Month 2 Review

Watching a video of the CC timeline while I get lunch ready.

This month was a little more productive than last month, although not a bunch more.  Eleanor has started doing more official schooly things, although I still give her power to overrule me until she is 4, which isn't for a few more months.  She wants to do school almost every time I ask, though, so she's doing pretty well too.

Math:
Lydia completed 15 lessons in Saxon, which puts her at 22% of the way through, which is still ahead of where we need to be right now.  She's building a nice little cushion for later if she struggles with a concept or if we take a break.  Saxon is still going wonderfully for her.

Eleanor started Miquon.  She completed 16 pages of Miquon Orange and did math on 9 days.  Since Miquon Orange and Red together are a first grade math program, I have no particularly strong goals for her to finish at any time soon.  I guess a tentative goal would be to finish Orange by next year, which is 126 pages, but I won't push it.  So far she really likes it but I see us mixing it up with other sources as well in the future.


Reading:
Lydia did formal reading lessons and formal extra reading 9 days last month.  I would like to do better with it this next month, but she's still fine.  She spends a lot of her own time reading too, so she is still getting practice. (As I'm typing this I can hear her reading the Frozen golden book to herself, for example)

Eleanor started OPGTR!  All that time with the HOP app really helped and her blending is much improved and she was definitely ready to start.  She finished through Lesson 33 and did formal reading lessons 8 days in July.

I did read alouds 6 days last month, including reading the entire first Bone book, which they enjoyed a lot, especially Eleanor.  I picked up the whole set on a whim at a consignment sale a while back and haven't red them, although Tyler had.  I thought they might enjoy a graphic novel format, although I will say it is sort of tricky as a read aloud.  They are begging me to start the next one.  We also continue to do daily family scripture study and the girls listen to an audio book for 2 hours or so every night in bed.  Lately we've been rotating Story of the World 1&2, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, How to Train Your Dragon, The Complete Winnie the Pooh, the Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter, The Wizard of Oz, Little House in the Big Woods, and Paddington Bear.  Can you tell we love audio books?

Lydia's most recent narration.  She insisted on copying it herself.

Writing:
As I planned, I tried to kick up writing this month.  Lydia completed 14 days of writing putting her in the middle of Week 7 in Writing With Ease.  She is enjoying it a lot and even does extra copywork for it by her own insistence.  She is getting better at answering the comprehension questions and she is starting to write a little quicker as well.  This puts us at 18% of the way through the program which is a little bit ahead of where we need to be.


Grammar:
We did 12 days of grammar and Lydia has finished through lesson 26 in First Language Lessons.  I am almost certain we'll start doing level 2 this year because there are only 100 lessons total in level 1.  We are definitely ahead.  I think Lydia likes it too because it is the first language arts that she always picks to do, although this may have to do with the fact that there is almost no writing.

Science:
We did science 4 days this month, so better than last month but still not great.  Maybe upping this should be my goal, although one of those 4 days was a "science" day where we only watched science shows, went to the science museum, watched a planetarium show, and worked on their MyBodies.  The girls have also watched the first season of Zula Patrol one and a half times while in the car.  They are enjoying it and we have been having lots of impromptu science discussions as a result.