Matthew's Writing a Song

Yesterday I had a rare opportunity to sit in on Matthew's guitar lesson without any of the other children.  This afforded me the luxury of taking some videos of the lesson itself.  This was my particular favorite:

His teacher has started getting him to write his own song.  Matthew had picked out 4 chords last lesson (a few weeks ago with illness interfering) and this was their first chance to talk them out.  It went from what you see here to this in just 30min:

There need to be at least 4 parts to the song and this is only the first but I'm thrilled with how it's coming along!

57 days in...Where are we now?

I have to say, I always envision this blog as somewhere I will come daily to describe in loving detail what I did with my children each day and what they learned from it.

Then reality comes crashing in with the lack of time because I'm busy DOING that stuff with my kids and how boring so much of the day to day stuff is.  I want to do more fun experiments and crafty stuff with them but so often, life gets in the way of it and we are dealing with that and trying to get the basic stuff in.  It does get done and there are lots of good times but it's not what I like to envision.

So instead of focusing on what I haven't been doing with them, I want to focus on what we have been doing and where the kids are at.

We have continued to hit KSW fairly regularly.  Or at least Mark and I have and have had good luck getting Jon and Nick to go.  The older two, less luck there.  Chris seems burned out and Matt seems to spend a good portion of his life lately injured or too sick to go.

I took Jon and Nick to Mori Point for a habitat restoration day 2wks ago and we have another one scheduled for tomorrow.  They love going and being outdoors and helping.  We try to volunteer at least once a month and because their clay class is nearby, I get to walk over with Nick 1-2xs a month as well just to check it out.  We walked by yesterday and he saw the patch where we had been clearing ice plant back in May and was thrilled with how it had stayed clear of that and how the new plants were thriving there.  I was thrilled that it had made such an impact on him that he remembered quite clearly that area and what we had done.

Nicholas is doing fabulous when it comes to school stuff.  He moved into the 2nd grade math with no problems and when he's focused blazes through each lesson.  When he's not focused...well...not so much.  LOL  His reading has gotten to the point where he will try to read absolutely every word he sees and there is no trying to spell around him anymore.  I'm thrilled with how easy it seems to be for him after watching Jon struggle because of his speech issues and I'm glad that it hasn't been that way for him.

Jon continues to be at once the easiest one to work with and the hardest.  If I'm working with him, he works hard and wants very much to please me but on the tasks I assign him to do independently, if it's not one he likes, amazing how it doesn't get done.  Most things involving writing would fall into this category.  His resource specialist and I have been working hard on this with him.  It all really boils down to a mental block he developed when handwriting was such a struggle for him.  Handwriting was hard therefore writing was hard.  I'm really thrilled at the progress he has made in this.  A year ago, getting him to write 5 sentences would take a full hour.  He's now able to make a nice paragraph with topic sentence, concluding sentence, and 3 supporting sentences in 12min.  His new goal is to do it in 10min and even he says that he can do that.  A year ago, he would completely freak out at the thought of having to write a multi-paragraph essay.  We've worked on that, breaking it down and having him write the main body of the essay as three separate blog entries and then we put those together and have him just write the introductory and concluding paragraphs.  The first time I tried that with him, he still freaked out but now he's realized that he can do this and it's not hard.  Again, I'm amazed at how far he has come.  And it's not just in writing.  He's become a reader now and while he's a little slow, his speed is picking up and even better, he's loving to read and will pull out his reading book when bored.  LOVING this!  I truly think that enjoying a good book is one of the greatest gifts a parent can give a child.  This has also made math much easier as he was getting board with Aleks and having problems with their lack of decent explanations so we've moved him to Art of Problem Solving.  It's a much more advanced style of math and it's reading intensive.  We had problems with Saxon because of the amount of reading it entailed but we discussed how this system worked and he got to look through Matthew's Algebra book and he agreed to go for it.  Unfortunately, this curriculum doesn't start until Pre-Algebra but never fear, MathWhiz can pass that pre-test.  So yeah, he's in 5th grade and doing Pre-Algebra.  I figure it means we can take it as slow as he needs to in order to get it and keep it fun.

