2 weeks done!

It's been 2 weeks since we've started our new school year.

Days completed - 9

Good things

D is finally doing well with WWE1 - We have stopped and started this program several times due to his difficulty and frustration with answering the comprehension questions. He has finally matured to the point where he can listen and remember the story even if it isn't something he liked. We are on week 20 so hopefully half way through the year we can make the switch over to WWE 2

We are making progress in Science and History despite the horrible library we have here. Using programs the rely on a large number of living books is very hard when you have a poorly stocked library. I am looking forward to being back home in a few months and back to our wonderful library system.

We started Latin with a few tears, but now he is looking forward to it and we have a goal of surprising his Sunday school teacher with him saying the Our Father in Latin one day.

Everything else is moving right along.

The Bad Things

It's nearly impossible to keep a 7 y.o attention on his work while his siblings are running around the house!

The little boys have decided that anytime I sit down at the kitchen table with D is a perfect time to find trouble. This generally means that Little E is putting things in the toilet and R is flooding the bathroom playing in the sink. It doesn't seem to matter what activities I pull out they won't play with it unless I'm right there with them. On good days they will play with a new bin of toys for about 30 minutes alone before they start trying to destroy the house.

Oh the whining and meltdowns about writing! D thinks that having to write more than a few words at any given time is the end of the world. I scribe for him a lot but he was writing more at the beginning of the year last year than he is now. Working on using those hand muscles and writing more on his own. I think we are going to have to go back to having daily handwriting practice on top of the 3 days of copying in WWE.

Highlights of the weeks

- D started riding his bike without training wheels!

- S took a reading test with Daddy (she won't read for me) and tested at an upper 1st grade level. She has some beginning chapter books that she "reads" to herself in bed at night. I'm starting to think that she reads a lot more of them than we realized. She has the patience to go word by word, line by line reading what she can. She comes out of her room every morning happy that she read one more chapter. We are going to push hard on OPGTR with her until we get to a lesson that she starts to have trouble.

- S likes to come up to me and tell me random math facts that she has figured out. We are working our way through Singapore Essentials B and I think I will have to add in Miquon Orange here soon.

- I managed to bribe the kids with fireworks and ice cream on the 4th of July to get a picture of all 4 of them together