2010/11 Year in Review

This year turned out to be a big challenge for me.  I changed jobs mid-year and have had to learn a new way to home school.  Until this year, I've had the whole week to dedicate to the kids and then work on the weekends.   This year, I was squeezing math lessons and reading lessons in between work meetings and conference calls.  Sitting at our school/dinner table with a kid on either side and my work computer in front of me is not the mental picture I have of homeschooling.

We cut out extra things, moved other things to being more independent and all worked to be more flexible.  Here is what we've accomplished.

LB

Math

BJU K
Halfway into Miquon Orange
She can see a problem like 5 + __ = 10 - 3 and know that she needs to move the 3 to the other side to solve the problem and can do these without pausing.

English
ETC 1, 2, and is halfway into 3
Her eye tracking problems and letter reversals and flipping are almost completely gone.  She read Green Eggs and Ham on her last day of school without losing her place on the line as she read.
IEW Poetry

Science
Studied animals, the solar system, and trees.  Her favorite thing she learned this year was how to make paper.

Art
Her favorite thing she did this year was learn to make origami frogs.

CC

Math
Saxon 7/6
LoF Fractions
Her favorite thing she learned this year was canceling fractions.

English
She wrote 3 fictional stories and won a writing competition in her enrichment school.
IEW Poetry

Science
Still working through ClassiQuest Biology
Completed almost half of the projects in Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction which was heavily supplemented with MythBusters and Beakman's World.
Her favorite thing she learned this year was a real understanding of the speed of sound and what happens when you "break" the sound barrier.

History
Studied Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid. She compared the hero quest model in the three, and we had wonderful discussions about how these stories reflected the people and times in which they were written.
Read and summarized SoTW 2 & 3

Art
Her pottery is progressing wonderfully. She can now make a round bowl about the size of a cereal bowl. As she grows, her work gets better.

What worked

Miquon and Life of Fred are working wonderfully for the girls for math.  ETC helped CC progress in her reading while waiting for her vision to mature.

This year I tried to put equal emphasis on art, physical movement, and academics which has worked well for us.  Each one challenges the girls differently so that they are growing in a balanced way.  It is an idea I picked up last summer while reading The Great Tradition.

What didn't work

I started the year with plans to read classics slowly and deeply with CC.  This didn't work for us.  She is a voracious reader with a great memory and a natural ability to synthesize information.  She needed more reading and more ideas.

I also tried scheduled reading.  She hated it.  She preferred to have a set of books to choose from then to read in her own time.  She ended up reading not only more books than I had planned, but also her choices were often loftier than I had chosen. 

I started the year with a particular reading goal in mind for LB (Little Bear books).   My older two were early and natural readers.  I learned to be patient and let LB develop at her own rate.  She has made amazing progress, but all of the pressure in the world would not have made her vision mature any faster than it did. 

Overall

 LB lost her first baby tooth, and CC lost her last  baby tooth.  We've worried about BB in Japan and celebrated wonderful joys with friends and family.  LB can now get on the merry-go-round on her own; CC can manage most of her day's work without me; BB has shown tremendous strength of character in the face of disaster.  At times I wasn't sure we could make it through the school year.  Looking back, it was a wonderful year of growth and change.