Thursday, May 3, 2012

End of 1st grade :)

Wow, I can't believe we are finally here. It is May 3, 2012 and we have 8 days left till the end of our school year. Of course we never stop learning here, but we can say that the kids are officially in 2nd grade and kindergarten! I am so proud of all they have accomplished.
We also have another little guy we have added to our family. I guess it is time to update some pics too since the baby in my picture is still Brianna and she just turned 2!
Well, after focusing on the 3 R's for a while since I had a rough end of my pregnancy, we headed back to using Sonlight with both the kids.
Noah is in week 21 of Core B and I do really love this core. We have learned so much this year in history. Since he is in the younger end of the core I don't mind if we let it stretch a little either. We can finish it up next year. We have been studying about the early people of Macedonia, Egypt and just finished up Greece. I think we are going to stop here with the core and spend a few weeks doing some FIAR just for fun. FIAR is lighter and I can do it with both kids. I had purchased Volume 1 a while ago because I thought I could use it for both kids, but Kayla is just getting to the point where she can do school without being too much of a distraction. We just started with Madeline this week. It is neat because their Mimi was born in France so we got to learn a little about where she comes from. I probably will continue to take a week off here and there from Sonlight and insert a week of rowing :) It is kinda refreshing because I am bad at getting through things.
Noah is finishing up Singapore 1B and has really enjoyed this. I am so happy that we have found a good fit with math for him. We have been through MUS, Horizons, Miquon and finally came to Singapore. It has just the right amount of work for him and he retention is really well so he doesn't need to do a million practice questions.
Mikayla is about half way through the first book of Horizons K. I think I might switch her back to Singapore after this book. I kinda like Horizons K because it gives the kids a good amount of practice with the numbers 0-100 where Singapore doesn't have them practice so much with the higher numbers :)
LA has been going well. I have used 3 different programs this year...ok a little overkill. We started with Sonlight, but it was too much for ds since it was 2nd grade work and he just isn't ready for that much writing yet. We have slowly been picking it back up though the last few weeks. We are on week 8 of it now and he is doing well. He did actually finish the grade 2 readers before January so we have added in some readers from Rod and Staff and CLE grade 2 readers and some library books :)
We did actually switch to FLL and WWE. He hated WWE so we just did a little handwriting and FLL. He loved the memory work in FLL, but the grammar was getting to me. I finally switched over to Shurley English and actually feel like we are learning more. The jingles are great and I actually feel like he is progressing nicely. I plan on either continuing with Shurley or giving Rod & Staff English a try since I have heard so many good things about it.
Kayla is also doing nicely in Sonlight LA K. She is at about week 16 in that and I will probably keep her going through until we hit a road block :)
Science K with Sonlight we finally finished too! I started using it with Noah in January of his kindergarten year so I am happy we are done with that. We also are about to finish AAS. I love AAS and I have learned so much through it too. I am a bad speller so I don't mind spending a little extra in this department since it helps me too :)
Well, I think that is all for today since the natives are getting restless :)

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