Looking Back at the First Six Weeks

If you are reading this post we are on our Sabbath week break. That means we've finished the first 6 weeks of the school year. We will take a week to rest, store away papers for our portfolios, and change out the books on the shelves to reflect the topics of the next 6 weeks of school. I thought this would be a good time to look back and evaluate how our first six weeks have gone. There are so many ways to do this. I could talk about how each child's work has gone or their progress toward their big goals for the school year. How our schedule has worked. If we got through the books I planned or if we changed any curriculum plans.

Books we've read as individuals or together for school during this 6 weeks (not counting reading for fun):

• Across Five Aprils
• Indian Captive
• The Sign of the Beaver
• Paddle to the Sea
• Stonewall
• Tuesdays at the Castle
• Henry and the Chalk Dragon
• If You Lived with the Sioux Indians
• If You Lived with the Iroquois
• If You Lived with the Hopi
• If You Lived with the Cherokee
• If You Lived with the Indians of the Northwest Coast
• The Indian Book (Childcraft annual)
• The International Space Station
• Mission to Mars
• Floating in Space
• Glow in the Dark Constellations
• What the Moon is Like
• Zoo in the Sky
• Once Upon a Starry Night
• Meet the Planets
• Beyond the Solar System
• Earthquake
• If You Lived at the Time of the Great San Francisco Earthquake
• Sections of several books on bald eagles
• There was also a host of picture books read to Mason and the younger boys. I didn't keep a list because we tend to read 4-6 at a time and repeat some over and over. 

Let's hit some highlights for each child. We'll start with the youngest school age.

Mason - He is working on his fine motor control and getting started with handwriting. He adores Handwriting Without Tears. He likes working on beginning reading with All About Reading level 1. He is using a lot of math manipulatives, has a cutting book he likes, and an Usborne first coloring book he works on a little bit each week. He likes being read to and would say science is his favorite. He loved the eclipse and enjoys all things space right now.

Caleb - He is trotting right along in Math U See Alpha and doing well with subtraction. He likes the drawing part of Draw Write Now but isn't up for the four lines of copywork. We made a deal that he could work up to it. This 6 weeks he's doing 1 line of copywork. The next 6 weeks he will do 2 lines, and so on. He enjoys All About Reading and is making steady progress. He likes science more than history.

Oliver - He has been doing great with beginning multiplication. He likes Draw Write Now but would be happy to skip the copywork portion. He does it anyway and has taken to using his drawings as the front and back cover of his binder, so he's proud of his work. All About Reading level 3 is going great. He liked learning about the different Native American tribes and how their homes/food/clothes/live were similar or different from each other and from us. He likes science too.

Daniel - His introduction to Fix It Grammar has been great! He's getting grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and copywork in one swoop. He completed two writing projects this 6 weeks. The first was his letter box, where he sent and received letters for several weeks. The second was an animal report on bald eagles that he researched and wrote. Math has been easy going, he's picking up fractions well. He adores science and is always asking for more. He has enjoyed his history reading.

Emma - She has had a good first 6 weeks with no math meltdowns in PreAlgebra. She has really loved her big writing project because she could create any creatures/cultures/histories she wanted for each island in her imaginary island chain - including artwork of them. She doesn't mind Fix It Grammar. She has liked her history reading and our science topics but has burned out a bit on space, so I know she'll be happy when we move on for the next 6 weeks to a new area of science.

Joseph - He has been my steady worker as usual. He just plows through the school work so he can move on with his day. He's doing okay with PreAlgebra and Fix It Grammar. He liked the book he chose for history, liked science, and liked the topic he chose for writing (Great San Francisco Earthquake) while not really enjoying the writing process. You win some, you lose some!

Makayla - Her first 6 weeks has had it's bumps. She is doing fine in each subject but doesn't necessarily want to do each one. Chemistry has had some interesting hands on things and we both like Discovering Design with Chemistry by Jay Wile. I'm not sure if she likes Latin Alive or just tolerates it, but we do it together and that is fun. She has kept true to form with Writing Fiction In High School and stayed as independent as possible, not wanting me to participate in the writing lessons. I'm fine with that. History reading has been good. She did say she doesn't like one of the books she's reading for the Civil War (Across Five Aprils) but I reminded her that we don't have to like every book we read to learn from it, so it is good practice for college.

The biggest problem subject has been math. The Math U See Algebra 2 lessons seem to have a TON of parts in a single lesson. They all build on each other but in past books this would have been done over several lessons. Makayla and I are not fans of this compression. We have decided that our brains have a limit of how many new math things we can cram into them each week, so we're slowing these extra full lessons down and taking longer than a week. We'll just plan for Algebra 2 to last more than a single school year. Better to slow down and learn it well than to rush ahead half-understood just to maintain some artificial schedule. #perksofhomeschooling

Other Thoughts

Overall our first six weeks has been great. We've done a later start time and while I still don't love it, it works really well for some of the kids. The kids who prefer getting started earlier just go ahead and do that.

We are all getting better at remembering that mommy can only help so many people at one time. Kids are noticing more often if I'm already busy with a sibling and just moving on to other independent work instead of interrupting. I'm remembering to ask if anyone needs me when I finish helping one child.

We really haven't done a morning basket this 6 weeks. I've added things in to our days a bit more free-form while we really focused on getting a handle on the main subjects. For the next 6 weeks I will be trying to put one or two morning basket type items into each day. We're going to study a Shakespeare play in the coming six weeks as well.