Musings.

We're currently on a break - we're studying Christmas and the winter solstice.  But once again, Monkey surprised me.  This evening, as I was setting dinner on the table, he was sitting in his bean bag chair with a lapful of Dr Seuss books.  I couldn't hear well enough to make out what he was saying as he flipped through them, but I do believe that he was actually reading those books to himself.  Part of confirming that suspicion is that he read the title for "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish," when he would usually say "white fish green fish red fish blue fish," and the rest was that the instant he saw me looking, he dropped the books and ran off to play with his trains.

How very interesting.  Looks like he's more ahead than I thought in reading as well as math.  Should be a fun second semester!

End of week 22.

Well, it wasn't as great a week as I could have hoped for - we came home from Hammie's just in time to get sick.  So, in the end, we didn't get all five days done, but only four.  Still not too bad.

Monkey is now essentially a reluctant reader.  If he wants to read something, he can.  If he doesn't want to, he suddenly finds out that he "can't."  Always entertaining.

Next week we will finish up Right Start Level A, so it's a good time for a bit of a break.  We'll finish that, and then simply move along with a unit study on winter Solstice and Christmas.  It is shaping up to be quite a well-timed season, and I like that.

Really, there isn't a lot new to report, so it could be a lot worse, no matter what we didn't cover this week.

Week 22

We're back from a break, and ready to go again!

It's been a long time since we've had school time, which I think is part of why this has been The Week of Crazy so far.  We cancelled school on our last Tuesday for an emergency dental visit for Monkey. On Wednesday, Monkey had a molar extracted, and I had a cyst removed from my back. On Friday, we went off to visit Hammie and Buppa.  We got back on this past Monday, and I had a Rheumatology appointment on Tuesday, Wednesday/Thursday is our usual weekend, and then... off we went!

Raz-Kids is still doing well for us for Reading.  Monkey enjoys it, but again, we're trying to get back in the swing.  He's progressed from the beginning of level aa to the middle of level A, which is fantastic, and we did some work with word families ( -ab and -ack, -ag and -ail specifically) as well.  There's more work to be done this week, but that's okay, we're moving at a good clip.

Monkey plowed through three Math lessons yesterday.  I only gave him one lesson today, largely because I'm lazy and didn't want to clean up after weighing to then bring out water to measure volume.  But, volume will come tomorrow, and we'll find octagons and tessellating, quarters, fractions, shapes (like cones and prisms)... and he's done with level A.  Holy COW!  I expect that will be next week, and we'll start level B right behind it.

Logic was an interesting time today.  Monkey was doing relationships, which he usually is very good at, and in his primary grouping were grapes, a ring, an orange, and a peppermint.  He somehow arrived at the conclusion that these things were all food, and crossed out everything but the smiling face (which resembles the smile cookie at our local coffee/donut stop).  For the flaw in the logic, it worked well, but it was still not right, and he's still insisting you can eat a ring, so there's nothing to be done there.

In other news (not taking into account the subjects we haven't done yet), I just nabbed an amazing deal.  The homeschool co-op occasionally has people listing the things that they're getting rid of - today I scored the Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedias of World History, Science and World Geography (with world atlas) for $30.  As in, $30 got me all three.  If I'd gotten the new books as I'd planned, I'd have spent $75 plus tax and shipping.  I'm THRILLED.  All in all, it's a good week, which is a nice shift for a first week back after two weeks off.