Three Weeks into School Already

Well we started back to school on the 4th of August and now suddenly it is already our third week!! So far we have stayed on track with our new schedule and amazingly enough I think that they are ALL learning. We have made some significant changes in curriculum this year and I'm loving it. We are still using Sonlight as our core for history, Bible and reading but we have changed to Abeka for most of our language arts and science. As well as adding Institute for Excellence in Writing which is fabulous! The children are doing so well with all of it, and it is such a relief since I spent so much time stressing over my choices as I mentioned in another blog entry. The Lord truly helped me through Robert to discern what were the best choices and He is rewarding us with a smooth transition. James, Peter and Emma are doing key word outlines and writing summaries from them all on their own...praise the Lord. My non writers are begging me to do writing which I never thought would happen. We have also done science every day we have done school...which for those of you that know me well know is a feat in and of itself. They are loving it and doing so well with learning about insects and some things about plants which we did cover last year. We are also doing devotions each morning to start our day and everyone is memorizing scripture together as well.

Daniel and Ana are on the right track as well and are coming along with their Abeka curriculum and Math U See. They still work slower than the others but I'm seeing some real progress and I'm hopeful that we will be able to cruise through the kindergarten curriculum and perhaps squeeze in some 1st grade work before the end of the year. We'll see! True praises all the way around.

Through some evaluations we have discovered some of the learning difficulties that we are dealing with with Peter and Ana and it has helped me to change my way of doing things and my attitude toward their learning. Sometimes you just need someone to lay things out for you and it puts things into better focus. We are getting them some extra services lined up for speech and occupational therapy which I think will also help. Daniel is still receiving OT services and making some real progress with it. It is daunting at times to think of all the individual needs, but I'm so thankful that the Lord is giving me the chance to help them through home schooling. I truly believe now more than ever that we have made the correct choice to keep them all home. They would flounder greatly if they had to survive in a large classroom setting. I don't have much free time during the day, but we are getting what we need to accomplished and I'm feeling content with our choices. Each day is not a breeze don't get me wrong, there have been a couple of doozies let me tell ya. But the Lord is giving me the strength and the patience most of time :).

We are looking forward to a grand adventure coming up next month. We will be travelling back to Virginia to see our dear friends and to visit Washington DC. We are all thrilled to be getting to do this. It is something that has been in the works since the beginning of the year so we are all anxious to finally get going. Until then we will try to complete some of our house projects. Robert is done laying the foundation for his garage...yippee! And we are taking some time now to replace some windows on the house and prepare it for paint. Which we will hopefully have someone doing while we are on our trip. So with God's help, when we return we will have a freshly painted house to welcome us. What a true blessing that would be.