July update

Last month was extremely busy. I can't believe it's already August and we're getting ready to start back on the school year calendar. We've had several birthdays, trips to the lake, a week long vacation with all of the family, my desktop finally decided it was done working, and Zoë saved enough money to buy herself an iTouch.

During the time in July that we were actually home, Zoë spent her time learning about Greek Mythology and preparing for a Greek Trivia night. I was really proud of her. She read tons of books from the library on the subject and came up with 50 questions in 5 different categories to ask everyone. As her final project we invited friends and family over, divided them into 3 teams and hosted the trivia night. She decided she wanted to serve gyros for dinner, so she helped me make those and planned the whole night. She really did a fantastic job! People's only complaint might have been that the questions were too hard. I think the high score was 19/50!

Last week I heard lots of complaints about Math from her, so I decided to try something a little different. Instead of working on ALEKS for the week, I pulled out the old Saxon books and had her do an assignment every day. After two days of Saxon she decided that ALEKS was much better and the Saxon was just a waste of time. I'm hoping it helped her realize that she's a lot better at math than she gives herself credit for. I have been spending some time doing flashcards with her just to reinforce the basic skills.

Aiden has been diligently working through the end of our curriculum and flying through his ALEKS pie. He's already 80% done with his current level and striving to finish it before summer ends. He seems to be enjoying the new vocabulary assignments we're doing. One of the assignments has you match two different parts of sentences and then write the combined sentence. He told me that he didn't see any reason why he'd need to write the combined sentence. I explained that it was extra practice to help him learn the meaning of the vocabulary words. He told me that he didn't need the extra practice, so I agree to an "experiment" to see if that was true. Of course he was right, he didn't need the extra practice and scored really well on the test at the end of the week. I think he was happy that he was able to present a logical argument to me and I agreed. I want them learning, not just doing busy work.

I'm quickly coming to the realization that next year around this time things are going to be a lot different. I have so much research and planning that I need to do this year. This is the last year I will have a curriculum to work from. I might continue Aiden with the literature component, but Zoë is going to be beyond all of it. It's time to find a high school curriculum and start diving in. Both of them will already be in high school math courses before next year, but Zoë will need it for everything. They both need to focus a little on their writing skills, but they will be doing that over the course of this year. In other words, I'm starting to panic now. I feel completely unprepared for what's ahead. I just keep trying to remind myself that everyone is really unprepared when it comes to parenting. Why should this be any different?