On the school front.....

Things are going pretty well. Greg is wrapping up his phonics work. He is pleased and I am relieved. I seem to feel vindicated when I manage to teach them to read.....ha, ha, people who thought I couldn't do it.....my children can READ :) So, now that I am done gloating about that; we are learning loads of cool stuff this year.

History

We are using Veritas Press as our spine and learning history starting from the beginning. We are in Ancient Egypt right now and using so many supplements that it is taking awhile. The history pockets are really cool and I am just itching to get started on the History Kit that we got from Hands and Hearts (see ad in the right side-bar). I think that the hands-on projects will really pull the study together. We might even be able to go to the Field Museum in Chicago and see the King Tut exhibit there. We are taking a trip to Chicago in a few weeks, but we haven't finalized our agenda yet :)

Science

We quickly finished our units on the days of Creation, reptiles, and are now working on an oceanography unit. The boys are interested, but would rather that we get to the part about the whales and sharks than have to read about the waves, weather and tidal currents :) I guess that is to be expected. We still have a unit about dinosaurs to dig into, so they are anticipating that.

We are enjoying all the resources that we have for this year. I am really, really liking Veritas Press. I am so glad that I decided to go with them this year. I am also glad that I spent a little extra and got all the supplemental stuff from various places. We are using it all and loving it. Leland is slowly reading through the BoxCar Children series. Gregory has just discovered the Magic Tree House series. He is reading them though quick....about 1 every 2 days. He may be my reader :) Leland is having great success with his writing this year. We are using Writing Strands (Level 3). Last year we had such problems because the book instructed the student to do the assignment by himself. Lee would quickly get bogged down and I would get frustrated because he was "supposed" to be doing this himself....right? Anyway, we dropped it after about 3 months. This year, I blocked off 30 mins. every day that I work through the lesson with him.....2 times a week. Small bites. And most of the time he is getting it himself. I won't say that he likes it, anymore than he did last year, but he is doing it and learning that he CAN do it himself :) That is an achievement if I ever saw one. We are getting ready to really crack down and learn our math facts for the year.....addition for Gregory and multiplication for Leland. Of course, I am not hearing cheers of anticipation on this one, but I am hoping that it will manage to be as painless as possible.

Happy studies!