Reading Good Stuff

Well, we finished My Father's Dragon in 24 hours. We both loved it, and last night we went to the library and got the sequel, as well as the second Boxcar Children book and a few stories about Moses and Exodus. We need to sit down and work on catching up with the children's encyclopedia- we're behind on social studies. So far though, it's been really fun to just READ. I had such a good time last night showing here where the information desk was and coaching her to ask for help, and finding the books on the shelves. I really wish that we could go to the library during the day where it would be obvious we were homeschooling and there wouldn't be a billion kids there. Maybe someday.

We're already on chapter 4 of Elmer and the Dragon. I'm so glad she loves to be read to- I love to do it!

We're Back!

We started My Father's Dragon tonight as a bedtime story. I read three chapters and she begged me to read more. She's in love with it. She asked me to wake her up extra early tomorrow so we could start school before breakfast. I believe she wants to do some dragon art- he's described as having yellow and blue stripes with a long tail, and red on his horns and the bottoms of his feet, and gold wings. It'll be interesting to see what she comes up with.

I'm ready to be back. Having a week off was really nice, but I think we both are missing the time together and the reading.

Fall Break

When I got the Sonlight box, one of the recommendations was to sit down with the calendar at the beginning of the year and plan out when you were going to be on vacation. It's a 36 week school year, but I don't think we're going to take the whole summer off. She likes school too much for that. So I scheduled a week off after every six weeks. This week is fall break. It's been really nice. She still asks to do some things, so we're keeping up with her favorites- Bible and math. But I'm letting her decide what we do, because she's on vacation. It's nice to give ourselves that luxury and not feel guilty about being behind. It's on the calendar that we're taking a break and has been since we started school. I'm so glad I did that, because it's been quite a change to get used to doing school every day and I was ready for a break even if she wasn't.

See, THIS Is Why I Picked Sonlight!

I had two emails in my inbox this morning- one was from Sarita Holzmann, who is one of the founders of Sonlight and sends out a weekly thing with tips and tricks to make school go more smoothly. I'll be honest and say I just started actually reading them last week, and I really wish I had started from the beginning. We haven't been doing an animal scrapbook and I'm going to go back and make one. Lots of other neat ideas in there too. It's a great resource that I hadn't been taking advantage of properly.

The other email was a notification that my last post had a comment from some guy named Luke. About three people read this blog, so I was curious. And it was Luke Holzmann, Sarita's son, who is now grownup and works for Sonlight and was sorry we are bored with the book and had even more ideas for us.

Thank you guys! This totally makes me want to get back on track and work harder to like the book and implement more of the strategies and all that stuff. Maid Marian was really excited about the comment from Luke after I told her who he was. WOW MOMMY! He reads the blog about my school? OH MY GOODNESS!!

He's right. Sonlight is not just a company that sells you books and leaves you hanging out there. We have felt all along like these people actually care whether or not school goes well for us, and that makes me so grateful.

What Week Is This?...

I want to keep posting for the accountability, but there hasn't been anything terribly exciting to say. I suppose that's life, so here's a recap....

The book we started reading after we finished The Boxcar Children is The Apple and the Arrow and I find it excruciatingly boring so far. It's hard to keep her attention- I think it's pretty far above kindergarten comprehension level. Amazon.com says ages 9-12. Hmm. Sonlight always says to tailor the curriculum to suit your family, but I feel guilty just throwing something out, and I'm not sure what to put in its place. Right now we're avoiding it and working on other things. She says she wants to learn all about dinosaurs, and I don't really have anything to give her for that, so maybe we'll go to the library this week and get some books that are more interesting.

Officially it's week 6. We're in week 7 for math, right on schedule for Bible and language, and a bit behind in poetry. We've been doing lots of Bible stuff lately- they're memorizing the books of the Old Testament in her Sunday school class and I think she only knows up to Judges so far, but she's supposed to know through Psalms. :) For me she's memorized Romans 3:23, Acts 16:31, Colossians 3:20, and Matthew 7:12 so far. We're using Sing the Word from A-Z (music in the link, watch out!) and she'll be learning 26 verses throughout the year, one for each letter of the alphabet. They're fun. Typing this I was singing in my head, "Colossians 3, verse 20, obey obey, Colossians 3, verse 20, obey obey, Colossians 3, verse 20, obey obey, for this pleases the Lord!" I like the way they include the address in the song. We have Steve Green's Hide 'Em in Your Heart, and she knows a lot of those verses but he doesn't work the reference into the song so she never learned where they're found in the Bible. This is better for that. We're both learning.

Robin Hood is making good progress on his animals and colors. Right now he's obsessed with rabbits. He likes to throw them at people and then look at me innocently and say, "HOP!" Like, this is what rabbits do, mom, don't get on my case!

Story Elaboration

Today the language book gave us a very short and boring story and Maid dictated some more details to me. We talked about how to ask questions and to give information that makes the story more interesting to people that are listening. (and that when Daddy asks her today how was school, she should remember elaboration and say something other than "good.")

Here's the original story:

Luke swam. Luke won.

Questions it suggested I ask her to include: How did he swim? When? How many other kids were in the race? What did he win? How did he feel?

Here's her elaboration:

Luke swam in a swimming pool on October 29 and he had one thousand kids with him swimming. He was very short, but he was the fastest of everybody! He won candy in a silver cup, and also a gold medal. He felt glad and happy and then he went home. The End.

Not too bad for a first attempt. Some of my sixth graders didn't get that many details on the first try. :)

Week 4

We're settling into a kind of routine, I guess, but on the other hand it feels like every day is different. Officially we're still in week 3, because we haven't done everything it called for us to do, but we're also half way through week 4 in some things, and in week 6 for math. As long as we're getting work done every day I feel good about our progress.

Somebody gave us a copy of the kindergarten science program, which I hadn't ordered, and Maid Marian is really excited about it. Most of it deals with nature and trees and the way God made the world, which is right up her alley. It looks like it's going to have a unit on simple machines though, and some other stuff that it will be good for her to know. We went on a nature walk last night and picked up a bunch of leaves, and then brought them back and looked them up in the field guide we got from the library. She's having a good time.

We've finished The Boxcar Children and are going to be starting part of James Herriot's kids' stories next. The math is getting a bit more challenging- she's learning to count by tens and do simple addition problems properly. It's still pretty easy for her, but she does have to think about it now.

So, off to do some reading while she does copywork. If you'd like her to write you a letter, tell her! She's getting good at writing and loves sending out mail.