Happy New Year!

Wow, what happened to 2010? New year, time to evaluate where we stand. I plan to go back and journal some of the steps we took to get to this point, but as of now we are homeschooling all 3 kids. I now work from home 2 weeks at a time with 1 week in the office and can help out more than previously. We are still fumbling a bit with our flow, but after evaluating this first half of our year, we are actually doing very well!

MATH
Roman had already more than met the requirements for math grade 5 prior to starting this school year and so we have taken it slow with no formal math so far this year. He occasionally works out of the Life with Fred series, various worksheets, and mostly has been helping to teach the girls their math basics in theory also strengthening his own foundation. His math facts are doing so much better. Guess it's true, you learn more from teaching than being taught! He will start ALEKS online again this month.

Bethany is not using any formal math program. We are taking a mastery approach and working on the basics to build a strong foundation in math. She is doing remarkably well and at this point has completed all 1st grade topics and will be moving into 2nd grade math this month.

Hope was originally going to start ALEKS math this year with Roman, but upon evaluating her math skills we found them to be lacking. It is by far her weakest subject. Because of this we have gone back to the basics and are working her and Bethany largely together with mastering math skills. We are seeing improvements and are optimistic that she will be on track and ready to begin ALEKS next fall. She is also beginning Daily Math Practice (Evan -Moor Grade 3) for extra practice for the remainder of this school year.

LANGUAGE ARTS
Hope excels in this area. Her language arts skills overall are above grade level, with exception to spelling. She is a phonetic speller. We are beginning Spelling Power for both her and Roman this second half of the year.

Roman doesn't exactly struggle in language arts, but he doesn't excel in it either. We are re-evaluating this area for him moving forward. For now we are adding Spelling Power and Daily Language Lessons (Evan-Moor Grade 5) for some daily practice.

Bethany continues to struggle with reading. Phonics are fine, but she's still not reading. We have seen great improvement in the last 3 days and hope this trend continues as she finally get over whatever hurdle has been holding her back from reading. We are using an older version of Hooked on Phonics, Explode the Code, Bob reader books, and have now added Flash Kids Sight Words beginning back at book A. She has completed half of book A in the last 2 days! We are at a turning point for her right now and I can just feel how badly she wants to read. Hopefully with the addition of Sight Words we will continue to see great improvements in her reading.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES
For these subjects we continue to take a one room school house approach working out of the unit study program Learning Adventures. This is going well, however we seem to take an exceptionally long time getting through each "30 day" lesson segment as we get sucked in to the topics. So far we have completed Egypt and the study of desserts and are finishing up Ancient Greece and the human body.

OTHER
Learning Adventures encompasses much more than science and social studies. We are also following the literature recommendations that work in conjunction with the program. We have been hit or miss on the bible portions and plan to tighten back down with our daily bible readings. We are following some of the language arts portions and taking what we can from it, but overall we are finding it isn't 100% for us and looking for alternatives in this area.

EXTRA
This first half of the year the kids participated in a homeschool fencing class along with their usual football/cheerleading season. The girls are now doing basketball and all 3 plan to continue with fencing. I am also in the process of working out an Art Co-op for them to participate in with some of their homeschool friends and we will be looking into other homeschool group things for them to participate in. Roman and Hope have taken the last few months off of drum lessons and will resume that this month. Bethany is beginning guitar lessons with James teaching her.

With my work schedule and homeschool it has afforded us more time to travel and do more stuff as a family. In September we attended Homeschool Days at Great Wolf Lodge. In November we visited Myrtle Beach, SC, Merritt Island, FL, and Orlando, FL spending time with family and a trip to Sea World Orlando. Roman also spent 2 weeks in Austin, TX visiting the Sammon's for his Birthday, then another week for us all in Baltimore, MD. We have always loved to travel but with work and school schedules it hasn't been as often as we'd like in the past. We are immensely enjoying this new found freedom!

We ended 2010 on a high note for school spending the day at the Science Museum studying the human body amongst other things, then a quick trip to the Museum of Fine Arts to see some Ancient Greek pieces. And look forward to many new adventures in homeschooling in 2011!