Friday, May 16, 2014

Mid-May Kid Update

   How is the fifth month half over already? It was January. I blinked. May. Never ceases to amaze me.

   No, we're not close to done with the school year. We take so many mid-year breaks that we school through the summer to make up for it. It will be so hot that they'll largely be trapped indoors anyway; it's already over 100F. There will be breaks for summer camps, water parks, and such. Of course. Some subjects will get dropped until fall. Some will get beefed up. Here's a kid by kid update.

   Faith - Kindergarten
       Faith has been restless and not too keen on lessons lately. I have her at least do math and read a picture book daily, and about twice a week I have her work on handwriting and spelling. That's pretty much it for Official Academics. My summer plan for her is to keep up this pace until fall. No reason to fix what isn't broken. :)

   Grace - Third Grade
       Grace has started coming around to enjoying science. Out of the blue she'll pipe up with a question like, "What do plants eat?" Rather than just telling her the answer we started a list of the things she wants to learn more about, and find books to read on those topics. After that particular question she read through the Childcraft volume on plants for her daily science block, and loved it! Since then she's read some Getting to Know Nature's Children volumes, and some Nature Readers from CLP.
       She's making steady progress in other subjects, though fractions rocked her boat a bit. She's thriving in Latin for Children and Writing and Rhetoric. Summer plan for this one is keep math, Latin, and writing daily, do a grammar intensive, and play on Duolingo Spanish.

   Honor - Fifth Grade
       Fractions were messing with his brain. I had him shelve Horizons and handed him the multiplication/division book in the Keys to Fractions series. That took about a week, and gave him a chance to just work on fractions without several other concepts wanting attention too. Then he went right back to Horizons, and his fractions were happy again.
       Science is where he likes to soar. When he starts asking questions I usually grab a middle school physical science textbook and go right to the index. This week I gave up there and started pulling out my high schooler's textbooks.There we found the hard details on velocity, and he was content. Today he wants to know WHY planet cores get so hot. I hope our middle school earth science text has an answer for him.
        Summer plan for this guy is working through all the Nova award work he can do at home, math, Latin, and church history.

   Teenagers will be in the next post.