Matthew is finally getting to the point where he can work mostly independently and I can trust that most of the work is getting done.  Switching the math seems to have helped a bit and we've cut down in a few other places because he was overloaded.  We may still cut back further still, but we'll see.  He wants to take college classes next year and those won't be a walk in the park so part of me wants to help prepare him for what he'll be dealing with but only as far as it helps and not hinders.  Still trying to find that line as he wants so much to do it all and doesn't say when it's too much or too hard or boring or whatever.  I have to figure that out once things have started going sideways with him.  The fun thing is figuring him out but once you do, all this amazing creativity comes forth and you just have to get out of the way for it.  He doesn't like research papers and chapter summaries and book reports or things of that ilk but tell him to write an imaginative story or personal narrative or even poems where he has complete creative control and it's fantastic what you end up with.

Chris has found some teachers that he has really clicked with this semester and it's been fantastic.  He's got an A in his math at mid-terms and a B- in his English class.  We are still struggling with his thinking ahead and following up on things but when things are immediately in his face, he is doing well.  Slowly but surely tho, I think we are seeing progress.  I'm saddened that his English teacher doesn't teach at the actual college level (English 100 and above) but he has already been kind enough to give Chris a list of other English professors at the college he believes he would do well with.  Definitely a big plus!  Now if can just finish things up for his read class from the spring semester, he'll be almost 1/2 way through with credits needed for his AS and over that by the time he graduates high school!  It's when I think about things like that that I realize just how far he's come and how well he really is doing.

So there's the catch-up on what the kids are doing.  I need to post some of the photos soon of their various activities too but that's for another night.

Another IEP done

So I now have 2 kids with IEPs.  I'm still a little miffed that they waited until almost the last freaking day they had to have this meeting and I had to call to get things moving and then get told "Oh, he was next on my list".  Um, yeah, whatever.  The other issue is that when I originally asked for testing, I asked for a full evaluation as I was concerned about his handwriting and figured let's just do the whole thing and be done with it and the school psychologist played games and said point blank that she refused to sign-off on it.  After going round and round with her for 2 freaking hours I gave up and rescinded the request.  Then at the meeting, they ask point blank about his gross and fine motor skills and I bring it up and then tell me to write in requesting an evaluation of that if I want them to look at it!  Really?!?!  These people make me nuts!

Ok, but the good news is that Nicholas starts speech next week as his intelligibility in spontaneous speech is at about the level of a 3yr old (which we already knew).  The school official running the meeting was in such a hurry that she rushed everything but since I was prepared for it, I asked about ESY (extended school year) services.  Of course, standard practice is to deny it especially for a first IEP and before he's had his first session (knew that but figured I'd start that ball rolling now).  Then the educational advocate I always bring along spoke up and talked about his diagnosis and what the standard procedure for apraxic kids is which is they get ESY because of severe regression.  The speech therapist was asked for her opinion and she said she would be able to better tell after Winter Break but that yes, apraxic kids typically do need ESY.  The school backed down at that time and set it up.  Score points for them not wanting to argue with us over that.

Now I need to figure out if/when I'm going to deal with getting Nick assessed for OT for his handwriting.  Which of course means sending in more letters, filling out more paperwork, setting up more testing, and then going to another IEP for him.  Basically getting to do everything I already did for him for the speech all over again.  Or why the heck I wanted to just do it all at once.  Ugh!

Ch...ch...ch...changes!

Yep, we are a month in and the problems are starting to crop up as things get in place.  The biggest problem...Matthew and Saxon math.  Christopher did great with it.  It comes highly recommended.  Matthew did great in pre-algebra with it.  We have now been at Algebra 1 for over a year and he's failing miserably.  He won't ask for help, he won't check his work, and he leaves it for last every day in the hopes that he won't get to it.

That is what we call classic Matthew avoidance or "I HATE this crap!" in passive aggressive behavior.

