Our Week

Well, it's been a quiet week here in Niceville.  The boys and I have settled into our homeschooling routine quite nicely.  Very simply, we spend from 8am to 9am doing workbook activities (Phonics, Math, English, Handwriting, and Spelling).  Will just works until he gets bored.  As such, he finished up the first quarter of kindergarten phonics this past week unexpectedly.  As it is just letter identification and being able to recognize the sound of the letter at the beginning and ending of the word, this isn't really as impressive of an accomplishment as it sounds.  I am proud of how hard he is working.  One only has to watch the focus as he hold his pencil to see how seriously he takes his studies.  Up until a few weeks ago he would just grab it with a fist grip, but with the help of positive reinforcement and specially designed pencils, he is getting use to the correct form.  I am also very pleased with the math curriculum we are using for him.  It is the Singapore math program.  He will do page after page after page.   Again, it is all very basic at this point. Differential Equations are introduced in the second semester.  Currently he is completing the unit where they are asked to write the numbers up to 10 and be able to count that many objects.   But, the pages are not boring and he will go through up to 10 before declaring he is ready to move on to something else.  I think they suggest a page or two a day...so, yeah.   As most of you know me pretty well, you can imagine how my heart sang to hear him say:  "Math is my favorite subject!"

Will playing with his good friend from next door.  Eric snapped some pictures for Uncle Brian.

Dom is my star pupil.  Having him at the table makes it cool for Will to also sit at the table.  Heck, Molly even comes over wanting to know what she can do during school.  I am so impressed with Dom's handwriting.  It quickly paid off to make him re-do work that was not up to standards.  He rarely has to re-do anything now.  His workload increased a great deal this year, but he has handled the increase with very little complaint.  It probably helps that Will sits at the table nearly the whole time even if he technically finishes his day's work in a matter of minutes.  One of my big goals for Dom was to make him more independent in his work and he is doing very well with this.  Thus, I can give him a page or two to do and then proceed to wash up the breakfast dishes and wipe the counters before he needs my attention again.

This year, we also added History to Dom's courses.  This is technically a minor subject, but Dom loves it along with Geography.  We have a US History book that we read out of every other week and then supplement with books from the library.  Currently we are learning about the Aztecs which is pretty interesting.  Earlier we learned about Christopher Columbus and next we will cover the Pilgrims with a side story of St. Kateri Tekawitha.  Geography is basically an independent study.  He came out to the kitchen yesterday morning announcing he wanted to learn all about the world.  He proceeded to color picture after picture of various countries that also contained facts about the culture and history of the region.

Dom pulled the Barcelona Bella and Harry book to get a better picture of Spain's flag.  What a little researcher!

The rest of our days are filled with appointments in the morning, reading in the afternoon, and playing the rest of the time.  I wrote last week about the success of quiet time.  This week, the boys have started playing a game to finish out the hour.  The popular game this week was Zingo!  Molly can even play and it helps with her speech.  I was folding laundry and loved hearing the patient way that Dom taught Molly the game and than included her in the play.  I'd love to take credit for his virtuous ways, but I am pretty sure it is just in his nature and I have luckily not messed it up.  Speaking of not messing up, I have delegated the Religion classes to Eric.  He covers this subject Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as I finish up meal preparations.  I may delegate science experiments to him on the weekends as well, but we'll see how his evaluations are mid-quarter.

I love hearing them play together and hearing Molly's angel voice saying: "Oh, Alright, Dom!"

So, we had a really good week.  Nothing exciting, just that nice ordinariness that is too often underestimated.  Though, our children are clearly all above average.

PS Happy Hobbit Day!