What's new?!

Hmmmm, I don't know. I'm finding it harder and harder to think of new things to post about on this blog. Homeschooling is going fine. Julia, Karley and I are learning a lot and getting things done. We have our good days, our better days, and our not so good days. This month is a bit tricky with all going on. Julia will probably finish her next set of phonics workbooks next month as well as the first grade handwriting book. I'm considering adding some grammar and/or vocabulary for the next semester. Julia's reading is really taking off. She does structured reading for me, fun reading for herself, and she reads to her sister.

We are continuing our science learning. We read about a different animal each week and she completes a notebook page or two. This week we are reading about chameleons.

Our history studies are going fine too. We have not done a big, fun project for awhile, but I think she still likes and looks forward to our reading. This week we are learning about ancient China.

I think Julia is enjoying her classes on campus. She had been complaining about her computer class for awhile. I think she gets frustrated with her work, erases, and then finds that she does not have enough time to finish before the class is over. So for several weeks she came home with nearly blank pages. The last week or two she has done better (I told her not to worry about her work so much and now she comes home with papers that actually have work on them).

She complains about PE and hip hop. She thinks that they make her too tired. Yipeee! I love it. I think she does too, but they do work her hard. She is learning a dance (or two?) in hip hop that will be perfomed at the end of the school year. So far I'm not convinced that she is a natural born dancer. She says she has a hard time keeping up with everyone and the music (and it does move quite fast), but I've found that she starts late, always a step or two behind the others. That was until I told her that "5, 6, 7, 8,...." means "on your mark, get set,..." Once she started replacing that for 5, 6, 7, 8 she started her first step in time with the others. Hurray!

So all is well. I guess it feels familiar and ordinary. Nothing new going on right now, no good material to write about, but we are doing fine and plugging along.

Karley is writing!

For a couple of weeks now I have been satisfying Karley's new request of "be my teacher too" with teaching her to write her name. I have small slate boards from Handwriting Without Tears that I used to teach Julia to write. With Karley I started with letter K, then A, R, etc. We haven't actually finished all the letters of her name (she really likes to do Ks over and over again), but yesterday I decided to have her try writing on paper. I gave her a piece of Handwriting Without Tears paper (grey blocks that represent the slate board). I was amazed (Julia too I think), but Karley can WRITE!!! She has always held a crayon or pencil correctly and has shown some good control, but she was able to transfer what she has learned the last couple of weeks on the slate board with chalk to the paper, which is much, much smaller writing. I also discovered that she has a bit of her father in her. She was getting mad at herself when her straight lines were not perfectly straight. She began erasing until I told her that this was practice and that there is no need for erasing when you are practicing. She filled almost all of the paper with careful, controlled and very legible letters. One of two of them I would have thought Julia had written if I had not seen Karley do it. Plus, she started branching out on her own with "new" letters. She asked me how to write an H. I looked at her paper and noticed she had both of the vertical lines already drawn! This girl can write!!!