This Week at Our House #32 #33 #34

 

We started school. We've done school and nothing more. It's time consuming, so this blog has been neglected. 

After three weeks, here's my report:

Adam is in the 10th grade. He gets everything right except for math. He struggled with math for the first two weeks, after that he seemed to 'get it'.  He did well on his test. 

Rachel is in the 9th grade. She's doing reasonably well with everything. She pretty much doesn't like to do any of it, and she's slow about it. 

Anya is in the 7th grade. She does her work. She complains a little and cries a lot. She gets her work done in a timely manner. She gets embarrassed when she gets something wrong. Her writing is good and interesting. Her drawing is really, really good. 

Joseph is in 7th grade too. I have had him a year a head since his second year of homeschool. He rushes through things. He's a fast reader and a fast writer. While Joseph is generally interested in things, he acts like he doesn't like school. 

Joshua is in the 4th grade. Josh is reading on level, though slow, so that is good. I can tell when he does not pay attention to what he is reading because he struggles through every word. If he pays attention to his reading, then he reads smoothly. His tracking is still troubled, though. We work through that by using book marks. Josh does well with math. He doesn't need me to read things for him in his workbooks anymore. 

Arwen is in the 3rd grade and an excellent reader. She's smart and picking things up quickly. She loves language arts and learning hard words and big words. She doesn't like memorizing math facts, but she's finally remembering them. 

Susan is in the first grade. For the most part, she likes doing her school work. After three weeks, I would say that she is coming along nicely with reading. But, we'll see. She doesn't really get how to sound words out yet, but she does memorize words and passages with ease. At first, I thought her curriculum was going to be too hard. I slowed down with her and that made a big difference. She's doing well with math. Kate saw her adding on her fingers while just laying around talking to herself. 

Samuel loves to learn and demands learning time. He's doing starfall and counting and tracing. He already knows some of the alphabet, and a few numbers. He counts to 5 by himself and 10 with help. Sam likes the structure of school. He keeps his school things neat and organized. He also spends a lot of time looking at books. He's a very curious 3 year old. 

Gideon, also known as gettingin, takes the busy lesson time and reseatches every nook and cranny, drawer and shelf. He particularly likes electrical and computer related devices as well as tools and coins. 

On the whole, I think we've had a good start to the school year. 

Ruth has almost finished putting the children's book that she and I have been doing together. She is in the process of getting the cover to work. She has put it up on amazon to see the preview and is working through the changes. 

I am going to start a book of children's poetry next, and get Kate to illustrate it. Ruth is working on the illustrations for a Christmas story, the birth of Christ children's book that I wrote and will need to edit and clean it up. I am working with 16 other poets from around the world to get a poetry book printed together. Our deadline is going to be in September, so I think we'll have it out in October. I need to get thinking about cover design and construction. 

Kate and Johnny definitely keep busy. 

My garden is producing. I have a large watermelon sitting on the bar from my garden now and many more still ripening. I have new plants planted and many things all the way harvested, like the butternut squash. The tomato bush is aging, but I have several offshoots from that plant now producing fruit. I have basil growing in 3 different places and peppermint in two different places. The parsley and oregano are doing well, but the lavender, thyme, and rosemary didn't make it through the summer's heat. Cucumbers, acorn squash, and split peas are young plants and should harvest in October. Deer have been into my watermelon and cantaloupe patches. They've eaten two cantaloupes and four or five watermelon, beside trampling down a lot of the melon leaves. I look forward to the young hens and ducks laying eggs.