Hooray for Homeschool

Check out these quotes from my blog, about a year ago, regarding Chloe's school:


"We're working on her concept of the proper order of numbers - i.e. 1 comes before 6, etc. It's harder to teach than I thought. Yesterday I wrote out 9 rows of three numbers each on the sidewalk with chalk. I had her jump from 1-9 in order over and over again. Then we started jumping on the smallest number in each row,"

"We're gonna work on memorizing our phone number and address, since she hasn't done that yet, and work a little harder on numbers and number recognition and some other math concepts. Her reading is amazing - she's got several blends down really well, and she's starting to understand the "silent e changes the vowel to a long sound" concept, like in plate and face."

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Now for an update on school. One year ago we were learning numbers 1-9. Now, she recognizes all numbers up to and past 100, and can tell you exactly which order they go in. She's learning addition (though she hates it, sigh) and bits of subtraction. She's learning to tell time, and can do so with a fairly basic accuracy so long as the minute hand is actually on a number and not between two numbers. (Telling time is AWFUL to teach. Way too flippin' complicated.) We're starting a unit on money, understanding what each coin is worth, and slowly working to understand the concept of 100 cents equals 1 dollar. Math isn't her strongest area, but only because she doesn't like it. If I could find better ways to work on it with her, I bet she'd fly through it, because it clicks for her in ways it just never clicked for me.

Teaching a child to read is amazing. A year ago she was learning basic words, basic blends and vowel sounds. Now, she's reading paragraphs out of books not intended to be read by six year olds. The other day she asked me how to pronounce "ancient." That's a tough word! Even just a couple of months ago she hated to sit down and read to me. Yesterday she read five short books cover to cover with little or no help. We drive around town and it's like a new world has opened up around her, because she can actually read signs. I can't listen to music anymore because she's always asking questions or telling me what signs say. I have to be careful reading blogs (or anything else) because she will read over my shoulder. The other day she asked me "Mom, what is a vag-ih-na?" Omgoodness. Must remember to be more careful about what text messages make it into my phone, since she'll apparently be reading them.

So yeah, school's going great. We do about 15-20 minutes of sit down work each day, mostly practicing writing sentences and doing addition problems. Other than that, we have fun, we read, we play games, we talk, we look stuff up on the computer. I love how her little mind is such a sponge for information. Homeschool is good.

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So I taped the inauguration speech the other night. I've also taped American Idol and some fun crafty shows. I figured I'd spend some time in the evenings knitting and watching TV after the girls were in bed, while Andrew's out of town. Sadly, by eight thirty I'm ready for bed too. I fell asleep on the living room floor yesterday for awhile while Cora slept and Chloe played next to me. I keep waking up super early to get things accomplished, and I go go go all day long, and I just can't keep my eyes open much later than bed time. :o\

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