Laura began using mostly ACE for her schooling this week. Except for a few problems, Laura did well. She needs a little more practice with the spelling words now that they are getting more challenging. I plan to have her write them out more and maybe give her a day on the computer to play on Spellingcity.com.
I also noticed some issues with Laura's focus. With the other curriculums I was mostly holding her hand through stuff. ACE is more independent work, and Laura sometimes wants to rush through stuff (which means it's sloppy or she hasn't retained it well), or she just gets sidetracked. I have a plan for this. I am scheduling in more breaks, and switching around some of the subjects. I am also going to organize a desk for Laura to do her work where her distractions will be minimized. With a two year old in the house, there will always be distractions, but I can try to limit them. I plan to have only one thing at a time in front of her. I think Laura tends to see all the stuff in front of her as a pile to get through instead of taking one thing at a time and really focusing on it.
Math - Laura is doing much better in math now that we are using Math-It and flashcards with her book work. Her memorization of the multiplication tables are so much better than even a couple weeks ago. I will continue this.
Social Studies - Laura finished her lessons on the history of Christian Education. She is beginning to study the Pilgrims and Squanto.
Science - Laura worked on the importance of water for animals and plants and humans. We did an experiment with celery. Right now we are working on dental health.
Word Building - Laura had trouble with this list. She eventually got the words correct for Daddy, but we had to review them quite a bit. On her first try at the test, she missed eight out of fifteen. However, we reviewed the words and re-did much of the pace work. She wrote the words a few times each and was able to spell them correctly for Daddy. Laura is a little advanced in spelling, and I started her at a higher Pace number as recommended by the placement test. The work is more challenging, but I'm sure with some extra work Laura will rise to the challenge.
Reading - Laura is on chapter nine of Song of the Brook. She also began Red Rag Riddle. While I don't usually like having two books going on at once that we are studying, Laura is almost done with Song of the Brook. There are a couple days next week where she will only be doing Pace work for Red Rag Riddle. I plan to double her Song of the Brook work on those days to finish it up. Laura will always have extra reading, but I am careful not to plan too much.
English - In Reading Skills (that I have lumped in her English), Laura did five lessons. She also worked in her handwriting book. We went back to ACE for English. It is a gentle way to learn language arts, but not so gentle that she isn't working on what she needs. There are some programs that are very challenging and push concepts very quickly. There are other programs that don't believe that children should do much grammar at all until later years. This seems to be a good balance. Plus, it gets into diagramming sentences, which is something that most public schools no longer do but that I find helpful.
Bible - Laura and I have been working on Lifepac Bible. I like it, but it isn't working for us. I'm trying to be creative and think of what we can do every day. Truthfully, I think I'll just come up with my own thing. Nothing I have seen so far for curriculum is what I want to do. We have Mpact Girls reading and lessons, and I will probably build a little off of those. Other than that, I'm not sure yet. I am praying about the direction to take.
Over all I am content with how this week went. There were challenges, but I feel so much more relaxed with a definite plan of action and a curriculum I trust. Laura seems to like the changes too. In fact, she asked if we could go back to ACE. We had used a lot of it at the beginning of the year, and I stopped due to financial reasons and because of some negative reviews. However, after struggling all year with this and that, I decided to go back to what my daughter enjoyed and just supplement with living books and other things.
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