Samuel's alphabet rhyme

It took what seemed like an prolonged amount of time, but we have finally adjusted to doing school again. Man, it was a hard transition this year. But of course everyone is a year older and so their coursework gets incrementally more difficult and time consuming. Evie's really isn't so hard except for occasional (lately, daily) meltdowns over two digit multiplication. Noah's work is genuinely harder this year though since he's beginning middle school. Plus we do three hours of Classical Conversations for Essentials (Writing, Grammar, Math) on Monday afternoons, so that adds quite a bit to this homeschool family that is used to being done by noon. Ha!

But I think the greatest adjustment has come in adding a third kid to the routine (kind of like when he was born!). Samuel's individual work doesn't take more than 45 minutes at this point but when the other two (and Ezra) are constantly asking for my attention and help, it gets stressful. Being pulled in four different directions is a sure fire way to lose my cool, but we're figuring it out...slowly. Except now we're about three months in and I'm feeling more optimistic. 

Samuel and his alphabet cards he's been memorizing.

Since last year I've been keeping track of their daily work...just in case.

Yesterday felt like a pretty momentous day. For Samuel's reading lesson we added in the final consonant sound, "Z." 

Granted, it's taken us twice as long to get this far as it did with Evie, but Samuel has always been slow to speak. I don't want to go too fast, be frustrated, and have to retread ground. So we've spent these three months learning and memorizing this alphabet rhyme. It teaches the name of the letter, the sound it makes, and an example of how it sounds. It was good for Evie so I only hope that next week, when we actually start applying all these sounds to reading he will get it. He is excited to learn how to read so I hope that'll help.

At three years old Samuel could hardly talk, so today felt like a big deal. It might be hard to understand him because he's going so quickly, but in one minute he recites the entire rhyme. Yay Samuel! Go go go!