Back to School 2014

A lot has changed since I last blogged. We moved across the country from Oklahoma to Alaska. The kids are loving the new neighborhood as it's a cul-de-sac with lots of kids. Daily they are begging me to go to the park or hang out with their friends. In OKC, these opportunities were very rare. Moving has cracked their social life wide open!

In between managing kids, I've been working on getting our house set up, and that includes the school area. In the house, we have two living spaces, which means we don't have to do schoolwork at the kitchen table any more. Oh yeah! So, we bought some desks and small chairs and the kids are happy to have their own space. I would like to eventually like to buy bigger chairs for the older kids, but these will do for now.

The neighborhood kids ago back to school on Wednesday so we are starting this week too. We've had a very large break (nearly four months!), so it's definitely time.

Enzo - Toddler

This boy is my shadow. He's always in the same room. He constantly is checking for me, grabbing my legs, climbing up me, and patting me. At the same time, he demands that he must play whatever the Bigs are playing. He's very determined. He also likes to undo. Any neat pile I've got doesn't stay neat for long. He's going to be the spice of our school year.

 

Hyrum - Three School

This year he will be working on potty training. That's the big focus, he's ready, but I've got to be more consistent than I've been. We didn't even approach it since we knew we were moving.

Hyrum is also going to work on the Core Knowledge preschool books with Mom. He's also started independently writing small words, so he's going to be learning proper handwriting formation along with Ellie. He will probably tag along with her Five In A Row studies.

 

Ellie - Kindergarten

It's crazy to believe Ellie is in kindergarten! She has sort of been working through some reading lessons when we remember. She's really excelled with Funnix and is on lesson fifty-something. It's almost halfway through the lessons.

My main focus with Ellie is to get her reading and reading well. Once she finishes with Funnix, she will move on to other things more intensely. For now, she will be dabbling in math (Miquon), spelling (Writing Road to Reading), and Five in a Row.

My secondary focus is to get her properly forming her letters. Her mind does not seem to process things linearly and I wonder if she's a whole-to-parts, visual/spatial learner. It's hard to know at five. Regardless, her fine motor skills have been slower to develop and she's only just begun to write letters. She is inclined to write letters from the bottom up and use clockwise strokes (gah!), so we will be drilling proper formation a lot.

Ellie also hopes to join a swim team this year. She will either work on a pre-team or attend lessons for proper stroke formation. She has an evaluation soon.

 

Emmett - First Grade

Emmett is my math/science kid. He is pretty advanced in his math and will finish up Singapore 2B before moving into Beast Academy. He seems to understand the mental calculation and crossing tens with ease. So well, in fact, that he argues about using the standard algorithm for regrouping. He doesn't see the point because he can do it in his head.

He is still not as confident in his reading as I would like. He reads fluently, but either guesses unfamiliar words or skips over them completely. For this purpose, this year he is going to really focus and solidify his reading. We are going to start him at the beginning of the Writing Road to Reading and I am hoping that analysis will help him become a stronger reader.

Emmett will also work through Writing With Ease 1, which is basic copywork and narration. We will focus on keeping his writing neat and focusing enough in stories to tell back what happens. We've been listening to a lot of audiobooks this summer (thank you, Audible!) and he's finally transitioned into listening and enjoying stories so I'm hoping he's matured enough that WWE won't be too difficult. He will do First Language Lessons 2 for his grammar.

Emmett's continuing swim this year. He is swimming with Knik Aquatics and loving it. His coaches are great. He had his first meet this past weekend and cut significant time off all of his events.

 

Abigail - Third Grade

Abby is my reader. She loves to disappear inside stories and books. She's also a perfectionist, however, and allows some of her anxiety about being wrong to impede her own progress. This year I'm going to expect more out of her - more quality writing, more reading, more willingness to try.

For language arts, she will be working on writing strong sentences and working up to good paragraphs. I don't ascribe to the public school philosophy that writing a bunch will make a good writer. Rather, I want to teach her the importance of word selection, constructing complete thoughts with good descriptions. We are going to be using a mash-up of a few things for writing. For the first few weeks we'll be working from Treasured Conversations. The first part of this curriculum works on making strong and descriptive sentences. Afterwards, we'll move on to CAP's Writing and Rhetoric and Writing With Ease 3. She'll continue with First Language Lessons too.

Abby has no issue with writing besides spelling. She freezes and refuses to write anything if she doesn't know how to spell all of the words. She gets so worked up over the one word, everything else becomes a jumble and she can't even begin her task because she's already worked up over it. We are working on learning to take things one step at a time, but also increasing her spelling abilities. When I had her take the standardized test (CAT) last year she schored very high across the board on everything (8th and 9th stanines) but spelling. Her spelling was at grade level. Obviously this is frustrating for her. She's going to use WRTR as well in hopes that we can accelerate some of the easier stuff and increasing her spelling ability. Apparently All About Spelling moved too slowly and some of it didn't stick.

She is also going to pick up Latin with a book called Getting Started With Latin. Mom's going to be learning right along with her and she's actually excited to do the lessons with me.

We are also trying a new-ish approach with math. Once again, Abby's perfectionistic tendencies inhibit math to some degree. She won't try problems if they seem too hard. She's already ahead a year in math, so this year is going to be a coast year a bit. She's going to become a bit more self-directed, a bit more confident, and still learn a few new things. We are going to keep using Beast Academy on Fridays. She's moving in to 3D and she loves those monsters. For M-Th, though, she's going to be working from Teaching Textbooks 4. TT should be a bit a more self-directed. It will be confidence-building because the the curriculum is considered a year behind in a lot of teaching circles so it should be mostly review. She will work double time until she's reached a spot where she should be working.

Abby also wants to do 4H this year. The base has options, but nine is the minimum age. I'm still hunting for a group.

She also is going to restart piano lessons this year. And I won't be the teacher. Woohoo!

 

Combined Content

Ellie and Hyrum will be working through Five in a Row this year. It might be a bit of a reach for Hyrum, but he constantly surprises me so we are going to include him and let the chips fall how they may.

Abby and Emmett will be using Story of the World 3 this year. I'm very excited to move into some US history. The kids will be reading in SOTW, using some Veritas Press history cards, and looking at the first few books of Joy Hakim's The Story of US. We are also going to be memorizing states and capitals and the presidents.

We will also begin chemistry. I think we are starting the year with Ellen McHenry's the Elements. I'm not sure if we'll move into Carbon Chemistry or RSO or just explore the rest of the time with books and projects. I guess we'll see!