Our school year is humming along. I am having fun this year with my girls and although this school year has been hard socially with COVID I feel like we are moving right along with our coursework. Because of the holidays, the next few weeks will be pretty stop and go with what we accomplish, but I am okay with this. This is one of the many benefits of homeschooling.
Joshua and Andy are wrapping up their first semester at college. Because of COVID, IUPUI ended the semester for most classes this week. Josh took 5 courses and 3 of them are finished. The other two will end in the middle of December. All three of Andy's classes are now finished. They are looking ahead to next semester and are deciding on how many courses to take. They both plan on signing up for their classes in the next week or so.
The main focus of this week is the girls reading. Elizabeth and Sarah both read aloud to me most days. Elizabeth does so because she struggles with reading/spelling at what public education would deem grade level (very much like Andy), and I want her to feel comfortable with where she is at and help her grow more confident in her ability to perform both skills well. We are reading the last book in the Land of Stories series which has been such a blessing to us because it is the first series that she is actually interested in reading. I knew there had to be something out there that would grab her interest. It just took a little while to find that series. (By the way, Chris Colfer has done an amazing job with these stories. Just outstanding. I love hearing these stories as much as Elizabeth likes reading them. They are so creative and take the classic children's story characters that you and I grew up with and turned them into something magical.)
Sarah and I are currently working through the Little House on the Prairie series. We are currently reading On the Banks of Plum Creek. Sarah reads to me in braille and our focus is on getting her reading speed up. (Her braille tutor would like her to be reading something more challenging, but I have never read through the series, and we had already started it before her instructor suggested she move on to something harder. I don't like not finishing a series once I have started it. Plus, the goal is to increase her speed, not learn braille. I figured an "easier" series would help her accomplish this better than a "harder" one.) She knows how to read braille fluently, but is a bit on the slow side. Even though technological advancements have made it so that learning to read in braille is not a necessity to get by in life, I am insisting that Sarah learn to be solidly proficient in her reading accuracy and speed. Call me old fashioned, but I just feel it will serve her better in life if she can read braille despite the potential non-necessity of it.
The third book that we are reading is one that I read out loud to Sarah. When Josh and Andy were high school homeschoolers we had a subject that I called Great Books. I read aloud to them from books that I considered classics, usually ones with life lessons or important social implications. I tried to expose them to all different types of stories, and we ended up reading through a good number of books. Josh enjoyed the class more than Andy did, but I know that they both got something out of that time. I wanted to continue that tradition with the girls because it is something that I feel is an imperative part of their education as it opens their minds to different experiences outside their own.
Horses and stories make up the majority of Sarah's interests/life, so this "subject" was a no brainer for me when she decided to come home this year. Plus, she was working on an Honors Diploma when she was in public school. I would like to be able to help her accomplish this as a homeschooler. Reading the classics and then having her write out extended responses/essays pertaining to those books will help her to meet the language arts portion of an Indiana Honors Diploma. We are finishing up our second book since she came home in September. The first book we read was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin. We are going to finish up Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment