Saturday, November 25, 2017

homeschool: coop and school update 2017

Last year when we did CC Essentials for Noah, we took a break from the homeschool co-op that we had done two or three times yearly in the fall. We went back this year. It was a good experience for only eight weeks up at Rimrock church, which has just the most beautiful location.



I took these pretty photos down by Rapid Creek on the final nice day we met together. 



They have an amazing set-up at Rimrock with the creek and a huge field, a garden, etc., etc.. I could just plunk down a trailer in their field and live there happily. I've always wanted to live next to a creek. :D



A panoramic of the field, the right side of which we used and I had set up for kickball. 



Samuel's gym teacher, Sarah, sent me a few photos of him in her class. To his right in the blue shirt is Norah. Her family are our friends and in our small group and every time he and Ezra play The Game of Life, Norah is both of their wives. Ha! I guess she's the only girl their age they know... This last time they played, both boys were throwing their little cars around with the little plastic families inside, and yelling, "Get in there Norah!" HA HA! Hilarious. 



Samuel playing an eat-the-donut game without his hands. This reminded me strongly of the time we did the same thing in Gburg in 2009 but Noah and Evie were tiny. So sad how huge they are now!



Noah's classes were Logic, Choir, and Apologetics. The choir class was not to his liking at all but we had no other choice because every single other class was full. 
Evie's classes were Crafts, Geography, and Inventors and Inventions.
Samuel's classes were Gym, Crafts, and Science. 
I helped with a 3/4 and 5/6 grade gym class where we played more old fashioned games. I wish I had taken any pictures the first six weeks when it was beautiful outside but I forgot. Here is the third and fourth graders playing What's the Time Mr. Wolf?



That day was the first time it had snowed (October 26), though it didn't fall much in town. So pretty.



The fifth and sixth graders playing the same game.



This was from the final day of class, November 2, when Samuel's class played with parachutes. Wasn't that just the best day in gym class when we were little?!


When we'd return on Thursdays we'd do the very minimal of school work like finishing up Math,  Spelling, and Latin for the week. I was looking forward to the end of co-op so I could conquer more on Thursdays.

I don't know what it was, but on October 30 I felt like we had an above average day in school and so I took some videos of all of the kids. I haven't updated since the first day of school when I said I just didn't know how Samuel would do this year, if he would continue to struggle with blending sounds in reading or if he would be able to move beyond that milestone. It turns out that he is doing great this year and not struggling like before! I had been worried he had an issue with dyslexia or an aversion to the curriculum and therefore needed something different. However, it seems that all he needed was a little more maturity because this year he is a reading rock star. He's not as fast as Evie was, but he is blending and learning and retaining new words every day. Like on this particular day, he learned a whole bunch of new words and knocked them out of the park.



He is doing even better now than in this video from a month ago. 




Evie continues to excel at reading of any kind, I think she's at Noah's level or beyond, but this day I recorded her reciting the poem her Grammar book had been working on for a couple weeks.




Noah is working away at Second Form Latin and doing well. I can't even begin to keep up with him or even really understand more than the bare minimum. I had to go into covert mode to capture some of his Latin recitations at the beginning of a new lesson this week. The dude on the video is crazy fast but Noah knows all his charts.




A day or so later I introduced Samuel to these little easy reader books we got with Noah's kindergarten Sonlight curriculum. I caught him reading them all on his own during quiet time and it was stinking adorable.




This is my favorite of the two videos because right at the beginning Samuel says, "Alright. I'm gonna like this one. Lets see what that one says..." I love him moving into being able to read all by himself!

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