Last week was the first week of "everything else" starting. We are now in our new normal.
Sarah turned 7 this past Sunday. How is it that 6 seems "still young" and 7 feels "old" to mommies? She is an amazing girl. She had her friend Hannah over for the night and they actually talked more than played. Listening to them at 11pm trying not to talk brought back so many of my own memories. I think she's still as big around as she was when she was 3, but she's getting tall enough that I'm not able to part her hair as easily as I once could. It's becoming clear that she has "tall genes".
She is still in ballet. This will be the year (Intro to ballet) that we'll be able to see if she really likes ballet or if she just likes going to ballet. She is also still in Chinese School at a local church. I think she is about to move into the 2nd grade there. I wish I could say if she's "good" at it. No one would ever say otherwise because they (the Chinese) are so glad she comes so faithfully. Glen too. I think he's in 3rd grade now. :) I wish I could learn it, but with all the other subjects my brain hurts at homeschool enough. We are doing 2nd grade this year. SECOND GRADE!!! We use Sonlight Core 1 for history/geography/bible/readers (for core 2 intermediate). I like it mostly. It's been great for geography! Do you know where Palau is? I do. :) There are some things I could do without in it or wish were presented differently, but I need their plans. We use Writing with Ease 2 (WWE) and First Language Lessons 2 (FLL) from Susan Wise Bauer. Both present writing and grammar in ways I didn't use in grammar school. Given my grasp of writing and grammar it seemed like a good idea to go the opposite way. I have planned for years to switch to an Amish curriculum for language arts in third grade so I'm not sure if we'll use them next year. Math. Oh Math. We use Horizons 2 right now. Ummm, we're on lesson 36 (of 160) and I've not had to teach her anything beyond what the directions mean yet. I'm a little frustrated with Horizons right now. I had planned to do Singapore Math but never go the workbooks, so now I'm trying to decide if I want to go with Right Start for 2 grades before switching to Saxon in 4th grade. Luckily Sarah is a good bit ahead of the game in math so Mommy has time to have a little breakdown before doing something one way or the other. For Bible we are using (in addition to what Sonlight does) Christian Light Education. Another Amish (or maybe Mennonite?) curriculum. Sarah loved the Amish Bible stuff we did in preschool so I gave this a try this year. It has little books that she completes on her own with some sort of activity at the end...she really likes it. Oh, and science is from Sonlight too. Sadly, I think I'm one of the very few that really dislikes Usborne books. So getting science done is a struggle at best. But in 2nd grade it's not a big deal anyway. That leaves us with her Friday at V****** program. "V" is a local private school that has 1 day a week classes for homeschoolers. It gives them a chance to have a class and do class-type things that I don't think they would die without, but it's an opportunity we are able to take right now that seems like a good fit for Sarah. Who knows if we'll be able to swing it next year, but if God makes a way I'll listen to Him. At the school they get music, art, Latin, history, some sort of writing. I don't think she's going to get a whole lot out of it academically just because they had to combine the 1st and 2nd grades and the majority of the class are boys. We'll see. I'm just glad she gets some art in. For some reason I never feel like getting everything out for a 10 min deal so that I can spend 20 mins cleaning it up. :) Oh, and she has her History co-op and her PE co-op (thankfully these are only once a month)....I think that's it. No wonder last week wore me out!
Ugh, would you know my battery on my laptop is about out. I'll leave you with some Sarah pics.
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