A long in coming update

Wow...I just realized I haven't posted in months. We have been doing our normal school stuff but since my last post (before BNL kids CD) we have stop running all over the world. We have become more "green" aware, I guess you would say. I don't think we have become more aware I think we just decided it was time to make it more of an issue in our lives. Anyways, we now stay around the Federal Way area most of the time and that is working pretty good.

J got his yearly test results last month and we found out that he tests at as if he is ending his 5th grade year in both english and math. We felt a bit disheartened at hearing this since he is only 7yrs old and "should be" just finishing the 1st grade. This really messed with my head since I had already planned out what we would be doing next year for schooling but now it seems it would be almost as big of a waste of time as this year was.

Don't get me wrong we did a lot this year and he learned a lot this year, but we purchased 2nd grade Calvert for him last year and he found it so easy it wasn't funny. I spend as much time if not more time "supplementing" him as I did when I wrote the curriulum myself.

I think we have decided what to do next year; we will be getting Calvert 4th grade for him and going from there. If need be we can decrease or increase how difficult the subjects are and it should be easier on me then having to scramble daily to find things to chalenge him on any level.

D is also a litte sponge; in short sessions the child learns major amounts. For example, he learned to spell his name in a 15 minute period....granted he only can reconize it if it is uppercase but he can tell you exactly how it is spelt if you ask him. I didn't really mean to teach this to him. I was reading that to help introduce children to letters to show them their names and go over the letters in it before the rest of the ABCs since those letters "mean" something to them. I couldn't believe how good it worked; since then he has learned most of his ABCs (he has been saying them for about 1.5 yrs but never could tell you what the letter was if you pointed at it...now he can for most of the ABCs).

D will be starting PreK at home in the fall while J starts the 4th grade and we will go from there. Right now we are doing "Summer School", it is very easy stuff but I wanted to do something beside sit around and mess off all summer. So far we have decided to do poster boards of Presidents, Countries, Letters, Numbers and we also do projects related to geography, music and science.

The poster boards are pretty cool but we might stop them and do the stuff in the Dangerous Book for Boys that they got for the holidays. It is a really cool book with lots of fun stuff in it like how to build a go cart or bow and arrow. Things the boys would love doing and more of a summer activity.

I think that is generally it besides general family life but I will update that on one of the other blogs.

Take care out there!