This is, so far, the best school year we've had. Both girls are progressing well.
In 3rd grade, E has completed 95 out of 176 lessons/tests in her math. She continues to learn math quickly, and just breeze through. She has completed 16 out of 34 Spelling lessons. She is still working on becoming quicker with her handwriting, but her neatness and spelling have grown by leaps and bounds now that she writes the majority of her work in cursive. E is consistently reading longer chapter books; her favorites are currently the "Boxcar Children" series. She isn't doing science as a formal subject right now. We are almost finished with her Health book, and we dropped her McRuffy science, due to it's lack of explanation, and she and I's lack of interest in the boring way it was written. We will be doing Abeka science when we finish Health. E is also loving her Abeka 3rd grade History and Geography when we get to it, but we will concentrate more on that the second half of her school year.
The subject I am most impressed with this year is Rod and Staff English. For years I have heard all the rave reviews from other home school parents about this program. Yet through 2nd grade I went the "gentle, "Charlotte Mason" style of learning for E's language arts due to her handwriting issues. I thought Rod and Staff might be too "hard" or too vigorous for E jumping in at the 3rd grade level, but I was wrong. Rod and Staff is PERFECT for her! She just completed the second unit (out of 5) and she has done exceedingly well so far. Our gentle, yet repetitive, approach to English the last 2 years prepared E perfectly for R&S's textbook. She and I do much of the textbook orally, doing only 1 or 2 of the written assignments per day, plus the extra worksheets for extra written practice. These first 2 units have been mostly review of what she already knew well...nouns, pronouns, and the 4 types of sentences, so we will see how she fares with Unit 3, which is on verbs.
C is progressing through her books well, also, although we've had a few minor setbacks. She is doing well with Apologia's General Science. She loves the experiments, and the book is written in a very interesting, and easy-to-understand fashion. She is just finishing the 7th module. She is also doing well with BJU World Studies, but MAN is this the most boring book we have ever read! Both C and i agree we will not be using BJU for History or Social Studies again, simply because it is such a struggle to read and stay awake. LOL However, it IS a good overview of our World, both past and present...just very dry.
C and I are both liking Lightning Literature. The reading selections are good, except for "Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland", which we just finished. We did this book as a read-aloud, since I had never managed to read it as a child. Although we both could barely stand the book, it IS a good example of creative writing. About the only thing I liked about it were the puns. The rest of their selections, even the poetry, have been excellent, and C has done well, and even (though she won't admit it) like the written assignments.
Our major hurdle this year for 7th grade is Math. Last spring and summer she had done the first 5 chapters of BJU Fundamentals of math. It was taking her an hour, to 2 hours, per day. She detested it. I loved it, and thought it was a wonderful math program. I decided, though, to keep her interest in math, to try "Life of Fred" math. I thought maybe, since C loves reading, and hates doing lots of math problems, that the humorous storyline, and the greatly reduced written problems, would appeal to c, and math wouldn't be such a struggle for her. Well....she loved the humorous story line, but she proved (by her slipping grades) that she NEEDS the repetition and drill work of a standard math textbook. So after wasting the first 6 weeks of school this year on "Life of fred" we have gone back to finish BJU's math. We are currently in the middle of chapter 7. Not only does C need the repetition of 30 or so problems a day, she needs MORE practice, and we are doing EVERY problem...doing the odds on day 1, and the evens on day 2, and the quizzes on day 3. So it is going to take us until high school graduation to finish 7th grade math! LOL
In other news....we are still working one day a week at the no-kill animal shelter, although some weeks we go in twice a week. All 3 of us love the work, although we are always sore and exhausted (even the girls) on the days we work there. Next week we will be working both Wednesday and Thursday, as they are very short of help on Holidays. That's fine with us; we will just have Thanksgiving dinner Friday, a day after the actual holiday. It matters not to me which day we actually eat our big dinner, but it matters to the 300 plus cats that there are people to feed, water, and clean their cages, let them out to exercise and give them love and attention.
My oldest daughter, 20, (technically an ex-step-daughter, but both she and I consider ourselves true mother and daughter) lives back in the area, and we have been seeing lots of her. She will be joining us, of course, for Thanksgiving. She is in the process of moving this weekend, to an apartment only a few miles from our house.
And a week ago C came rushing in the house out of the freezing rain and brief snow we got exclaiming, "Look what I found!" In her hand was a tiny 3 or 4 week old kitten, so we have a new addition to our already over-populated feline population. To be truthful, the next morning I took him in the to shelter we work at, but after 3 hours of work the girls and I went back to check on him, and just couldn't bear to leave such a tiny creature in a cage all his life, so...we took him back home.
Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We plan to take most of the week off of school, and concentrate on animal shelter work, and prepping for a huge meal with family.
