Dogwood Forest Creek School

DH had last week off, so we took the week off, too. But we roared back this past week! Or, well, you know...we did stuff.

Ari:
Math--I think I somehow have the non-US version of Singapore right now. Dave's aunt sent us a big stack of random math books that his cousin had had (but not used). 3B was among them, but not 3A, so this is our first encounter. So right now he's learning a LOT about the metric system and doing "revisions" instead of reviews. He's getting more comfortable with word problems these days. The boy likes his math concrete, but the word problems are definitely good for him and his little brain.

Grammar: He is not a huge fan of Growing with Grammar. I wonder if we should have stuck with First Language Lessons. Oh well. After years of thinking about it, I finally ordered the Michael Clay Thompson Language Arts materials from Royal Fireworks Press. I got the whole level one package, so it's grammar, poetry, writing, vocabulary, and a practice book. I'm thinking we'll go through Grammar Island with the rest of this year and then start on the rest in the summer or fall. We read a few pages on Friday, and he seemed pretty interested. I really think language is his strong suit, and I very much want it to be interesting for him. We'll keep doing Growing with Grammar, though, and have the MCT stuff as a supplement.

Writing: I really like Writing With Ease. Ari secretly likes it, too, though he would never, ever admit it. He giggles regularly at the passages from the books, and he's torn through two of the books separately on his own lately (The Mouse and the Motorcycle and Pippi Longstocking). Next year I'm thinking I'll pick all his assigned reading from the books used in WWE and do a casual literature study with them.

Milo:
Math: Milo's still adding and subtracting. He says math is favorite subject.

Reading: I keep thinking Milo's going to suddenly take off with reading, but instead he keeps gradually getting better. That works, too :) ...He really likes the "Now I'm Reading" books, so I bought a bunch more from someone on the WTM boards. He was thrilled when they got here. He's reading level 2 on those, which is beginning and ending blends and funky vowel stuff (I'm not sure what the official term for funky vowel stuff is). And he's halfway or so through Explode the Code 2. I guess I need to hop on ordering Book 3 pretty soon.

Next year I'm confident he'll be ready for FLL 1 and for WWE 1...I checked the guidelines for WWE, and it said it can be started once he's reading 4 letter words and comfortable writing his letters...he's all of that now, but by fall he should be stronger with reading and finished with Handwriting Without Tears K. I'm excited about doing FLL with him; I think he'll like it.

Other stuff: we've gotten pretty lazy about history. I'm at the point in the year where I'm more excited about next year than this year. We're keeping up pretty well with the readings, but projects aren't getting done. Which is fine. We're reading about Lewis and Clark and reading Little House on the Prairie right now. I'm getting a little worried about finishing WP before summer. We may have to make some selective cuts to the reading.

And, really, I'm thinking we might need to reverse the amount of time spent on history vs. science around here, as the kids enjoy science so much more (but maybe they'll like history more next year with my hand selected books???) We learned about different kinds of energy in the Nebel book this week.

And now DH is back from an ALL day chess tournament (he coaches the chess club at his school), so I'm going to spend some quality time with him and try not to eat any more of the brownies the kids and I made today!