Back to {Home}School

Christmas break is over and we are sllloooooowwwwwlyy getting back to our regular routine.  I thought I'd give a little update about where we're at and how things are going.

I'm glad I did a lot of planning before the break because it seems that I can't get myself into gear just yet!  We have settled into a comfortable and fairly easy routine that is not difficult for me to plan or prepare, and that has helped immensely.

We are finishing up Level 1 of Matthew's reading curriculum (All About Reading) and I have to say we LOVE it!  The lessons were pretty short, very manageable for us, and the teacher's manual is fantastic.  There was some prep work, but not too much.  There were games that Matthew always enjoyed and it came with three books that helped him to build confidence as he was learning to read.  He often asks to read from these books and seems to really enjoy them.  I would definitely describe him as a reader now!  He can pick up any easy-to-read picture book and read it with very little help.  It is amazing to see!

We are taking a little break from reading lessons but continuing to work on fluency and vocab as we read every day.  Matthew is building a caterpillar by reading books (for every book he reads we add a circle to his caterpillar) and when he gets to 20 he will get to pick out a new book (his idea when we talked about what would be a good reward).  So far he is at 9 and he is very excited to read us books every day!  I'm hoping to order All About Reading Level 2 sometime in February and then we will continue on with that.

Matthew is starting to like coloring and drawing more (he has never been one to pick this as an activity if given the choice).  Last week for our Five in a Row curriculum (which we already really enjoy, by the way!) we read the book, "The Story About Ping", which was a book about a duck on a river in China.  We learned more about ducks, and one day used our "Draw, Write, Now" book to learn to draw a duck.  This was Matthew's drawing:

I had the poem typed up already, and Matthew read it to me (he needed help with the words "specially" and "bottoms") and then drew the duck.  I thought he did a great job!

We have a lot of fun with school most of the time, although we certainly have our days.  Matthew loves math, does NOT love learning to write (we're going slowly and he's doing a good job for his age), enjoys coloring, really likes reading and being read to, and is generally pretty cooperative.  We have our "bad attitude" days for sure, but they don't usually last very long.  I love homeschooling and we are thinking and praying about next year and what we will do.  So many decisions!!!