It's the last week of 2007-2008 school year!

Next Monday begins our 2008-2009 year officially. In the future, this week will be a "week off" week, but I've been trying to get Rachel caught up with some things, so we've been plugging along. Some of the subjects we've been working on will carry over into the coming weeks, and some curriculum will be new. We have one more unit in science in the Human Body book, and we'll be done! So, we'll probably finish that the week of August 18th sometime. I think our next science studies will be Animals/Animal Kingdoms. I'm amazed at how much Rachel has absorbed and retained in her science knowledge! A lot of stuff we went over was probably "above her age level." But, I taught it to her anyway, not expecting her to remember everything, just what she's able, and she can remember quite a bit about the human body and the body systems (except reproduction system, which isn't in the book).

In math, we're working out of MUS-Alpha and A beka 1. By the end of this week we'll be done with the addition unit, and ready to start with the subtraction unit in lesson 18 next week. (There's 30 lessons total, so we're getting closer to the end!) I suspect subtraction will be a breeze since she is already familiar with it. In her A beka workbook, we're getting close to half way through. Most of it is really too easy for her, but I want her to go through it anyway to get the extra practice with the easier stuff and master it more, and also so she gets to do all the money, measurement, clock, etc problems. That's the main reason why I added A beka math to her MUS. . .for the stuff A beka covers that MUS doesn't cover till later, but I still want her to learn now. They both offer something the other doesn't, so working out of both seems to be working for us. Around January or so, I'm projecting that she'll be into MUS-Beta and A beka 2. Once the math gets tougher, we'll slow it down a bit more and really focus on it, but for now, she's doing good retaining it all at this pace. And, I'm wanting to catch her up some so all her subjects are on the same grade level eventually. If she didn't have the ability, I wouldn't help her get there, and just leave her split between two grades. But, she's able to speed a little faster through the math and grasp all the concepts so far, so we're getting evened up while it's "easy!"

Some new curriculum will be English and Reading. I got the Rod and Staff English 2 and Reading 2 that we'll start next week. I'm putting her into 2nd grade for those since her reading is at that level, probably above; and she's been flying through her grade 1 English workbook this summer and most of it was stuff she already knew, or got quickly, so we'll go right into English 2. (Of course, this is the child that could form a few sentences at 10 months old, so it shouldn't surprise me that language comes easy to her!)

For social studies, I have a few ideas, but don't have it totally figured out yet. The history books I had planned to use for a few years now have proven to have some Christian/religious inaccuracies, so I'm trying to figure out what to do instead. We'll definitely be doing more flapbooks, I'll probably do some history through living books and then have her add a page to her 'Book of the Centuries' each time we study a new event in history, and then some map learning and geography.

Whew! I think that's it! Rachel was disappointed that today we didn't work on the Olympic flapbook since we did science instead. I told her she has to get her morning work done faster then if we're going to have time to do both science and flapbook on days I have science planned. We'll see if that motivates her any to move faster! lol