What worked this year?

Ann is in third grade this year. She is 8 (9 on the 17th) She is dyslexic and is currently attending a dyslexia remediation course which is for 2 hours a day, 4 days a week for 2 years. She is in her first year.

Here is what has worked and what has not worked for her this year.

Language Arts – All of her LA will be done at Scottish Rite (SR). She will read aloud to me at home and do her homework from SR daily. She will continue to do her journal writing daily. (I love the Love to Learn Daily Journal)

This has pretty much remained the same. She leaves the house at 11am and does not get back until between 2:30 and 3:00, Mon – Thurs. She does her journal writing daily before she goes. I still very much love the Love to Learn Journal. It is just a habit we have gotten into to do creative writing and some copy work every day.

Math – Bob Jones 3rd Grade and Calculadder

This is the same except we dropped the Calculadder like a hot potato when I found the Flashmaster. No more photo copying! And the flashmaster has the added bonus that the kids don’t mind doing it. I am trying not to stress too much about math. We don’t always get it done every day. We also skip a lot of pages. I KNOW she will get to it again next hear and the next year and the next. It is hard to get everything done when she leaves by 11.

History – Sonlight Core 3 along with Bob & Eve.

Honestly, she has not done a lot of the History reading or the History of USA workbooks that go with core 3. There is just not enough time before she leaves. However, she and Eve listen to Your Story Hour tapes. (The ones that pertain to American History) or another history book on tape before they go to bed. Our library has many of the My America books on CD so that has been great for her. I think even though she is usually gone when we do our history in our school day, she is still getting plenty of history for a third grader.

Geography – Simply stated. I posted a while ago about this. I am very excited about this study. I think it will be a lot of fun. You can go check out that post if you like. (I bought the Deluxe Package)

I’ll tell you, I really love, love, love this! We’ve had lots of fun doing the various activities and making a state folder etc. I wish we could do more but we just seem to run out of time. The kids beg for this one so we haven’t dropped it although we don’t find time for it every week. I know we will be doing American History for two years so I am not too worried about it. We’ll get to all the states in two years.

Science – Various unit studies. We watch a lot of documentaries, and she loves to get various science related picture books at the Library.

This is the only subject that has gone exactly as I expected. (the benefit of very low expectations!) She loves to get science type library books with nice big photos. We do watch lots of Nature/science videos too.

Electives –

Typing – She has just started a typing program on the computer. Spell Write Type is the name.

Spanish – We have access to the full program of Rosetta Stone through the library. It will get too tough for her pretty quickly, but for now she is having fun with it.

Sadly, our electives have been a complete flop as the Typing CDRom died and I have not replaced it, and Rosetta Stone has stopped allowing libraries access so we can’t use it online anymore. I am quite sad about this.

American Girl – This is a hands-on classed based on the books. They do two dolls a year. There is also a play at the end of each semester.

She is loving this class! I knew she would. They are doing the Molly play in May and she is thrilled beyond belief! She had her lines memorized in a day!

Book Club – I teach this class. It is based on the Five in a Row model which I love (I used FIAR at home when my kids were younger and loved it!). Obviously we don’t do it for five days, but we have a lot of fun with the picture books.

She also loves this class. I love this class! I really do miss the days when my kids were littler and we did Five in a Row. It is such a gentle, easy, relational way to ease into homeschooling. I miss it.

So Happy Mommy, If I could give you any suggestions it would be to check out Five in a Row. It’s inexpensive and really good.

And just as an aside, I found this site that is a go along for the Five in a Row way of doing things. It is sooooo cool! I have been using many of the ideas for my co op class.

That is all for today. Now it's your turn! Leave me a comment and tell me what has worked for you or write a post on your blog and I'll come check it out.