Behind again!

Yes, I skipped a few weeks.  We went to Disneyland, you see.  It's true, we didn't go to Disneyland for an entire month (though that might have been fun), but I get kind of thrown off by big trips and upsets to my routine.  I am much like a toddler that way.  Anyway.  Disneyland was fun!  To prove I have been documenting our lives somewhere, here is a link to my trip report (almost finished!) on the Disboards:

Disneyland 2009

We're just over a quarter of the way through our school year (well, with some luck. We may spill into the summer a bit, and that is okay.  That's my mantra: and that is okay), so I thought I'd do a catch-up/where we are right now kind of post.

Ari:
Ari's just about halfway through Singapore 4A....he just finished up a section on fractions, and is doing a review now.  He's been working through the Life of Fred fractions book with his Dad at night, so the fractions section of Singpore was really easy for him.  I'm having him drill multiplications facts for 5 minutes or so every day as a warm-up, and I think he'll finally get those down soon.

We're STILL almost finished with Writing With Ease 2.  We tend to forget about it some days, which I think is a problem with how I have the morning scheduled....I try to come back to it after he does all his independent work and I'm finished with Milo and Gus, but by then my mind's often on lunch and the afternoon already.  I think we need to start doing it first thing.  Narrations are coming easier to him; I'm having him do them in other subjects a couple of times a week, and I think he actually does better writing them out than doing them orally with me.  Of course, on his own, he does things like write Harry Potter fan fiction, so I'm not overly worried about his writing, despite his mental block when it comes to narration.  He's chugging along with First Language Lessons 4--no problems there.

He just finished reading the 5th Harry Potter book.  I think he's going to take a break before tackling the 6th one, which means we'll spend a lot of time trying to find something he likes to read at bedtime. For school time reading, he's just started Turn Homeward, Hannalee.

Ari's moving slowly but steadily through Lively Latin.  He's in Lesson 3.  I don't really care if we take a couple of years to get through the first book there--I'm just trying to have him do 20 minutes or so, 3 times a week.  I need to catch up with him and learn the chants!

Milo:
Milo's on lesson 34, I think, of Right Start Math, so pretty much where we need to be.  He's enjoying it a lot and it's pretty clearly working well for him.  I'm glad we did it!  I might get level A for Gus and go ahead and start him on that after Christmas, as I think he'd enjoy it.

Reading is coming along.  He's about 2/3 of the way through Explode the Code 3, and he's doing it on his own pretty easily, if with some careless errors.  He's reading Mouse Soup aloud to me right now.  We're moving through First Language Lessons and Writing with Ease at a decent pace, too.  I'm amazed at how much his handwriting has improved this year!

All together:
We finished up the Civil War a couple of weeks ago (and topped it off with a weekend hike up Kennesaw Mountain, after I forced them to sit through the (boring, I admit it) movie at the visitor's center) and are now doing some reading about pioneers and westward expansion and all that.  I'll have to update the sidebar with our history reading. 

We're working through Real Science Odyssey, and are still on the human body.  Ari and Milo are also taking a science class at our homeschool co-op, so that takes a bit of pressure off of me.

Other stuff:
Odyssey of the Mind kind of imploded, so we're not doing that anymore this year. This is too bad, but it does free up my Mondays, so that's a nice side effect.

And I'll end with that....I've been putting off updating forever, because it felt overwhelming.  I'm hoping that now that the catch-up post is finished, I'll be able to handle weekly updating again!