After trying a few different tacts, it was decided that it was time to try something new.  It's going to be hard because he's in the middle of the curriculum so we will have to try and figure out where he fits into the new curriculum but it should be worth it.  We are borrowing the Art of Problem Solving from Ian which is where we get all the good curriculum for Matthew.  There learning style is so similar that if it has the Ian stamp of approval, it's almost a guarantee that Matthew will do well with it.  There are no tests with it until the end so I'm having him do selected problems from each chapters review section until we find areas where he doesn't understand stuff or just needs more practice.  Hoping we can get at least half way in before he has to start doing full lessons.  It's a pretty advanced curriculum tho so we'll see.  The other nice thing is that there are corresponding online courses for a reasonable price taught by the people who wrote the texts and free online help even without enrolling.  Really nice.  And it goes through calculus so we have time before we have to use the JC for his math.

While looking through his other problems, its apparent that while he wants to do all of the courses, it's an overload so we looked at some ways to tone things down a touch to make it easier for him to get everything done.  *crossing fingers* we've got things set-up better for him now.

In other changes, Jonathan will be starting US History this week.  We had to wait for Matthew to get through the first book in the series so Jonathan could start it and that's now done.  Jon will be going slower through it so there wont' be any more problems with them sharing.  Now I just need to find time to do all the work with him. Always with the needing more time.  *sigh*

And the last big change is that I had to pull out the 3rd box in Hooked on Phonics for Nicholas!  He has completed the 2nd box and chomping at the bit for the next one.  He is doing great with his reading and really enjoying it.  He's starting to try and read all over the place and people are amazed when they realize he just read something to them.  He was at clay class this week (need to post more pictures of that) and picking out his glaze color.  He pointed to one on the top shelf and Margaret picked the one next to it.  He told her "Not that one, the Hot one".  She looked confused for a moment but then looked and realized that the one next to where she was pointing was Hot Tamale.  He couldn't read the second word but he was able to get his point across.  Totally amazed her!  She just looked at me and said "He read that?!"  Um, yep.  He's been able to read that for about 6mos now.

So here's hoping things go smoothly for a bit now.  I know we'll end up tweaking things further, it always happens but maybe we can get a month out of these current changes before needing the next batch.  LOL

The First Month

So it's officially been a month since the start of this school year.  Activities are continuing to trickle in, we have all our curriculum, and are starting to get into a groove.

So where are we:

Chris has settled into his schedule at school.  He LOVES his Math and English teachers.  He has been getting the math teacher to post homework assignments in advance so he can work on them early because he is finding them easy at this point.  He has gotten nothing less than a 90% on his quizzes and the teacher was even giving out extra credit questions on one that were designed specifically for him.  Talk about awesomeness!  He has just turned in his first major paper, a movie review, in his English class.  I really like that the teacher took time to see his beginning work and give feedback and then has the kids bring in several copies of a rough draft a week before the final draft is due to get feedback from him and other students.  Great way of helping them!  I'm excited to see how he did on this one and how he does in this class a teacher that, at this point, seems so supportive. I mean hey, this guy was bringing up old Schoolhouse Rock songs in class which when he couldn't remember them totally, Chris helped him out with and then he went and found it on You Tube and played it for the class.  You can't get much cooler than that!

Matthew is still struggling to balance everything.  His Civics class first couple of assignments consisted of three 2-3 page essays.  Instead of talking to me about it, he kind of let it slide out of view.  It didn't take long for me to catch on to it so we discussed it and came up with the workable solution of a good paragraph for each part of each question the was supposed to write an essay on so it comes out to about 1page per question rather than 2-3 which made it more manageable with everything else he has going on.  Of course, as we are working through that, he gets sick again and is in bed for several days unable to even read so now we are behind schedule on things yet again.  Some things can sort of get caught up but some things can't.  Going to have to have a discussion with him on how to handle it going forward.

Jonathan is continuing to excel at what he loves and balk like a stubborn mule at anything he has gotten into his brain as being "too hard".  This definitely includes writing.  I think because the mechanical process of writing was so hard for him for so long that he just remembers it being hard and has now decided that the entire process is super difficult and he can't do it.  His resource specialist and I keep plugging away at this but it's hard as it ultimately has to be something that he realizes.  Until that time, we just keep trying.  Now if only we could figure out someway to keep him from forgetting everything everywhere as he left his swimsuit at swim class 2wks ago and his backpack with his science materials at clay class last week.  Ugh!

