Learning is actually fun

Each week, we are completing more work than the week before but it has stopped feeling like a mad rush to cram everything in.  We are enjoying each activity and the progress he has made in just 8 weeks has given me confidence in my decision to make things much more informal in terms of the actual curriculum.  I have stopped trying to follow it closely and instead substitute in things that are more fun and reinforce the areas we are working on.

Art is still his favorite, and I am surprised by how well our method of introducing classic art pieces is working.  I tape up the piece for the week on the refrigerator and we talk about the painter.  Then sometime during the week we look at the painting and try to pick out elements to re-create.  He is getting more observant (even if you can't tell by his finished product - watercolor is really hard) each week, noticing more colors and features.  Last week was Mona Lisa.

Excuse my work - I really know nothing about painting

We are also continuing our letter crafts and it is so nice when the craft aligns with something that is happening in real life.  He did the letter P out of order when he pulled his workbook out but that's ok because we just got a pumpkin at the grocery store and he is so excited to carve it.  We painted pumpkins as well. 

He wrote the word "Pumpkin" free hand

We also started working on "A Book About Jackson", an activity recommended by the curriculum but they included it as just a thing to make in 1 afternoon.  I decided to make it more in depth and keep adding to it as the weeks roll by.

He tells me what to write about each topic we touch on and then he traces the words I have written in pencil on the lines.  He pastes the pictures on too.

So far we have added pages about his immediate family, his grandparents, and about where he lives.  I am proud of this page here:

All this really great work aside, he is a lot further from "reading" than I had thought he was.  He just is not ready at all.  It is maddening trying to get him to sound words out.  He knows individual sounds and does really well when we complete pages but he cannot rhyme and he cannot even "hear" what word is being said when he blends the simplest of sounds together.  This is the most frustrating thing about homeschool.  I can't even get him to follow simple instructions on sounding out the words.  Things haven't clicked into place yet and there really isn't anything I can do to move him further along.  He just has to make the connection on his own.  I just hope he makes it soon because sounding the same 15 words out all the time is making me want to rip all my hair out.  The thing making it even harder is how well the kid writes.  The writing normally comes much later but he can copy words out of a book like there is no tomorrow, left to right, in order.  He KNOWS but doesn't know.  Oi.

On we go to week 9, where we are going heavy on the phonics.  After this, I plan to just review for awhile and keep reading the primary phonics books, pointing to each word and having him read a few for himself.  After this week, he'll have worked consonant sounds P-, S-, M-, F-, H-, T-, N-, R-, the vowel -a-, and word endings -at, -am, and -an.  He knows more consonant sounds (for sure B-, J-, L- and D-) but they aren't officially logged yet.

Week 9 also marks the completion of numbers 1-10.  We worked their actual numeric value (counting), writing the number, and writing the word.  From here we'll also spend several weeks in "review" with math exercises that include drawing by numbers, number lines, counting and writing the correct number, and a few other activities.  Then we'll move on to writing numbers 11-20 and basic addition/subtraction exercises.

In recitation, I'll also be adding some different content.  We no longer need the ABC flashcards or numbers 1-10 cards every day (and haven't needed them for awhile).  He knows the full Pledge of Allegience, can recite our geography "We live on the planet Earth.  There are 7 continents.  We live on the continent of North America.  We live in the United States of America.  There are 50 states.  We live in the State of Texas.  Our city is Richmond, our street is xxxx, and our house number is xxxx."