Fruits of Labor

Yesterday we had our meeting with our academic advisor. Because of the craziness this year with the school moving, Julia had not had a reading assessment done since the end of Kindergarten. Yesterday we had some time at the end of our meeting so Karley and I stepped out of the office and Julia had her first reading assessment of the year. When they finished her advisor came out and told me that she gave Julia a total of 5 tests and was doing well but decided to end on a high note and that she had had enough "tests" for one sitting. Julia tested at or possibly above (since she didn't get to a point where the words were too hard for her) 4th grade level (she is in Grade 1) and she tested also in the 4th grade level for reading comprehension. These results were great to hear, but not unexpected since I'm with her all the time and I kind of already knew she would test somewhere in there. BUT, the cool part for me was that the advisor said during the reading comprehension testing Julia gave all her answers in complete sentences. The advisor was really surprised and pleased by that. THAT was great news for me because it is something we have been working on a lot this year and I feel like I am constantly reminding her to use complete sentences. It's nice to know that it is paying off!!!

So, my challenge now, pull some of my time and energy out of working with Julia on her language arts lessons and put MORE time into Karley's. This may be tricky since I don't really see Karley particularly WANTING to know how to read.

But for now, I'm going to enjoy these successes, knowing that it is probably only a matter of days or weeks that my frustration level will peak yet again!

What have we been doing?????

Ummmm......well, trying to catch up from our bad weeks. We are only a day or so behind, really, but of course it is not one calendar day on my nice little weekly planner. It is a lesson here, a lesson there, half a lesson here, etc. At least we have the next two Mondays off, so that should come in handy. We are also trying to decide if we are going to enter a project in the science fair. I gave Julia two choices and she won't choose. She says she wants to do both. Other than that things are about the same. This week we are studying echinoderms and finishing up the Roman Empire. If I remember I'll try to post photos of the clay bowls we made this evening.

It's Official

Karley is signed up for Kindergarten....and she couldn't be happier (unless she were starting tomorrow!). I'm not quite sure how I'm going to homeschool both, but I do think Karley will be a lot easier in many ways (and probably harder in other ways). But at least my pile of Kindergarten forms is gone off my desk!