Nicholas is just excelling at everything right now and is actually the easiest of all the kids to deal with (such a change from all other areas of his life).  He has the attitude of "This is easy so let's get it done quickly so I can go play" which is what I've always told the kids.  He reminds me of what hasn't gotten done and is quick to pull it out.  He is reading well and almost through box 2 of Hooked on Phonice (1st grade level).  He loves his math and blazes through that each day and is starting to read most of the ordinal numbers phonetically which is amazing to me. He's already figured out that when he's sounding something out if it sounds off but familiar that it's likely this other word he knows.  His memory is also incredible.  We've been doing these animal worksheets as part of his science and after one reading he can generally answer the questions and I just underline the part so he can copy it down on the sheet.  He remembers a lot of the details from his Five in a Row books as well and we can go to the library and he'll see a previous Five in a Row book and tell me about it (and usually insist that we check it out again).  I remember what a struggle all these things were for Jon so it's a relief and a joy that Nick has such an easy time of it.

Ups and Downs

The Ups:
Chris got a perfect score on his last math quiz and actually had someone wanting him to tutor them.  Considering he's already getting to the point where he needs some help at home, I suggested a study group idea instead but still, it did his confidence good which is priceless.

Jonathan and Nicholas got all their schoolwork done in a timely fashion today which was so nice.  Nicholas even read "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you hear?" and "Spot goes to the Farm" to me today with only a little help on the words that don't sound out easily.

The Downs:
Notice who I didn't mention in the first section?  Yeah, Matthew.  I started going through his work today and found that a lot of it just isn't done.  *sigh*  Yep, apparently we are back to that.  We discussed it and I gave in on a few points but then also showed him what absolutely had to get done.  He didn't get to go to KSW again tonight because he needed to stay home as he has a ton of work to do to get caught up again.  Here's hoping he's figured out I'm on top of it right now and these things will get caught within a week and he just starts getting it done.

Tuesday = Activities!

 Tuesday is seriously our busiest day for activities right now.  Not a lot of book schooling goes on although

 

 we do what we can along the way.

Our day looks a lot like this....

First Jon & Nico have swim lessons.  It's first thing in the morning so they get a nice wake-up for the day....

 Cause hey, who doesn't wake up well after climbing into a 90F pool to do some laps and have some fun with friends...

 Today Nicholas started clay class right after swim.  It's his first time working with clay and it was absolutely precious to watch.

Here he is just getting a chance to work with clay and the different texturing tools...

 This is his first project.  They are making fish to hang on the wall, working on learning to score the clay, cut out the shapes you want, and play with textures.








Their teacher is really hands-on and so great about offering lots of praise and encouragement.

They had some extra time at the end so she had them practice working on making coil people for next week's project.

And I missed most of Jon and Matt's clay class because I was walking on the beach with Nick (need to get pictures of that but here is one I managed to get of Matthew at the end of class just before his bowl was taken off the wheel...

After all that, we come home and collapse.....

Until soccer practice for Nicholas in the evening.

A Couple of Big Deals & Week 3 wrap-up

Chris ~ Got his first math test back this week and got 9/10 correct.  Woohoo!  He's enjoying the math class and actually went so far as to ask the teacher to put up assignments ahead of time so if he has time, he can work slightly ahead if he understands the material.  He's also got what looks to be a really good fit for his English class.  He had that paper due the first couple of days of class and then the teacher met with all the students this week to go over the papers.  Lots of constructive criticism where he marked out the points he really liked and thought were good and asked questions where things were unclear.  No nitpicking things.  I'm sure that will come but they are also addressing a lot of that in the class as well.  He does things like have you bring in rough drafts to go over with your peers a week before the final draft is due and you can get appointments with him in the writing lab to make sure you are on the right track with what he wants.  What a blessing after his last attempt at this class.  I think it was his English teacher that showed up at his Competitive Gamers Club meeting this week as well.  Really think this is going to be a great semester for him!


Nico ~ Started the second half of the orange Hooked on Phonics workbook.  Couldn't believe it when I showed him the sound cards for it and he sailed right through figuring them out.  They were all beginning blends and he had no problem and started in on the words.  He's been sailing through all the concepts I've introduced so far in his math as well and when we do his animal worksheets, he has no problem answering questions afterward.  He just continues to blow me away with how quickly he picks things up.

