Starting Off Busy

W started his academics this morning by reading a few pages of Sam the Sea Cow to me. Then I read the first chapter of Tree in the Trail to him and he did a great narration. He loves that book already. Poetry was next - and it was an autumn poem in a big book of poems compiled by Walter de la Mare. The schedule says to read poems BY him, not compiled by him, so I'll have to print out a bunch I find online. That segued into copywork, which was a nice Mother Goose rhyme. These are full of big words not often used, so it helps him with spelling and vocabulary. I also wrote out the poem, hung it up, and will use that one for a dictation exercise on Friday. After that, I read half a chapter of The Little Duke to W and again he narrated what he remembered. I love listening to him. Then he did 2 pages in his grammar workbook. The first page was a review of compound words. A lot of times I'll just have him tell me the answers instead of him having to write them down. He prefers some pages that way. It definitely eliminates any tedium. The next page was like a game where he had to follow clues to find the right words. Artist study was all about Raphael Sanzio. We looked at all the paintings we'll study this term and read a quick bio. It's interesting how he is starting to come up with his own take on certain paintings. He seems to undestand what characters are portrayed and thinks about why it's significant. I'm looking forward more of this with him. Finally he did a few math problems in his workbook. This was a review of 3-digit plus 3-digit addition. We haven't purchased TT5 yet, so he's just using books for now.

J started her academics today by reading Little Women snuggled up in my bed. It's still a chore getting her to read anything at all, but she's drawn to classic literature and picked this one herself. She then read a poem out loud and wrote it out for copywork. After that, we picked up the American History book (that I really really enjoy) and read a chapter together. Soon she'll start doing written narrations on the history, lit, and science we read together. Painless Grammar was next and we discussed more parts of speech. This is just review for her, but these are good things to remember - like prepositional phrases, uses of the conjunction, and how so many words qualify as adverbs. Then we did some Life of Fred. She loves math now, btw. I'm so glad I bought a bunch of those books. J spent the afternoon with friends at the park. The new season of dance classes starts tomorrow. This should be a fun year.

K's first day was good. Her schedule is great. They're doing a Spirit Week soon, since their plans of it last spring were cut short by the swine flu closing. She already joined a fundraising committee and plans to rake in as much money as possible so they can do all these things as seniors. It's funny to me that they have to start this in junior year. She's happy there and I feel it's a nice fit for her.

I think we're starting off well. All the kids liked their first day. Lets just hope it stays that way!