New Year

We started off the new year with new maths. I gave J the option of going ahead to the grade 2 stuff or just skipping math and doing other things for the rest of the year, just learning math through our day to day activities. He chose the grade 2 maths, so I ordered them and he's enjoying them, so far. Of course, I've skipped alot. We've had four or five lessons, but we're on lesson 20 in the book. Saxon starts the year with lots of review, I guess. I'm hoping we get to the meaty stuff pretty soon. I don't want him to lose interest again.

We're finishing up the Phoenicians in history. I've loved learning about them and J has, too. We're reading an adaptation of Virgil's Aeneid since Dido features prominently and she was the mythical founder of Carthage, a Phoenician settlement that became a huge merchant port city. We'll do a couple activities in the next week and finish up our extra reading.

We're studying birds for our life science and papa built J a birdfeeder right off of the rear living room windows so that we can watch and keep a list of birds who visit. It's a big platform feeder that spans the window. I want to get some window tinting so that we don't frighten the birds and so the boys can get close up views. We've finished classifying them and now J's reading books from the library on songbirds, birds of prey, tropical birds, big birds (ostriches, etc), waterfoul, arctic birds, etc. I also print out coloring pages for whatever animal we're studying and often read to him while he's coloring. After we've read a book (either him, on his own, or one I've read to him), I try to take a narration, but it's dodgy. He usually either balks, in which case we don't do it, or else he goes on and on and on, describing details from the book verbatim (which, incidentally, is why I think he balks sometimes; because they often take so long to describe and write down). We should be finished with birds by Friday and ready to move on to big cats (lions, tigers, etc), our first mammals! After the big cats we do bears and then we're done with animal study, ready to move on to The Human Body (ody, ody). I've been watching too much Bill Nye.

J still hasn't regained an interest in Latin, but I do see him occasionally thumbing through the books we have. I'm sure he'll let me know if he wants any help and/or structure with it.

We're about 3/4 of the way through first grade grammar, and I don't think he's learned anything new, yet. It's good review and lays things out more formally and with more detail than I usually do when I answer his questions off-the-cuff, so I think it's good. The activities are fun enough to keep him engaged and he likes doing them, so we'll finish, probably by his birthday at the end of February.

We haven't been doing any formal spelling since he finished the 2nd grade book. We've just been keeping a list of the words he misspells in his everyday writing and words that he asks me how to spell. That's been working well.

We haven't been doing copy work since the end of December. We use poetry as copywork and then he memorizes the poems as he goes. Since Christmas, though, we've been reviewing all of the poems he's learned so far and solidifying those in his mind, and copywork has fallen by the wayside. He's been writing, though. Yesterday he made a birthday card for LDM, his godfather, whose birthday is this week. He's written 5 thank-you notes from Christmas, and he works on his little stories and descriptions for the pictures he draws. So he's getting his writing practice in, but informally, which is fine (better than fine!).

In addition to his history and science reading, we're reading Bedknobs and Broomsticks and the Chronicles of Narnia to one another for fun. We usually read B & B during the day and then CoN at night before bed. I'm enjoying them, too, as I don't think I've read either of them before.

I'm wanting to start a weekly art study using this book, which looks wonderful. I've flipped through it over and over again, but keep wondering if I can keep my cool while trying to teach three crazy boys (it's not something the little ones would leave J and I alone with). I may make the plunge soon. I also want to start doing some music study and daily yoga, but I may be pushing it, there.

We shall see.