2 to School

We did it

We finished our school year today. I was looking over all the work and subjects we've covered over the past 36 weeks and I can't believe we were able to cover so much ground .
Finn learned to read, which was his major goal by the end of this year. He learned skills such as and telling time and can tie his own shoes. He finished a writing workbook and completed his first Math text . As I've been looking toward the next year's curriculum I realized he's ready to start first grade work in the Fall. This surprised him last night when I announced that he's been doing Kindergarten work this year not preschool work. He's ready for science, history, and language arts in the fall.

It's been such a blessing to have Chance at home learning this year. He was able to catch up and plow ahead in his Math studies finishing almost three Math texts. At the end of third grade he stated he would never be able to learn math because he just didn't get it. Over the past 36 weeks he's studied World History from 4000 B.C. to 1990 A.D. In Science he started with light and color, moved on to astronomy, then to electricity and magnetism, and finished up the year with a study of the microscope. He studied and mapped all 7 continents and created a US geography notebook with a state fact sheet and a map for each US state. Probably his weakest area was language arts but he managed to put a book of poetry together, do 7 book studies, put together a book of his family and research the state of Illinois. This week he created a newsletter with his likes/dislikes from his first home school year. He read over 50 books on his own and loved having this "free reading" time. He also completed his first year of Spanish. One more year of Spanish and he's free to study another language of his choice(right now he wants to learn French).
They both were in gymnastics, Finn took swimming lessons the whole year, Chance started taekwondo 4 months ago and plans to continue throughout this coming year. They both started baseball teams through the park district a few weeks ago and games start up next week.
We were also able to take in about 10 local plays/productions that we all enjoyed.
We're looking forward to the lazy days of summer laying around reading and enjoying our pool.

posted by Anna @ 10:00 AM 1 comments

Roller blading

It's officially here. Our last week of the current school year. Yes, we are all ready for a short break. Last week Chance spent some of the money he has been saving to buy roller blades. Here he is headed down a local nature trail close to our house.


It's amazing what this child can accomplish when he decides to do something. If only he had that same enthusiasm for his English/language arts studies.

posted by Anna @ 5:16 AM 0 comments

Spring training

Yes, Finn had his party to celebrate his reading accomplishment.



Both kids started baseball during the past couple of weeks. Finn is in the beginning t ball league and it's Chance's fifth year playing baseball. He surprised himself by how well he did during a trip to the batting cages.


Next week is our last week for official school studies and Chance is looking forward to even more leisure reading time. We hope the weather cooperates and summer is sunny and warm so we can spend lots of time outside the next couple of months!

posted by Anna @ 12:15 PM 0 comments

Another reader!

Finn completed his reading program yesterday. He's very proud of himself. We're having a celebration of this fantastic accomplishment on Saturday with cake and ice cream.

posted by Anna @ 8:40 AM 0 comments