I don't know what happened over break, but things have turned 180 degrees!! For the last week, I have covered a whole day's worth of work in one day!!! I don't think that has EVER happened! I feel like we are finally moving forward on some things!
I have trapped Micah in the kitchen and amazingly, he is occupying himself. My floor may be covered with pots, pans, food containers, toys, shoes, food from my pantry, etc. by the end of the day, but he has played by himself and I have been able to get school done!! We are still nursing, so I have tried to do that during reading time and that has worked out well too!
Christian is another story. We had some MAJOR behavior issues with him last fall/ winter. Matt and I were not quite sure what was going on with him, but he was in time out 5-7 times a day. By Christmas, we had confiscated most of his toys and even some of his clothes. We were dealing with discipline issues that we had never dealt with before. And on top of the misbehavior, he was not very cooperative in school! It would often take him 20 minutes to do one worksheet. I actually set the timer and if he wasn't done at the end of 20 minutes, I made him do the rest in the evening. I felt like it was a waste of my time and he was just not doing well!
Now, he has totally flipped. He still says, "No" when I tell him it is time for school, but he still comes over and sits down. I no longer have to set the timer because he keeps working on his schoolwork. His reading has improved by leaps and bounds and his latest favorite book to read is I Can Read with My Eyes Shut. He has read this to me at least a couple times and I know Courtney has also read it to him. I have also seen him by himself trying to read it! I am sooo proud of him!
He is also doing great in math. We have now learned all his numbers, so we are moving onto math concepts. Today we were doing less than or greater than and he got them all right! I barely had to teach him anything! I told him that these were concepts that Megan and Courtney still use and he was impressed!
As for the girls, they are still cooperating too. :) Megan has ended up having blocks of time to study and she has been using that time very wisely. She is becoming more independent in her school work. She actually told me about a week ago that she wants to be challenged more in history. She doesn't feel like it is hard enough for her and I tend to agree. When I picked the curriculum out for this year, I didn't want to get in over my head, so I picked something on the light side. Well, apparently she wants more!! I don't quite know how I am going to get her "more." I thought maybe she could just pick a topic we talk about and research it on her own everyday.
She is halfway through her math book and we are aiming to finish her 7th grade book as soon as I can. I have ordered the 8th grade book, so we will be doing the pre-algebra chapters in there and hopefully starting her in Algebra I next fall. She also told me that she wants to do five years of high school math. She is also trying to keep up on science and English. She is doing a great job!
Courtney is also excelling. She thinks it is funny that she is in 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade. She is still in her 3rd grade spelling book (2 weeks left), in 4th grade English, and 5th grade math. Oh the joys of being homeschooled!!! She is doing science with Christian and we just started a unit on physics. I am tempted to give her the book and let her do it independently. I think she gets frustrated when I go slower to explain things to Christian. She's always saying, "I got it mom, you can go on now." Math is super easy for her. We just did a chapter on fractions in about 3 days. She had a "four for one" special one day. We reviewed four lessons in one day! We started a new chapter today on long division and she's already telling me it is too easy. I told her to wait until 6th grade math becuase that is a very challenging year!!
As of now, things are going great! I wish my house was able to stay a little bit cleaner and I had a laundry fairy, but other than that, things are off on the right foot this semester!
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