Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Lotsa Good Stuff

K had off today for Election Day. She met up with a couple of friends this morning and they headed into Manhattan to be in the audience for the Alexa Chung show on MTV. K loves that show and is excited to see it live. I saw her several times in the audience (having DVR'd the episode). She was in awe to see Lady Gaga and the cast of Glee (one of her favorite shows).

Halloween was fun this year. One of K's best friends is cousins with a celebrity singer (I promised I wouldn't mention names) and they hung out with him and his fiancee on Halloween. K met him before and he's really sweet. K's friend's mom was with them, too, trick-or-treating with another little cousin. He got recognized in the restaurant they stopped in and they were all given the royal treatment by the staff. K was loving it. Then they all went back to his house and the girls sang a few songs in his recording studio.

J had a sleepover the night before Halloween and she and her friend went out trick-or-treating with the little siblings. B and W met up with them and all ended up with a nice stash of candy.

W is loving his new math program. TT5 seems to be perfect for him. He's asking to do 1 or 2 lessons a day. He also just got a reading program called Hooked on Phonics Master Reader. It's a dvd program full of fun activities to help older children read better (ages 7-11). He loved it. The Ambleside readings are moving slowly. He can really only listen to 3 or 4 pages of something at a time, so it can take 2 weeks sometimes to get through 1 week of readings. It's ok, though. He's getting so much from these classic books, that I don't care how long we take reading them.

4 comments:

nuyorican said...

I would like to thank you for a great blog on Homeschooling in NY City. My wife and I are homeschool parents (my wife is the main homeschooler) living in Fresh Meadows, Queens. My wife homeschool our 7 yr old son since 1st grade. It's great to see how other NYC homeschool parents. THe other homeschooling blogs are mostly from rural areas which we can't relate to most things. Keep up the good work.

NYCitymomx3 said...

Thanks so much and thanks for stopping by!

Anonymous said...

What is TT5 and Ambleside and where are they found on-line to buy??

NYCitymomx3 said...

TT5 stands for Teaching Textbook Math 5. It's $120 for 4 CDROMS and a big spiral textbook/workbook. You can buy that at teachingtextbooks.com.

Ambleside is Ambleside Online, a free advanced curriculum based on the Charlotte Mason method. It provides a 36-week schedule of living books (for history, geography, literature, science, nature, and biographies - and religion, but we omit most of those), a 3-term artist, composer, poetry, and nature study schedule, a separate literature reading list each year to do on your own time, and tons of ideas, advice and guidelines. It focuses on good books, nature, history, and art in conjunction with CM's short lessons, narrations, copywork, nature walks/notebooks, art & music appreciation, handicrafts, and good habits. You provide your own math program.

Find it at: amblesideonline.org/sitemap.shtml