Matthew ~ Is continuing to plug along and is keeping up with all his courses so far.  We have a bit of discussion to do but so far I'm keeping up on grading his papers as well.

Jonathan ~ is working hard most of the time.  Our biggest hurdle right now are his own mental blocks where he is asked to do something that he has decided is too hard.  Mostly this pertains to writing and I think stems from the time when handwriting was so difficult for him that he hated the physical process of writing and while we've dealt with that, he now just has a block about writing anything.  His resource specialist and I are doing what we can to help him get over this but it's hard.  Otherwise, he's been doing well and I'm happy to see that his spelling is improving at least in his lessons.  Unfortunately, since he is still working his way through the first book, there haven't been enough words to really make a difference in his writing.  *sigh*  We continue to work on it tho.

This coming week is going to be fun as Nick's soccer starts up and clay class for Matt, Jon, and Nick starts as well.  All of it on Tuesday.  Ugh!

Week 2 recap

Had our first meeting of the year with our ES.  Matthew now has his Civics and Physical Science books and the 8th grade grammar for once he's done with 7th grade.  Jonathan also now has his 5th grade science so this will be the first week for both of them having all their courses.  Yay!

Nick is loving the Horizons Math and continues to generally be very easy to work with.  He'll generally sit down and just knock everything out quickly and if we are home or somewhere he can in the morning, he'll be done by lunch.  What's more amazing is that I had Matthew help me a bit with him this week so instead of doing Hooked on Phonics, Matthew had him read Hop on Pop aloud.  He did it!  Even words like Constantinople and Timbuktu!  So proud of my little guy.

We are still trying to figure out a good writing program for Jon.  He's working with a resource specialist to try and bring his writing skills up to grade level but it's a struggle.  They are going back to basics again with subject and predicate.  *sigh*  I wish this stuff wasn't so hard for him.  Looking into different things right now and there may be some back and forth between therapy and home which is fine...so long as I can find a few more hours to work on it with him since he absolutely loathes writing so it's always a struggle to get him to do it.

Matthew is plugging away.  He's complaining about LotR and how can it possibly take 3 chapters for them to get from one end of the shire to the other.  "All they do is walk!!!" I frequently hear wailed from the other room.  I get to laugh.  It's good for him tho.  He can't always have his way with the main character being attacked and stabbed in the first chapter.  Poor guy.

Chris has been doing well in his math course.  Got his first quiz back today with a 9/10 which is great.  He does his homework online and gets immediate feedback on if it's correct or not so he can retry it if it's wrong so that's wonderful for him.  Still haven't heard how he did on his first paper in the English class.  He's currently doing the research for the next paper which is a movie review on Deep Blue Sea.  Need to talk to him about getting a plan together on when to have each step completed by.

In all tho, the school year is going well so far.  I can only hope it continues this well as we go forward.  We still have a few activities left to add in so we'll see how that shapes things as we go.

2nd week in progress

 Yesterday was super busy with running around but we did manage to get almost all schoolwork accomplished.  Today was only a touch less busy so I asked Matt to help out a bit with Nick.

Yeah, he's a big help.  LOL

 A few days ago I had promised little chef that we would make cookies.  We were given the Trader Joe's sugar cookie mix for Christmas so he pulled that out and prepared it on Sunday so today I kept my promise and we working on culinary skills like flouring a board and rolling pin and how to get the right thickness of dough.

 And of course, the mechanics of the cookie cutters that can produce such cool Star Wars characters. LOL

 Such concentration...I can only wish he was like this with his regular schoolwork.

But thankfully, these two can actually sometimes settle down and get it done.  Gives me hope for all of them.

End of Week 1, Only 34 more to go

Here we are at the end of the 1st week of the 2011-12 school year.  Here's a recap:

Chris ~ Was looking pretty dicey for him getting into all the classes he wanted at CSM but as of today he is enrolled in all 3 for a total of 10units.  He has already completed his first math assignment and has his first 4page essay due on Monday.  He also still has to complete the accounting work for me from last school year.  Ugh!

