An Uncluttered Mind: Homeschool catch up & family

  Whew, I need to catch up. I was pretty much off the pc for awhile. We had some family in for a few weeks last month. Our cousin brought her mom down with her, so that was a huge surprise. It was very nice to see them.
   Then some of my in-laws came for a visit. They rented a beach house near us. In all, it was a lot less stressful than I thought it would be. Both women are former teachers, though one was an elementary teacher. When they visited last summer, they were very against home school. I'm sure they still are. But, after looking at our Phonics Road, math and some of the things we have gone over, as well as just observation, the former elem teacher, was impressed. She mentioned that what we are doing is good for right now. We talked briefly about what we would do with our little guy if we had to place him in school. Would he be bored? How far ahead would he be? Things like that. And, my husband is coming around a little more. He said we would continue with home school for now, though he'd have questions later on. I am happy, but sad because it is causing friction between him and his folks.
  Anyhow, on to my review. Last was week 16, and if you count the weeks, you'll see we took a small break. I think I took 2 weeks to cover one of those weeks, and then with family here...But, that's the great thing about home school. We can go at our own pace. And considering we are technically kindergarten....

  So week 17 of Phonics Road we covered the normal spelling words, and then introduced abbreviations and contractions. He was a little sloppy with his letters this week-just being lazy and seeing what he could get away with.

Here are some of week 18's words-much nicer printing. He is still marking the letter pairs and spelling rules.

We are also continuing with comprehension, which will go through the end of the course. Some weeks are better illustrated, only because like all of us, there are just things that we draw better. Here is his book on seasons. He is doing very well with his comprehension.

Along with the Phonics Road, we reviewed nouns, sentences, verbs and started some crosswords. The workbooks my cousin gave me are just wonderful as a supplement to Phonics Road, if I want to give him a fun work page to do, as home work or just a review.

On to math, we're still sticking to review and drill. I think drill is very important at this age. And they have the memory for it, so might as well. In his math class, his teacher introduced addition with carry, which we have not covered yet, but he caught on well.

We started plants for science, which is actually the third instalment of Elemental Science Biology. We were supposed to move onto the body, but with us planting seeds and watching flowers bloom, we are doing 6 weeks of plants instead. I'm still debating ES as of yet. I think I probably should have skipped the grammar years and started with the Early Years, instead. We started with biology, only because my guy is a huge animal kid, and I didn't think it would be a problem. I'm finding now, that there is just too much, so we cut back on the animal weeks of study, and started to work in some other science experiments. Eventually, we'll be back to biology during another stage, so it's not a big deal. I feel like we cover more just by reading and exploring, than actually following a curriculum at this stage. I see now, that there are lap books that can be done for the ES Biology, so I may do that instead. There is more coloring and craft work, so more appealing for a 6yr old.