Homeschool update

We have been homeschooling for almost 3 months now. While each day has its ups and downs, I would definitely call it a successful adventure! I want to go over what we are doing in each subject:

BIBLE
Dino has memorized the books of the New Testament and is working on the Old Testament now. Each day, we discuss a book of the Bible and point out the highlights of that book - the author, the theme of the book, and the key characters and stories. Dino creates a flash card for each book, which he uses to practice putting the books in order. I would like to start memorizing scripture as a family. We are going to start with what Dino's Sunday School class is studying - Hebrews 11:1 and 11:6.

MATH
We started the year using a book called The Life of Fred, which appealed to me because of the incorporation of other topics into each lesson. While this curriculum appeals to children who love to read but aren't too fond of math. Unfortunately, Dino is just the opposite, and it was immediately frustrating for him to read so much and have so little math to work on. Dino does much better just learning one math concept at a time, so we abandoned Fred in favor of worksheets printed out from a couple of different websites. He worked up to 3-line addition, 6-or-more-digit addition and subtraction, carrying and borrowing, time telling, word problems, basic fractions, and measuring using a ruler. We are now starting to introduce multiplication. Dino understands the concept of multiplication as iterative addition, so next I want him to memorize the multiplication tables.

GEOGRAPHY
Dino has started learning about the United States of America. He is learning to identify each state's location on the map, and he is memorizing the 2-character postal code for each state. We work on 3 or 4 states at a time, 2 days for each group.

SCIENCE
We are not using any particular lesson plan for science, but rather grabbing opportunities as they come along. The local homeschoolers organized a field trip to the Department of Public Works, where they discussed water conservation. We read a book together about the life cycle of frogs. We read a book about fire safety and used a candle to demonstrate what elements fire needs to burn. He read an articles on push and pull forces, how things move, and the pitch and volume of sound. He has also read an article in a National Geographic book on wolves and another on dogs vs. cats.

SOCIAL SCIENCE
Dino read an article on land use (rural/urban/suburban), and we discussed the election last week and how individuals are voted into local and state government.

SPELLING
We are using and loving Sonlight's Sequential Spelling curriculum. Instead of memorizing lists of spelling words, Dino is learning the logic behind how words are formed and is seeing the patterns in lists of words. The curriculum is set up so that he has a list of 25 words each day. I say the word, use it in a sentence if needed, and he does his best to write down how he thinks it is spelled. I tell him the correct spelling, and he corrects his paper if needed. We also discuss the homophones of words as they come up (when words have different meanings but sound the same, like thrown and throne). Each day's word list builds on the day before in an 8-day cycle. For example, day 1 might have the word bat, then day 2 will have bats, then batted, then batting, and so on.

ENGLISH
Dino is reinforcing some things he learned in first grade - ABC order, homophones, synonyms, antonyms, nouns, proper nouns, etc. We are using worksheets from a book I found at Sam's Club called Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills. I expect us to get through the Grade 2 book by the end of the calendar year and go through the Grade 3 book next semester.

READING
Dino loves the Magic Tree House books and has gone through 4 of them this school year, reading about 1 chapter a day. He took a break from them recently to read a few short story books. I try to read a chapter a day to him from another book. We finished The Jungle Book and are working our way through a young reader's adapted version of Alice in Wonderland.

READING COMPREHENSION
We are also using the Comprehensive Curriculum worksheets for Reading Comprehension. Dino *hates* these because he actually has to think to get his work done! He has been doing sequencing (putting steps in order), identifying same/different details about 2 characters in a story, reading for details, and following directions. Like English, I hope to be able to go through Grade 2 and 3 concepts this school year.

HANDWRITING
We started cursive handwriting 2 weeks ago, and Dino loves it! We do about 2 letters a day, following the order prescribed on this website: http://www.kidzone.ws/cursive/
So far, Dino has learned 13 lowercase letters, so he is halfway through the alphabet! He is very detailed, so he tries hard to keep his writing neat and slanted.

PE
Dino has a few hours almost every afternoon to run around with his friends when they're done with their school, so he is well-exercised! We go for walks together around the block to get our dogs some exercise, too.

We follow the local school's schedule for breaks and holidays, so that Dino gets the same days off as his friends. We did make an exception for fall break, however. We took a week-long vacation with family that didn't line up with the local school's fall break. We gave Dino the option of doing school on vacation so that he would have the same days off as the neighbors, or taking our break on vacation then just push through and try to get school done a little early on the friend's day off at home. He wisely chose the latter.

We don't have any particular art plan, but do things as they come up - some English/Reading assignments involve drawing pictures or coloring, he cuts and glues his Bible flash card every day, we make geography flash cards, and we recently made salt dough Christmas ornaments using a recipe on a Reading Comprehension assignment for following directions!

In first grade, Dino's goal in reading was to find a book in the library each week with the fewest words as possible. He has made a huge turnaround in the past 3 months, finding books that he actually enjoys reading, and declaring that he *loves* to read! That, if nothing else, is a huge success in my book!