No, it’s not Christmas I’m referring to. This is the most wonderful time of the year. This is the time of year when we are obviously nearing the end of our many books we’ve been working on all year. I love it. At the beginning of the school year, there is a sense of excitement as we bring out our new books we are going to study from. The end of the school year brings us the satisfaction of a job well done.
This year we have been reading the Uncle Eric Series (my 14 and 15 year olds and myself). They have been very interesting. They have sparked some considerable debate. Richard Maybury (Uncle Eric) has introduced us to the "rest of the story" so to speak. He has definitely given us many things to think about.
My 11 year old and I have read through Apologia’s Exploring Creation With Zoology. It is a study of the flying creatures from the 5th day of Creation. We really enjoyed the easy going pace of this book. There are lots of activities to do in the book, but being the laid back home schooler that I am, we chose not to do many of them. Besides, we were involved in a co-op that had a great nature class. I left all the exciting dirty work to them. The Zoology book has great pictures and a conversational style of writing that makes it feel like you’ve got Mrs. Fulbright right in the room with you.
Our biggest struggle this year has been with math. We use Saxon and are happy with the program. We’ve just had some unavoidable interruptions during this last half of the year that caused a few problems with math.
This year, my 15 year old has working independently in Advanced Math. That always scares me a little when they work independently. Not because I don’t think they can do it, but I’m not keeping up with them and then when/if they have a question, I can’t answer it. Thankfully, he hasn’t ad any problems.
My 14 year old has been working in Algebra 1. Math is not his strong point, but he’s not bad at it either. He got about half way through the book (well, maybe 1/3 of the way through) and started making 70s consistently. I let it go a while think he would finally get out of his slump, but he didn’t. We decided to do some remedial math with him for a while. We’ll start back in Algebra 1 at the beginning of next year and give him another shot. Sometime, they just aren’t ready for it yet. I think he’ll do fine next year.
My 11 year old is working in Saxon 7/6. He does fine with it, we just got behind. We’re doing about 8 lessons a week right here at the end. I think we’ll get finished with most of the book. We’ll start in 8/7 next year.
Jonathan has been learning to read this year (he is now 6). We are using Reading Made Easy by Valerie Bendt. This is the first year I’ve used this phonics program. It has been a good choice. It has no bells and whistles. It is not in color. There are no cute little readers. When I first started home schooling I thought everything needed to be fun and exciting. Reading Made Easy is simple, and down to earth. it’s purpose is to teach reading. Jonathan has learned that very well. We are about half way through with the book. He was a little slow catching on, but now we’re doing a lesson a day and he thinks it’s great fun. He likes to pick books off his shelf and read them. That to me is success in reading.
We’ve done a lot of reading aloud together this year. We’ve almost finished reading through the New Testament twice. We read 1 Peter this morning. We should have it done by the time we’re through with school. We’ve also read: King Arthur and The Knights of the Round Table, we started A Tale of Two Cities and didn’t finish it, we’re reading Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. I know we’ve read others, but I can’t think of them right now. I really need to keep better records.
Our biggest project this year was the string orchestra. We had 16 kids involved. Three of my kids were in it. One accompanied us on the piano., another learned to play the viola and the last learned to play the cello. It has been lots of fun. We had a concert Monday. I hope to have pictures and music for you to hear in the next few days.
Back to my original thought. It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. School is about through and we can look forward to the many plans we have for the summer. Of course, learning isn’t about to come to an end, just what we call school around here. Learning is a never ending process for the whole family. I hope you have all had a great year.
