first day of school 2017/18

I had enjoyed summer and sabbatical so much, I kind of dragged my feet for school preparation. After we returned from Montana at the end of July, I dove in to the updated fourth edition of The Well Trained Mind in order to get my mind around middle school a little better and to familiarize myself with the new book suggestions. I finally got through many, many chapters and ordered all of our supplies. It was about a week later in August than we usually start.

A silly first photo I took of the kids. I caught that Luna lick! And Samuel and Ezra of course aren't even looking.

 Our first day of school was Monday, August 28, 2017.

Time for the Six Pack to go back to school!

And a silly one of us either looking at Luna (Terry and I), looking elsewhere (Ezra), or making a silly face (Evie), or still looking at the camera (Noah and Samuel - ha!).

Daddy prayed for us before he went to school. Can we just say a collection, "Awwww"? 

Ezra is four years old and is doing a very gentle approach to preschool. Now that we're exactly a month in to school, I can say that he is learning his letters and sounds at the same time Samuel reviews them every day and he is doing very well! He enunciates so nicely, something I notice since that was something Samuel could not do at that age when he went to Communication Preschool. 

Samuel is six years old and starting first grade. We had some reading difficulties last spring and so took a step back to review and get some help from a tutor. We thought perhaps he had dyslexia but now are fairly sure he didn't/doesn't. This year I am continuing with the same phonics program with a  lot of emphasis on review and moving slowly. If at the end of this year he is still struggling with reading, we will get him professionally tested. For now he is doing well enough. We shall see how the year progresses since we are just now getting to the more difficult letter blends. 

Evie is nine years old and entering the fourth grade. Holy moly, didn't I just do phonics with her? She is a rock star reader and can keep up with anything Noah the 7th grader reads. I am a little curious what her reading level is... And it's just appropriate that Luna is posing so well with Evie here. They seem to like each other best.  

I guess Luna is sitting nicely with Noah too. Ah well. Noah is 12 years old and in the 7th grade. I decided not to do more Classical Conversations and Essentials with year to try to keep my stress level down. Instead we are doing an 8 week co-op this fall. Just today we finished our third week. The kids love it. Noah is continuing on with all the usual stuff including Logic and Memoria Press' Second Form Latin. 

I think I put on Facebook that Luna's main objective this year was to learn not to jump up on people. But even more importantly now, she has to learn how to get along with the cat we got on my birthday. Oh my!