tossed the 100 lessons book and just worked slower through the Sonlight program. Now he is reading easy readers and working slowly into chapter books. I would have never thought he would progress so far with his reading! Rob and I are very impressed with him. He flew through the last half of his school readers (he did LA-1 this year) with ease. He also completed the Alpha book in Math-U-See with no problems (that's a first grade book for those that don't speak "homeschool.") Math is definitely his strong point! His handwriting is behind for sure, but I have decided with all of the kids to just let them learn that skill as they are ready. I figure if it was good enough for Abraham Lincoln, it's good enough for them :) For summer school Ben is doing all of the math workbook pages we skipped, devotional book for the Wed night program at church, and some phonics books from the Think it Through set.
Matthew: This child is my voracious reader. He did LA for 4-5 grade this year and excelled. He can literally read anything he picks up! Right now he is almost finished reading the third Harry Potter book (and that's where he has to stop until he's older.) He started it Wednesday night and is almost finished! He completed the Beta math book this year, which I think was his only real challenge in school. Otherwise he just flew through the rest of his material. I need to get this guy into a spelling bee b/c he can spell almost anything w/o much help. For summer school he is doing the same as Ben with the addition of the Bible Bee.
Next year school will be a bit different. The plan right now is that I teach Matthew and Anna while Rob teaches Ben. We have found that Ben and I do not work well together, so our current solution is to hand him over to Rob, who does work well with Ben. I'm very relieved b/c our only other choice would be to send him to school and I can't imagine what that would do to him emotionally if he gets sent away and his siblings get to stay home. We love our life as a homeschooling family and can't imagine doing anything else!!
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