Homeschooling Update

The last month has been a quiet homeschooling month. We did make one field trip in October to the Texas Hill Country Olive Company. It was fabulous! The kids enjoyed it–especially the tasting. We learned a lot about olive trees and the process to make olive oil. The staff was very friendly and accommodating of all the children.

Otherwise, the children are trucking along in their academic year. One thing I really appreciate about homeschooling is the ability to move at the learning pace of the child. Fulton is almost done with 1st grade math and he’s a super whiz. Adam says he has my brains but I don’t think I could do what he’s doing at his age. He’s starting 4 digit addition this week and not even tripped up! He can add two 2-digit numbers in his head, no problem. Therese is also moving on to 3rd grade math next month. The RightStart Math curriculum has a very long Level C which is supposed to be 2nd grade; it took us a little over a year working through part of the summer. But I’m not concerned at all because Therese is doing great and she’s far more confident and happy with math than she was before we started RightStart. I think Baby G is going to be a math person. It seems that s/he is always kicking and moving around when I’m teaching those lessons.

Botany has been a lot of fun. I really enjoy the Apologia Science series. Today was the first day that we ran into a project that didn’t work. But we just move on. Going on walks has been so much more fun as we identify the flowers and now the leaves we’ve learned about. Therese is a superstar in science. Fulton is 5 and I have to remember that. The material is pretty dense and I have to remember that most kindergarten age kids, aren’t doing much more with plants than planting seeds or measuring the growth of seeds with non-standardized measuring tools. At least he remembers what cotyledons are. He’ll revisit it with Gianna and Cecilia later.

History and Catholic history have also been interesting. Between Therese’s history lessons and EPIC:  A Journey Through Church History, I must say that having a broader picture and the Catholic perspective on events has really given me much to think about. Learning about the context that the Saints became Saints and martyrs have died for Christ and His Church, have giving me a deeper respect for the holy men and women that have come before us. We’re one episode from the end of EPIC, but I’ll need to go back for some lessons with Therese. I hope we can do Fr. Robert Barron’s Catholicism next, but we shall see what the Holy Spirit guides us to do.

Oh and did I mention the recent fascination with Chess? All the kids except Cecilia are playing it. Fulton ran downstairs one day after his bath saying, “C-H-E-S-S, here I come!” It was so funny. He’s certainly better than me. I JUST learned how to play. It boggles my mind that he can just see all different kinds of plays. Thankfully Adam plays with him too.

Gianna is just itching to start school, but I can’t yet. I will probably start her reading in January when we start back up. She’s certainly ready. She knows all her letters and sounds and numbers.

Cecilia’s speech is coming along. She was recently re-evaluated because she met all her goals from July. She has been saying many more words and now we need her to say them legibly–like “Jesus” should sounds like “Jesus” and not like “tito” or “umbrelalala” just needs one ‘la’ at the end.It’s been a little rough having two speech appointments  during the week, but it’s worth the progress she has made. She LOVES the iPad. We put a couple of flashcard apps and a puzzle app called Tozzle. Speaking of which it is now time to tear her away from it and undergo the torture of the two year old tantrum.