Everett and Annika worked on their Grammar from Analytical Grammar and Junior Analytical Grammar respectively. They did well, Everett remembered more than I thought he would, and Annika had no trouble reading the pages. If you've followed me through this crazy journey with her and reading you'll know how much of an accomplishment this is.
I give a lot of the credit for Annika's great advancement in reading to the Barton Reading and Spelling program. It is a program designed to help dyslexic, but can be used by anyone struggling with reading and spelling. She loves the program, and it's easy for me to teach because it's all laid out and ready to go. It saves us quite a bit of time as it teaches reading and spelling at the same time in a way she understands.
Lucas is also making great strides in reading through the use of All About Reading. This program is such great fun. He looks forward to it each and every day. We have started level 2, after holding him off quite a bit this summer, and I believe we will progress rather quickly through it. Level 3 is on order so we'll move right into that when we finish Level 2. He also started a spelling program this year. We are using All About Spelling, which dovetails nicely with All About Reading. He completed steps 1-4 this week. Everett is also using All About Spelling, but is on step 19 of Level 4. I believe this level will be completed rather quickly, and we'll move right along into Level 5.
Math is quite a change from the last few years. Lucas was doing ok with Saxon, but the lessons were really boring and not fun in the least. Everett and Annika were using Teaching Textbooks for the past 2 years,and although it's a great program I found that the retention just wasn't there. They could do the work by going through the motions, but they weren't really grasping the topics. I did a lot of researching in the late spring and came to the decision to try Math U See. I bought levels Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta. The biggest difference is that Math U See is a mastery based program unlike the other programs we used in the past which were incremental or spiral. We started it a few weeks ago. Annika is working on Gamma which focuses on multiplication to help nail down those facts and operation. Lucas is working on Alpha to fill in any gaps in his single digit addition and subtraction. They are both progressing rapidly, and I see us finishing these levels up within the next couple months and moving on to Delta for Annika, which focuses on Division and to Beta for Lucas, which focuses on multidigit addition and subtraction. Everett did a quick review of some topics in Epsilon to brush up and master some fraction topics that he felt he didn't really understand. He then expressed his interest in using this for his upper level math courses. He opened up and talked to me about how he felt he did with Teaching Textbooks. He said it was a fun program, but he didn't feel that he really had time to grasp a topic fully before having to move on. He asked if we could use Math U See this year instead and I agreed. He chose to start with Pre-Algebra again because there were things in the scope and sequence he said he didn't work on in Teaching Textbooks or that he simply couldn't remember how to do. He'll work through both Pre-Algebra and Algebra 1 this year. He worked with Adding and Subtracting negative numbers, and although it proved a tricky topic, he did enjoy the lessons and seems to be understanding it now. The Math U See manipulative blocks are a big hit with all the kids and really help them cement things in his mind.
The last subject we worked on this week was History. We have a few lessons left in our study of the United States during the early 19th century. We read about and discussed the Oregon and Santa Fe trails. Everett and Annika worked on a project to add to their lapbooks about traveling in covered wagons. Lucas is still in tag a long mode when it comes to history.
Here's a slideshow of pictures from our week I hope you'll enjoy.
