So I figured out that I was not providing enough writing practice for Calvin and I wasn’t staying on top of assignments that I had given him so I purchased this (geek alert: I am way too excited about my success with inserting a clickable link, including where the link is going to take you if you hover over the word.)
Meaningful Composition should provide daily assignments, and direct, step by step instruction so he gets clear guidelines (which he likes) and I don’t have to deal with tears (which I like). Win-win-win.
This year I’ve been experimenting with having all 3 boys in the same Five in a Row (FIAR) book each week. Yes, Calvin is in the age range for Beyond, and in fact that’s what I had him doing last year, but trying to do 2 levels didn’t work for me. It didn’t get done regularly and then no one was getting the benefit of FIAR. There are plenty of FIAR vol 1-3 books that he hasn’t rowed (vol 4 too!) so I’ve decided even if the books and lessons are on the young side, there is still benefit to be gained from it. I’ve said over and over again that I learn things every time I row a book and I’m a 35yo woman with a college degree so I think we can make it work for a 10yo.
So far we’ve had 2 great weeks rowing Daniel’s Duck and The Bee Tree. Daniel’s Duck week went along with the county fair and this past week we learned so much about bees. They are amazing creatures! I could write an entire post about all I learned about bees and how they basically dehydrate nectar to make honey and how they have this internal clock that tells them exactly what jobs they are supposed to do on which days of life and how they spend the first 3 weeks of life working around the hive as “house bees” and the last 3 weeks of life collecting nectar and pollen as “field bees” because the only live for 6 weeks and how worker bees are all female and the only difference between them and the queen is that the queen was fed royal jelly during the larval stage of her development . . . anyway, like I was saying, plenty for a 10yo to learn.
For the rest of school we’re doing Bible Study Guide for All Ages first thing in the morning. That takes about 30 minutes and all the kids are enjoying that. Then we do FIAR and talk about the daily lessons. That’s probably another 30 minutes. Then the kids move on to their independent work. Math U See (MUS) for both Calvin and Carter, then Calvin has to do 30 minutes of independent reading and 30 minutes of piano practice and Carter has reading lessons with me after he finishes his math. Then he’s done for the day.
Calvin has been taking WAY too long with his math because he’s doing long division and he’s just too slow with his multiplication facts. I’m going to start requiring him to do 5 MUS online drills per day and write down his fastest time. I’ll set a goal time that he has to beat eventually.
I don’t have any writing incorporated into Carter’s school at the moment. He did copywork last year and I will implement copywork again (copying their Bible verses) for Carter and Caleb once they start AWANAs in a few weeks, but I want to really focus his energies on reading for a few weeks. He’s so close to becoming a fluent reader and I want to keep up that momentum.
One other thing I want to add to their school is Arabic language lessons. I’m not sure how to do this, but I’m thinking of letting them watch Arabic kid tv on the computer each day. I also have Rosetta Stone that Calvin could do, but I really have to get our current schedule running smoothly before I add anything else. That was a mistake I made last year — starting everything at once and then getting overwhelmed and dropping it. This year we started with Bible Study, the next week added FIAR and reading, last week we added Math, this week we’re adding my Arabic class . . . hopefully we’ll be able to keep all the balls in the air.