End of the School Year

Our school year is almost at a close. This is a good thing since the baby will be coming soon. Looking back, we have accomplished a lot. I feel okay about taking the summer off.

Ellie (3rd grade, 8) :
*She started out with Saxon Math 54 with the DIVE CD (and got about 20-30 lessons into it). This did not work for her. She was really discouraged by its textbook layout. She didn't like all of the extra time it took her to write the problems out on her own piece of paper. Math has never been a subject that she enjoys, so I didn't want to discourage her further. We switched to Horizons 3 (Horizons seems to be about a year ahead of Saxon). She finished it this past week and is happy to be taking a break from Math! (Although I have to add that she IS good at it - she just doesn't like it!)
*She finished Easy Grammar Grades 3 AND 4 this year. Yeah Ellie!!
*She has been working on Spelling Power and is almost done with Level F.
*She has worked on her cursive handwriting.
*She has been working through Rosetta Stone French, but is losing interest. We have an old version of the program (and not the homeschoolers version). We don't have any accompanying text or workbooks as I believe they now have. While she has learned a lot, I think she definitely needs work on writing and forming sentences in French on her own. We may look into the new version 3 for next year. I am hoping that it may fill some of the gaps we have felt this year.
*Her writing has been intertwined with our history studies. We do "notebooking" and she makes pages for every event/famous person we come across. She also does various assignments using the "Writer's Express" writing handbooks depending on what we're studying.
*We are almost done with our history studies. This week we finished studying the Panama Canal, Teddy Roosevelt, and Hawaii. I'm hoping to at least get up through the Great Depression before the baby comes. I think that wherever we stop, we'll just call it good and start over in ancient times next year with Tapestry of Grace Year 1 Redesigned.
*We are also almost done with our Life Science studies. I did not use a packaged curriculum for this, but made up my own course of studies this year. We started out the school year with plants and we're now almost done studying animals. We're working our way through various mammals. *Her PE classes are coming to and end in the next few weeks. She has been in gymnastics, acting, lyrical dance, ballet, Highland dance (which I just love to watch!), jazz, tap, and at various times swimming and bowling. We've been busy!! It is amazing how much more tone the muscles are in her arms and legs since fall. I am very proud of her :)

Kate (Kindergarten, 6):
*She completed 2 math programs this year - Saxon Math 1 and Horizons Math 1. She LOVES math and it shows. It just seems like fun to her :) We will be moving on to Horizons 2 next year.
*She did Explode the Code books 1, 1 1/2, 2, 3, 3 1/2, 4 and is now finishing up book 4 1/2. Her reading and writing skills have improved so much this year. She has not enjoyed reading as much as Ellie did, but now that she is doing it with more fluency, it doesn't seem like such a chore to her. I think we will move on to Explode the Code 5 for next year.
*We have also worked through quite a few lessons in "First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind" She really enjoys the poetry memorization. I am thinking about coming up with a list of poetry to memorize for next year.
*She is at the same place in history and science as Ellie.
*We started out with Muzzy French for her, but we didn't enjoy this program. They liked watching the movie, but I didn't feel that they were actually learning much French from it. She sometimes works on some Rosetta Stone lessons,but we pretty much dropped French for this year. *Kate has been in gymnastics, pre-ballet, tap/jazz, and swimming. She has become more focused during her lessons and is getting better at listening to instructions and paying attention during class (she is my wiggle-worm!)

After our busy year, I think we're all ready for a break!