So....where were we?

We didn't exactly take the summer off from school (though we were VERY laid back about it), but I seem to have taken it off from homeschool blogging. So I think when we left off, we were just finishing up Story of the World 2 and space science, getting ready to jump into Winterpromise American history and Chemistry. Jumping in has happened, and now DH is back at work and we're back to being sorta kinda organized and scheduled about things.

A quick rundown of the year's plans:

Ari:
Singapore 3
Writing With Ease (level 2)s
First Language Lessons 3

Milo:
Singapore Earlybird (he's almost finished with this and will start 1a soon)
Headsprout phonics
Explode the Code 1

Both:
Winterpromise American Story 1
Time Travelers Colonial Life CD
The Elements: Ingredients of the Universe
Super Science Concoctions
Elementary Spanish on United Streaming
Memoria Press Christian Studies
Homeschool in the Woods Old Testament

We're about to start week 8 in WP...so I guess we did get something done this summer.

We're also slowly adding back in to our social/extracurricular schedule. Our homeschool coop will be starting up again next month. Looks like we'll be doing sign language, some kind of math, and handicrafts with them. And then there's talk of getting a park nearby to run a wilderness survival skills class, too, so that would be cool. I keep meaning to get to park days with that group, but lately they've mostly been meeting at swimming pools, and I really can't do pools with three non/beginning swimmers and actually get a chance to talk to people, so we skip those. And my mom lives very close to me and has a pool, so the lure of the swim playdate is not strong for me. Milo has started taking Capoeira. I tried to get Ari to take it, too, to streamline things, but he's devoted to his gymnastics class. So I guess we're sticking with that for now, which makes our evenings very crowded (Milo does Capoeira two nights a week, and then gymnastics is a different night for Ari). But our mornings are mostly pretty free, so we'll try to be very efficient at home (which will mean I need to get off my summertime sleep schedule and get things going earlier). Gus is still napping for the time being; once he stops doing that I'll probably start trying to get everything done by noon to leave our afternoons free.

I'll do a quick update for this week, and then try to get back into it, with pictures and all that, next time.

Math: Ari is working on multiplication in Singapore. He's glad to be done (for now) with 4 digit addition and subtraction. Milo's working on telling time (o'clocks and half pasts).

Milo's reading: he's halfway finished with Headsprout now. He's doing well with CVC words and some longer words, but I think we're still waiting for it all to "click." Reading's still a big effort for him, but he's trucking along.

Language Arts: Ari's more than halfway through FLL 3 now, I think. He's memorizing the first stanza of Poe's "The Bells" right now. It's always a proud moment when one's child first learns the word "tintinnabulation." We just got Writing With Ease in the mail this past week and did the first lesson. The workbook won't ship until next week, but I think we're going to go ahead with it without the workbook until it shows up. Too soon to tell whether Ari will like this or not.

History: the tweaking has begun with WP. The Time Travelers Colonial Life CD will serve as evidence of that. We're keeping up with the reading pretty easily (I added in "If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620..." this week, because I happened to have picked it up somewhere). We're just starting reading about the the colonial period. This past week, we made some pop up colonial houses and a little pocket book about what you'd find on a colonial farm (both from the Time Travelers CD). We're reading The Sign of the Beaver which seems to be going over well with both Ari and Milo so far.

Science: We started reading "How to Think Like a Scientist," did some reading and an activity from The Elements, and did an experiment from Super Science Concoctions.

Reading: I'm reading Finn Family Moomintroll with Milo and The Wheel on the School with Ari. Ari's just coming off reading a string of short Roald Dahl books and is having trouble figuring out where he wants to go next. Oh, he read Ted Hughes' The Iron Giant. He's strangely intimidated by long chapter books right now, which is sort of new. I gave him a Hardy Boys book I found at the thrift store, but he only got a few pages into it (he may go back to it; I don't know). The past few nights he's been reading Choose Your Own Adventure books, and I'm hoping he'll get tired of them and return to real books soon.

And now it's midnight, so I'm done!