Homeschooling

School went really well today. We are in our 4th week of homeschooling. Wow have we already been going that many weeks! Gosh time flies when you are having fun....well....fun a lot of the time....pulling my hair out the other part. Ha ha. We are getting adjusted for sure. And today was one of those days that I'm starting to see the fruit of it all.

It's amazing to me how quickly the boys memorize scripture....and some of it long scripture. Even Dallas being only 4 1/2 stays right there with Boston (6 1/2). Sometimes when I think only Boston is listening and Dallas is just playing around next to us he totally surprises me and asks if he can recite it. And he does! And he's SOOOO proud of himself, and mommy is even prouder of him. (this weeks verse is Proverbs 20:11 "Even a child is known by his actions by whether is conduct is pure and right.")

For Phonics we are using Rocket Phonics and today I really got to see the advantages of this program. Boston is a Kinesthetic learner and the man who wrote this program is a Kinesthetic learner and has done extensive studying on it. We do a lot of hands on stuff and games. Today I was so proud of him for his reading and how excited he was to do it. For the first time he wanted to do ANOTHER page instead of just being glad he was done.

We are also supplementing with Explore the Code. (He used this in school last year and is very familiar with it....along with the fact that Susan Wise Bauer recommends it in her book The Well Trained Mind.) He is on book 1 1/2 right now. A lot of the time (even last year) Boston gets VERY frustrated with reading and sounding out and blending. Today was the first time he didn't complain at all. And on just one page he had about 10 sentences to read and comprehend. I was so proud of him and the excitement he showed when he read it. Mom was beaming! And he was even more excited that he got a sticker to put on the page. (funny how far a sticker goes with kids.) Then on the next page he had to look at the picture, figure out what it was and write that word. He got all of them right (about 8 of them.) Wow. It was just great to see how far he's come!

For math we are using Right Start Mathematics...and I'll talk more about that another day. But today we supplemented with Kids Sudoku for Dummies. I haven't done much Sudoku but I thought this would be a good thinking, mind game for him. We started out with a 4x4 puzzle and he did great. We will keep doing these and see how it goes.

More to come later.....