Matt ~ Still trying to finish up a few classes from last year and behind for the week as he got nothing done while housesitting and then exhausted from housesitting thus killing two days of the school week.  He's working hard to try and get things done but he'll be working this weekend to catch it up.

Jon ~ Got most things done.  Completed 5th Grade math in Aleks and has been bumped up to 6th.  Missed spelling 2 days this week so he'll be doing it this weekend.  Also didn't get any Prairie Primer in so we'll have to figure out why that's not happening and remedy that.

Nick ~ Progressing nicely with everything.  Even did a page in his animal workbook today on caribou.  We found Italy on a map and learned a couple of words in Italian and some great new vocabulary words.  He's been eager to get to work and get everything done as quickly as possible most days which helps a lot.  Here's hoping that it continues!

Things are coming together

Had Jon's OT do a quick evaluation of Nicholas to see if we need to really push for a full evaluation at this point.  Thankfully she said that he's age appropriate and while there are a few things, it's nothing we would get services for.  She gave me a few things to do with him, some thicker pencils to help improve his grip, and will check again in a few months to see how he's progressing.

Started Horizons Math with Nicholas this afternoon.  He was using the new pencils and apparently they are doing the job as after half a lesson he was complaining of his hand hurting.  That was the bad news.  The good news was that he needed only a little help, mostly on ordinals that he couldn't sound out and the whole concept of the crossword puzzle since he'd never done one before.

In other good news, Chris did manage to get into the English class.  The bad news on that, he has a 3-4 page essay due on Monday.  Yes, the one that is coming up.  Thankfully it's on what he perceives as his strengths and weaknesses so it sounds like the teacher is trying to get an idea of where the students are at.  It still means that I get to try and find time to help with some revision this weekend.

Could have been better news

Chris started back at CSM today for the fall semester.  He was waitlisted for three classes.  He got into his Body Conditioning class with no problems.  He looks good for getting into the Intermediate Algebra class and will find out for sure on Friday.  English is a problem tho.  The instructor said that the class is full and no waitlisted students are getting in.  He advised them to go be pitiful to the Lang Arts department in hopes of getting a new class going and try back again tomorrow to see if he scared any students away today.  Chris will be trying the second option first but I may tell him to try the first if the second doesn't work.  I do have some English stuff I can do with him here but it's a major pain as it puts us in a bad position for next semester. Not awful, but not where we were hoping to be.  Not sure if there is any way for him to get into any other classes at this point either.  If things don't work out tomorrow, I may have to look into that option.

Not much of a 2nd day

Tuesdays are going to be one of those days were very little book learning happens.  By the time we get up to speed on all the activities, J&N will be in activities from 8:45a-3p straight.  Makes it kind of hard.  We aren't there yet but had other stuff fill in for it today.

So school looked something like this:

• Get J&N ready for swim, wake other kids up
• Leave Matt to do history reading before he went to housesit and Chris to work on accounting while I take J&N to swim
• Finish up with swim, go to grocery store and realize I don't have the coupons I need. Run other misc errands instead
• Drop J off at speech and take N to library to renew library cards and put a hold on some books for N's Five in a Row
• Come home to get lunch and help C find accounting error. J did some typing practice and reading.
• Drop C at dentist and take J&N to do grocery shopping. Taught them about economics (ie. You get this cereal because it's on sale and with coupons it's only $.99 whereas that cereal you are asking for is not on sale and I don't have coupons so it's $4.59 which I'm not paying).
• Teach kids about time management when I have C walk to the grocery store from dentist as that saves me having to drive to library to pick him up there when we have other places to go from grocery store.

After that, it was gaming over at a friend's house which consisted mostly of me learning I read the last campaign wrong and gave them way too many big creatures to go up against which is why 2 of them died.  *shrug*  They came back to life and now they are dealing with the consequences of my actions.  That's what we call a valuable life lesson.

2011-12 First Day of School

First day of the new school and we got off to a pretty rockin' start.  I had a doctor's appointment at 11a so I did what I could with Nicholas before leaving so he just had some workbook stuff to do while I was gone which Mark was on hand to supervise.  We started the morning with Five in a Row at his request (Clown of God this week) and then Hooked on Phonics while playing Mille Bourne.  What a way to combine Math and Reading!  As you can see, he's working hard and super proud of himself!

