Report Card

This week we are wrapping up our first semester home schooling. I am not planning on giving my 6 year old a report card by any stretch of the imagination; but I did think I would take a moment to evaluate how the semester went....

I was a bit nervous schooling Elijah - he's very strong-willed and stubborn; but he loves to learn (notice I did not say he loves to do his schoolwork!) Overall I would say it went way better than I thought it would. :)

We start each day with math.... mostly because the math curriculum we are using (Saxon 1) is totally manipulatives based and so the little boys can play with the manipulatives while I teach Elijah his lesson. I love the curriculum... he is learning a ton almost effortlessly and the manipulatives are great - they change each day, so it really works to keep the little boys occupied and gives Elijah something new to "play" with each day.

My one complaint with Saxon is the worksheets are a bit much.... he has to do 3-4 a day most days. Granted, he's doing the first grade program in kinder (the real kinder program is entirely manipulatives based with no writing whatsoever; I thought that was a bit too easy) So I've made him just do one worksheet a day and occasionally throw in an extra. He still seems to be getting the concepts well enough. His issue is it just takes him SO long to complete one little worksheet - he's so easily distracted. "Hey Mom, look at how I drew the dot on the 'i' in my name. It looks like a snowball. Hey, next time we go to America can we play in the snow? How come it doesn't snow here?" and so on and so on and so on.....

I don't have any pictures of his language arts curriculum, but we're doing Sing, Spell, Read, and Write. I really like it - very basic, easy; again, almost effortless to teach. There's lots of coloring and cutting and gluing each lesson, so Elijah likes that. He finished all the alphabet letters, which was a bit of a review for him; and then just finished the semester with learned CVC words for all the short vowels - so he can read about 50-100 little words. When I told him the other day he was doing such a great job reading, his response was "Mom, the words I read are just 3 letters and really easy. I can't read big kid words yet."

Elijah does his reading worksheets in the afternoon when the little boys are napping. Then I read with him from a chapter book - we're working through the Sonlight curriculum's "Read Aloud" book list for kinder. He LOVES it; definitely the best part of the day. We've read several really fun books, including 3 Boxcar Children books, a fun one called "My Father's Dragon" and are currently reading "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" :)

For social studies and science, we met with another family here in town who has two little boys Elijah and Caleb's ages. I taught social studies once a week; my friend Rachel taught science on the opposing weeks. We used Sonlight's K social studies program and the boys LOVED it. We covered ancient world history - a bit heavy sounding for kindergarten, but the books were great and each week we did a project covering the people we were studying; most of our lessons revolved around weapons and ships and warfare... you could say it was an "Intro to World Cultures for Little Boys Interested in Fighting" :)

Here the boys are wearing their Egyptian collars and eating their snack from a reed basket.

For Roman day we baked "Roman Bread Pudding" and ate laying down on pillows.

Rachel did a lesson on magnets and we got a Magic School Bus book on electricity, so Brant and the boys spent one evening making electrical experiments, which they thought was so cool.

Then we went and saw baby chicks.... the ex-pat doctor here in town is doing a chicken/egg social development project and had dozens of baby chicks in incubators in her living room. :) We were hoping to see them hatch out of their eggs, but it takes hours for one little chick to poke his way out of an egg.... not exactly a thriller for the little boys. :) They loved holding the baby chicks, especially Ezra.

Our other "class" we're doing is the national language class... I set up that all four little boys (mine and Rachel's) go to the big MK school once a week to learn language with the elementary foreign language teacher. The teacher is a young guy just out of college and he's really good... he definitely has his hands full with our four active little boys, but the boys are learning quite a bit - family terms, foods, animals, colors and numbers. It's fun to see them getting more comfortable using the language.

Final pic - at the MK school here in town, one of the high school classes put on a "costume ball" for the elementary classes back in November. They invited all the elementary aged kids - not just students at the school, so Elijah was THRILLED he was able to go..... He was a pirate - he and Brant worked together all morning before the party to make his sword - and he did not whack anyone with it at the party. :) It was his first "big kid" party, and I was a bit nervous how he would do just being dropped off, but he did great and loved it... they broke the kids up into groups by grade and Elijah knows all the other kindergartners, so he had a ton of fun. Plus, some of my students were his group leaders, so I told them to keep an eye for Elijah or they wouldn't pass my class. :) They played games in the gym then went to the MPR and watch short cartoons and had snacks. He had a blast. Caleb was so disappointed he wasn't allowed to go, but we explained that it was a privilege Elijah got for working so hard on his worksheets everyday and doing such a good job on school.

So, overall, was a great first semester. The other day Elijah turned to me while we were reading and said "Mom, I love school."