59 Days! School Progress Thus Far....

Katie drawing in her journal.

Our school year is going very well! We logged our 59th day of school today! With a 180 day school year, that means we have 121 days of school to go for the year! WOW!

Katie is doing well in all her work. Our big struggle this year has been with conquering frustration. The need to get it perfect the first time. It seems so "not" like her personality with everything else in her life, but with school work it is the case. She is getting much better though. Working on addition and subtraction, and many more things in Math... like measuring, halves, time, place value, etc. Reading is, of course, a breeze. We are about to hit just the right level I think to go along with her comprehension level. The practice of reading books with lots of words on the page and less pictures... remembering facts about what she just read. The actual reading part isn't difficult, but again, I want to be sure she is getting the idea of reading to remember and not just to read. The spelling words aren't that difficult for her, but I want to be sure she gets the spelling rules down solidly. No reason to rush. Language, etc., going great. No complaints.



Journal time for Noah

Noah is doing very well also. I am finding that a lot of the Abeka Math and Reading in Kindergarten and First is similar. Not exactly the same, but whereas she is mastering and applying at a more complex level, he is being introduced to some of the same concepts in a much more simple way. So, I have been doing their lessons in Math together. He may not "get" every single thing, but he is really impressing me so far. AH the advantages of having two so close together in age! He has learned his short and long vowel sounds and has just started working on special sounds (like y in fly, ay in pray, etc). It seems that once the concept of the long and short vowel thing sets in, the growth is exponential for a while! I think I almost postponed the teaching of long and short vowels because I knew that he would seem to grow a year in a day at that point! :( ha ha. So proud of him!

I have finally found a balance of how to get everything done and done well in our school day. I think! ha. I was stressed with being able to teach the lessons completely and get all the paperwork done each day. So, we have started doing the lesson parts together in the morning, then bringing the paper part upstairs to do in the afternoon or evenings. If we have a day that we aren't free in the afternoons then we can review and just do the paper part for that day. This seems to be working very nicely. Abeka works so much review and "reiteration" into their lessons that alternating out between these two plans works fine.

Overall, this school year has been fantastic!

Oh, and another note about 59...today marks 59 days until our Disney trip! Yay!