March 10-16, 2013

Oh, here's the spinning week.  It's the week in which I caught what everyone else had.  At least Matt was home when I had the worst of it.  That helped a lot.

What we did last week:

Henry

•  Saxon Math 1: Lessons 110-111 (Written assessment #21, oral assessment #11; writing the number 100, identifying one dollar)
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 159-160 ( r-changed vowels: OUR as /ôr/; OAR and OOR as /ôr/)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Pages 85-87 (writing words, writing a letter)

It's strange to say this in March, but our year is coming to a close.  We have 19 lessons left in math, or about five weeks.  We'll start going through Math Made Easy as soon as we're done with Saxon.  Henry sneaked a peek at it this week and wanted to start it now, but we're going to wait.  We have 71 lessons left in OPGTR.  That's about 18 weeks at our current pace of one lesson per day, but once we're done with Saxon I'm going to increase to two or three lessons per day (depending on mastery).  Saxon takes up a big chunk of our school hour, so we'll have more time to work on reading once we're done.  We also have about six more weeks of handwriting left to do.

Based on all of this, I think we'll easily be ready to start first grade in July.  I've been slowly accumulating all of our materials and should have everything we need by then.  My biggest task is going to be working out what our schedule will look like for the week.  I also need to start some lesson planning.  While I'm a big proponent of "just do the next thing," there's quite a bit of overlap with the courses.  For example, there is copywork in grammar, writing, history, and science.  That's a little over the top.  I want to go through the materials and pare back the assignments so that we have a sharper focus in each subject.  I want grammar to be about grammar, writing to be about writing, etc.

Over the next few months, I'll be paging through The Well-Trained Mind, taking notes, drawing up sample plans for the first month or two of lessons and seeing what form our school is going to take.  I am just crazy enough to be excited about this.  Lesson planning: living the dream!

Oh, remember about two years ago when I posted about making my way through the Great Books?  And I thought that ten years seemed like a long time for it?  Yeah, I'm almost done with the first year's reading assignments.  Two years later.  I did have a baby in there, so that's my excuse.  Personal goal for me: finish the first year's readings so that I can start the second year in July.  Fingers crossed.