Our first week (since public school) last week!

It was a great week! We got LOTS accomplished! Rachel's handwriting is starting to improve, and doing away with some bad writing habits she picked up at school. :) She started down a road to liking math again. :) She completed TWO lessons in her math book. Yay! We started her Book of the Centuries for History. She LOVES history because of it! Brandon's response to it, "Whatever makes history fun, right?!" She loves science. We completed 3 science lessons, the last one in the overview section, and started Digestive System and did 2 lessons there. On SATURDAY, she asked to work in "The Human Body!" lol I told her we don't do school on Saturday. . .I need a break too, plus Saturday was busy for us. I was glad to see she was so eager for it though! She doesn't like Language, Spelling and Handwriting though. (All the ones I hated in school, go figure!) But, she still does them. . .just complains about it. And she does well at least. So far, every test I've given her, whether math, spelling, or language. . .she's gotten 100% on all! Brandon was wondering if the stuff I'm giving her is too easy or something. Nope, it's more challenging than her public kindergarten classwork, she's learning it, then takes the test. Take spelling, she usually doesn't know 3 of her 8 words at the beginning of the week, but can get 100% by Friday after doing the activities and looking at the words enough and using them. And just as important, hardly any attitude in the evenings ALL week! :) Brandon and I have both noticed the difference. 8:30 catch the bus to 4:30 arrive home is WAY tooooooo long! There really needs to be a half day option for K! Or half day all together.

Michaela is doing well too. Still working on the pre-writing skills, and learning letter sounds. Let's see, off the top of my head, she knows the sounds for s, d, a, g, k, n, m, w, x, one sound for c (suh), l, almost there with u and q, j, and t. :)

Rachel's first day of full time home school since leaving public

Today was Rachel's first day of first grade (although she's been doing first grade work at home for months now)! And also our first day having her home since the end of public. All went well. :) She was excited, but the only thing is, she didn't want to do math. Evidently, she has decided math is not fun since the last track out! Ugh! From what I can gather from her, she was just bored with the same old writing numbers to 30 or 100 and counting over and over, and nothing else new really at school. I hope I can change her attitude on math. No evening attitude either! Imagine that?! She got to spend her day doing something interesting, got an afternoon rest (she won't nap for me anymore, but I do insist on a little down time, and it helps) to rejuvenate her energy and not get cranky at the end of the day. . . .we can have a pleasant evening family togetherness time without any snapping. . .homeschooling ROCKS! :)

It went so well!

I was nervous about getting resistance when it came time to take her out of public school. Taking Rachel out of school today went surprisingly well. Her teacher was sad to see her go since she just adores Rachel and she's "such a good kid," according to her. (I sure hope she had been good while at school!) But, she TOTALLY understood, especially since there's only 3 weeks left of school anyway! I was expecting some kind of resistance or hard feelings. Sounds like she'll still be getting a report card and everything! The office people were kinda sad too. She said, "Rachel's leaving!" and gave a little pout, but didn't give me a fight about it at all!

I would have taken her out on Monday, but she REALLY wanted me to come to the little Mother's Day party thing today. So, I left her in, went to the party, then took her out. Now, after the fact, a part of me actually feels a little sad for some reason, but we know this is best. I guess cause her teacher was so sweet! She just wasn't learning at her level, and we were fed up. That and Rachel doesn't work well being away from home from 8:30-4:30! That's too much for 5 year olds, if you ask me. Just about every evening, she'd be in an awful mood from too much of a long day. . . .long boring not learning much of anything new day!

I took her to Chick-fil-a afterwards for an ice cream to "celebrate her last day of public school." :)

Tomorrow is Rachel's last day!

Yep! Last day for her in public school! Sooooo exciting! Then, it's back to full time home school and learning at her pace. I wish I had never put her in there to begin with, but thought maybe it would be good for her this year. I THOUGHT that somehow she'd be able to learn more there than from me while having the new baby. I was soooo WRONG! I could have taught her more even with the birth and dealing with a new baby. . . . .Public school works for a lot of people, just doesn't fit into our life, and we'll be better off without it! I guess what we did get from it is that if times get tough in the future with homeschooling, then we KNOW the nightmare the alternative is.

Online Reading Assessment

So, today I found this site that tests a child's reading level. http://www.readingkey.com/athena/en/trialTest.php When she came home today, I did the test with her. She reads words on a 4th grade level! 4th grade in the 2nd month is where she can read words at correctly, and did better than 82% of other kids that took this test in the same grade and month as her. Past that, she doesn't get it and stumbles and butchers the words. I knew she was well above kindergarten, but sheesh! Brandon isn't surprised since she has read difficult words out of books before, and can read out of the Book of Mormon fairly well too. And at the 3rd quarter conference last early March, her teacher said she was close to getting into first grade level. Her teacher doesn't have a clue! Not to mention she "came into kindergarten not knowing how to sound out any words." Um, excuse me, but my child was sounding out three letter words since she was 3 years old!

Not sure what she reads at school, but for homework she has brought home these twaddle books that say nothing but, "My cat can. My cat can run.". . . .oh, please! She hates having to read those, but she has to also draw a picture about it and write three sentences, so she has to. How in the world can you draw and write about a "book" that has NO plot, and make it interesting? This week, she doesn't have to draw and write about the book she brought. . .just read it and talk to a parent about it. I think we'll skip the "baggie book" (that's what her teacher calls them, she sends them in a zip lock bag) this week! Especially since it looks like this Friday will be her last day of public before I transfer her back to homeschool anyway. We'll read a more challenging book instead! One with a plot!

Homeschool Field Day!

Today we went to our homeschool group's Field Day. And oh what fun we had! Looks like we'll be going ahead and just pulling Rachel out of school next week anyway (that's a whole 'nother post in itself!), so I kept her home today and took her to the Field Day too since she'll be missing out on the one at school at the end of May. It was held at a local park.

Ball Toss:

A foot race:

Get ready!

They're off!

Michaela had a late start. . . .

Michaela at the tail end!

Use sponge to fill bucket with water relay:

Rachel heading off!

Rachel squeezing out the sponge.

Michaela loading up the sponge!

Michaela coming back.
Rachel and Michaela's team won that round!
Rachel's team won the second round they played. . .they were on separate teams.

Balloon Popping Relay:

Rachel trying to pop balloon.

Michaela giving it a try! I ended up having to help her a little by pushing her down onto the balloon. . . . .

Michaela trying the sack race. Took her a while to get going. . . But she sure did jump!

Rachel in sack race.