 Jonathan got all of his school work done nice and early as well except for spelling which I did with him when I got home.  He's almost done with his 5th grade Math and took great delight in telling me this when he got home.

 Matthew stayed in his room much of the day but claims to have gotten everything done.  I still need to grade his grammar test and catch-up to him on his history reading so we can discuss that.  Just need to find more hours in my day to do that.

 School doesn't technically start for Christopher until Wednesday when he goes back to CSM but he has yet to complete the Accounting course he took from me last school year despite my constant hounding so he's paying for that now.  Don't mess with the mama boy!

And here is what happens when you sneak into the teens' room to try and take pictures of them working...  Funny faces and books being thrown at you.

I think we are set!

I think we are set for the start of our new school year tomorrow.  I had a basic plan back in May and started prepping towards that.  We are still awaiting delivery of a few courses but we have almost everything.  Chris is enrolled at CSM although he is waitlisted for all his classes.  It will be a few weeks before all the activities start up which is just fine with me since once those do, it's truly insanity.

So here is what the boys are taking...

Chris 

• Intermediate Algebra (5units, 8th on waitlist)
• English 848 (4units, 19th on waitlist)
• Body Conditioning (1unit, 3rd on waitlist).  

Not many classes but still, at 10units in college, it's a decent load.  We want to focus this semester on getting his non-fiction essay writing up to a college level.


Matthew

• Algebra 2 (Saxon, this will happen after he finishes up Alegebra 1 in about a month)
• Saxon Grammer 7th/8th grade (again, needs to finish the previous before we head up)
• Lord of the Rings unit study (full year-long course studying the books and what went into writing them)
• Oak Meadow Civics (waiting for curriculum to start)
• US History using Story of US by Joy Hakim
• Oak Meadow Physical Science (waiting for curriculum to start)
• Accounting (LifePacs study units)

We'll see how things go as he is taking a lot of classes this year.  If it proves to be too much, I may pull back on the Accounting and save it for next year.  

Jonathan 

• Aleks Math (he is almost done with 5th grade and will be starting 6th grade probably within the month)
• Winston Grammar
• Editor-in-Chief Beginner (4th grade level but I want him to finish before moving on)
• Word Roots Beginner (4th grade level but I want him to finish before moving on)
• Prairie Primer (still working our way through this since we are not using it to cover everything)
• US History using Story of US by Joy Hakim (he'll be going slower than Matt as it's a two year course but Matt started it back in 5th grade so he'll be doing more review where Jon will be going slower since he has time to)
• Macmillian 5th Grade CA Science (I think this is physical science as well)

Jon has some other things like typing practice and critical thinking that are not necessarily curriculum based but help him in areas he struggles in.  

Nicholas 

• Hooked on Phonics (he is currently on the Level 2 box)
• Explode the Code (Book 2 currently)
• Horizons Grade 2 Math
• Handwriting Without Tears
• Five in a Row (almost done with volume 1)
• Various other workbooks from Bright Minds, Kumon, and Costco

Really just focusing on reading good books to him and helping him work on his reading skills.  He's doing well and has started working on blends on already which I think is great.  His math is very advanced so we'll take it easy there and slow down if necessary.  The program looks good tho, lots of review, bright and colorful, brings core concepts back every so often to keep them fresh.

So that is what we will be studying this year.  Well, that and all their extracurricular classes which I'll post more about later.  

2011-12 School Year....It's a big one!

Wow....2yrs has sort of flown by!  Not quite sure where it's gone but I'm pretty sure it was spent chasing and/or chauffeuring children places.  That seems to encompass much of my time on any given day.

This year marks some major milestones for us here.  Nicholas, my last baby, is starting Kindergarten this year.  Jonathan will be in 5th grade and Matthew in 8th.  Christopher, my first baby, is a high school senior.  This will be his second year doing primarily college classes at our local Jr. College but it doesn't change this fact.

I have a child graduating Kindergarten, Elementary, Jr. High, and High School....all this year.  No, I didn't plan it but you can believe we are going to be throwing one huge party come June!