Long time no blog.....

Umm, hello. Last year got away from me somehow. I can blame the second half of the year on the fact that we listed and sold our old house and moved into a new one (!), but I have no excuse for pre-January. Now the blogger interface looks completely different, it's been so long!

To sum up, last year was good and eventful. The school part went well. All the extracurricular stuff went well. We were very busy all the time. Then we decided we weren't quite busy enough, so we spent a lot of time fixing up our house to sell and then moving. Then I got pregnant. Then Dave changed jobs (well, same job, new school). Also, we're fostering dogs now.

See? This is Cocoa, our first foster dog. She's supposed to be leaving to go to her new home on Monday, though.

 So NOW I feel like we have enough going on.

So! New year in a new house. The new house is much closer to friends and activities, so we spend a lot less time in the car, and this is lovely. Milo's guitar lesson today is less than 5 minutes away. For example.

I feel like we're cruising along so nicely (last year and this year) with academic stuff. I'm happy with pretty much everything we're using; the kids are mostly working hard and not complaining (and not complaining, particularly for Ari, means actively enjoying....even if he'd never admit it). I will probably need to break the what-we're-doing-these-days summary into a few posts so that it doesn't get out of control. Let's give this a try....part 1: curriculum and scheduling. part 2: the new schoolroom! part 3: all the out of the house stuff.

Part 1, then!

Ari:
Math: Jacob's algebra, along with some Brain Pop and Khan Academy. This is going so nicely. He started it last year, after AOPS Pre-algebra proved a bit too frustrating for us. He's doing really well with it, and Dave is spending time a few times a week checking his work and going over things with him. Despite our kind of scattered math year last year, he did really well on the Explore last spring, especially in math and English (brag alert! 93% percentile in math compared to 8th graders taking the test, and he was in 5th grade)...so I guess we're doing okay in spite of ourselves.

Language Arts: a lot of stuff. He's maybe 2/3 of the way through Writing With Skill. We started MCT's Voyage level last year, but didn't get too far with it, so most of that is left for this year. I bought some back issues of Bravewriter's Boomerang from Homeschool Buyer's Co-op, so we're going through that and doing some writing assignments for literature studies. We have The Creative Writer, which we'll try to get to from time to time. He's taking a King Arthur literature class elsewhere. And I have a big ol' reading list for him to work through in all his spare time.

Milo:
Math: Singapore 3B and Beast Academy 3, along with Brain Pop and apps to finally memorize the multiplication tables. Still moving along. Still slow going. I'm hoping Beast Academy will spice things up a bit, and give him more of a chance to show off his relatively good conceptual skills and give him a break from his relatively agonizingly slow computation skills.

Language Arts: MCT's Town Level, Writing With Ease (we're halfway through level 3, and then we'll move on to 4), a daily language practice workbook that his ITBS scores suggested would be a good idea, Bravewriter's The Arrow, and lots of books.

August:
Math: Singapore 2A and lots of games and Brain Pop. Poor Gus' education depends more heavily on Brain Pop than I would like this year....but he has developed a fascination with and love for exponents as a result (he refuses to use Brain Pop, Jr.), so I guess it's not a total waste.

Language Arts: Writing With Ease (halfway or so through level 1 right now). We're trying KISS grammar, too, since he wants MORE. I'm trying giving him the same books as Milo this year and having him follow along with The Arrow, too. We'll see how that goes. He's not really any slower at reading than Milo, but his endurance is not nearly as good, so I'm not sure he can keep up. But Milo will probably usually finish the month's Arrow book in less than 2 weeks, so Gus can just keep going for the rest of the month while Milo moves on.

And then....

History: We're doing Story of the World 3. Last year we mostly just did lots of reading; I'd like to keep up with the mapwork and questions from the activity guide and even the occasional project this year. We'll see how that goes.

We're reading Bible stories and working on poetry memorization, too. There is bunches more, but I think the rest of it farmed out.

Maybe FOUR parts! Because I'm tired now and would like to postpone the talk of how we schedule all of this stuff for another time.