Another Year in Review

It is obvious that I am unable to keep up with two different blogs. I started a separate home school blog with intentions of getting more involved in the online home school community and thought that having them separate would facilitate that. Instead, I find that it just falls to the wayside. My life is separated into "school" "family" "church" and "other", so why should my writing life be separated? With that said, after this post, when we start our new school year mid-October, I am going to be posting school updates on my main blog, Miriam Pauline's Monologue. I may (or may not) remember to post a link from here for a while. I think all 3 or 4 of you who read here also read there so it shouldn't be a big issue.

All that said, this post is meant to put last year in review. We finished up our school year on September 10. In general we have had a wonderful year. Most of my goals were met, and we made some great memories along the way. Where we struggle just reminds me of why we home school--so we can go at their pace and meet their individual needs.

Jewel completed 1st Grade/Year 2 (US/UK equivalent). She is reading well beyond her age of seven years. I mean, just yesterday she read out of Acts for our family devotions and never missed a beat. During the course of the school year, in addition to the fictional stories assigned she has read aloud to me all of Genesis, all of Exodus, several Psalms, a couple chapters of Proverbs and all of Philippians. She loves to read and will spend hours curled up with a book--often it is her Bible that she is curled up and reading to Flower. We could get ten books a day from the library and she would stay caught up reading them. In the same vein, she loves history since it is reading based. This year we looked briefly at ancient civilizations then focused on Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. We have visited the mummy room at the British Museum, the Parthenon exhibit at the British Museum, and Roman ruins in England to add to the learning experience. Although she talks the most about our Roman studies (probably because she remembers going to Rome and seeing so much of the forum and palaces and such) it is Greece that enamours her. She is desperate to visit Greece so that may have to move up our list of places to go. Missionary stories, which form much of our history and geography core, fascinate her. We studied George Mueller this year and she could not get enough. She even had her daddy read another history of George Mueller as bedtime stories "so he could learn about George as well." We hope to get down to Bristol this autumn and visit Ashley Down. She also read a biography of Billy Graham with her daddy. I definitely see a heart for other people in her, so there are more missionary stories on the horizon. Science continues to go well with introductions to how the body works, how to stay healthy, and Pasteur's discoveries and work with bacteria. We didn't do as many science experiments as planned, but I plan to do better next year. Our slower area continues to be math but she is making tremendous progress, especially the last few weeks. It seems to be finally "clicking" with her. I am so thankful that we could slow down to her pace and allow her the chance to "get it" without totally losing her love of learning in the process. We didn't quite finish our math book during the school year, so we will just pick up where we left off and when she is ready move to the next level.

She continues to do exceedingly well in swimming and has started piano lessons where she is also making great progress. She attends a weekly group at the church as well and has lots of friends. All in all, she is doing well!

Flower and I have had a great time doing PreK/Reception work this year. We have read lots of fun stories and some great introduction to easy science and history. We looked at things that live under the sea, we learned about the smallest and largest things in the universe, we learned the months of the year and the days of the week. She has done terrifically with handwriting and can happily write just about anything you give her to copy or spell aloud to her. Her reading is coming along great. She is sounding out cvc words with little effort and spends much of her time when we are out attempting to read everything around her. She's really proud of herself for learning to read. She has also learned to ride a bicycle without training wheels/stabilisers this year. She is in the same swimming classes as Jewel and is totally able to keep up with her big sister. She isn't old enough to start piano yet, but Jewel "teaches" her when she is practicing and she is learning quite quickly!

Of course, the thing I love about Sonlight is the great books that we get to read. Here is a sampling of what we have read this year:
*A Year with Miss Agnes
*Mr. Popper's Penguins
*Henry Huggins
*Detectives in Togas
*Understood Betsy (and we made butter which was wonderful!)
*Follow My Leader
*Charlotte's Web
*Little Pear
*Mountain Born
*Homer Price (made doughnuts, yum!)

It's been a great year. We are enjoying a little time off before getting into it again. The new Cores are on the shelf waiting to be used. I'm really having to encourage the girls to wait, but we did need a break. Our annual eval is this week and then I'll be able to focus more on the next stage.

A New School Year Approacheth

Just a note, this was written on Saturday, but I couldn't add the pics so I didn't publish it. We did start yesterday and updates will come.

I am probably getting the latest start of school of anyone out there, but there was a definite method to our madness! And it was totally blessed because our last two weeks of "summer vacation" have been a gorgeous Indian Summer! Jewel has had opportunities to really learn how to ride her new bike, we have taken lots of walks and just enjoyed being outside. This week the forecast is for rain...so what better time than to start school?

Actually, I am very ready to start. We have not received the ordered math curriculum or Flower's handwriting program (since I ordered the wrong one the first time around) but we can start without those subjects.


Box day arrived here two days before we left for Romania.

The girls had such a good time going through the box, seeing what we would be studying


and even getting a jumpstart on the reading.


Then, being the mean mom that I am, I put the books up on our shelves and had them help me organize the toy room. They thought I was horrible, but my main goal was to make room for more craft stuff, so they should be pleased in the coming weeks.

Then we headed off for two weeks in Romania (the posts are coming, I promise!) While in Romania, I was left three messages that the LEA reviewer would be coming to check out our school efforts...four days after we returned! ACK!! I spent two days franctically trying to make sure that everything they would need to see was organized enough to tell the story of our educative process. I needn't have worried, the reviewer was quite impressed with how well Jewel presented herself and the work she had been doing. Even math, which I was fretting about so much, was no problem. She felt that we were "way ahead" of what was expected in school. She should know, she was a retired maths teacher. Of course the thing one always worries about is that "s-word" (you know, socialization). That, too, was a piece of cake. The first thing she said was "I see you are involved in church, she will get plenty of socialization opportunities there so we can move on." YAY!! She went on to talk about what they did in their church (so not the norm in England) and then asked where we went. When Jewel told her, she said "my niece goes there!" In fact her niece has been a part of my Ladies Bible Study. God was definitely going ahead of us in this review. AND we do not have to worry about another review until next Autumn, so it is good.

As far as Monday, the plan is to start everything but math and Flower's handwriting. Our curriculum will be:
Jewel will be doing Sonlight Core 1 World History, Geography with Level 2 readers and language arts, MathUSee, Reason for Handwriting and Rosetta Stone German.
Flower will be doing Sonilight P4/5 (a mix of what they have updated and what Jewel did because they have eliminated a couple of our favorite things), Handwriting Without Tears pre-school, and Rosetta Stone German.
They will both continue with swim lessons and Jewel will continue with SPARKS at church. I am still working on finding a piano teacher for them both. A friend will teach Jewel if I don't find anyone, but she is moving in January and we are not sure that it is best to start and then change approaches that quickly.

I plan to do weekly re-caps on Mondays and hopefully will be able to participate in some homeschool memes on Fridays. We'll see how well I do.