Day 172

Well, it is Day 172.... Clearly I've missed a few posts.  Sorry, but the demands of homeschooling and being a mom and wife trump any obligation to post.
I have started to plan for next year. Moriah loved homeschooling at home. I think the stress of maintaining social interactions and her fight/flight reactions were overwhelming and she was glad to avoid them by schooling at home.

We moved - from one county to another during homeschool... Not a good idea. Listing the home, selling it, moving into a hotel for over 3 weeks, moving into a real fixer-upper, surviving the remodel of the basement while living upstairs, learning while the upstairs was being gutted and rebuilt, having a mentally ill big sister come home to live with us... All a really bad idea. I would counsel anyone who is planning on moving to not homeschool - especially if they buy a HUD fixer-upper...

I have started to plan/set up for next year. This next year - 5th grade - is also going to be digital... 5th grade BJU Homesat. For the past few days I have been punching out the Math manipulatives, laminating them and cutting them out. I did that for last year, and it is remarkable how many of the manipulatives got lost (the coins for example) and so I am redoing the manipulatives for his year.... Lots and lots of cutting. But the manipulatives are crucial!

Moriah made a lot of progress in math this last year. She mastered all of her tables. She has her measurements down. She still needs to work on multiplying 3 digit by 2 digit numbers. She really struggled with decimals (first time always is) and fractions, although she has made progress. This year when she stalled on a topic, failed the test, whatever, we also watched and did the problems from the Kahn Academy online to fill in gaps. That really helped her, and we will continue this practice this next year.

5th Grade BJU Math has lots of quizzes (2 per unit) to catch missing information earlier (perhaps they realized that some kids need earlier intervention.) I am excited about that because covering a topic for 2 weeks and then having Moriah come up to the test for that unit and flunk the test even though she was doing alright on the day to day work is rough. I had Moriah doing 2 worksheet pages a day (one from the 2nd edition and one from the 3rd edition) but Moriah still struggled with fractions and decimals. I feel like we will hammer these home in 5th grade, though.

Setting up for 5th grade, I had to pull all the tests and quizzes out of the parent guide packet (along with the answer keys.) I do not need the answer keys to daily work - it is easy enough work for me to grade... and besides that, I feel like it is easier to use a real teacher's edition rather than copies of work text pages with the answers. If I had one suggestion, it would be not to collate the quizzes and tests in the parent guide, but keep them separate. It was drudgery to dig each and every test out!

Well, I need to get back to cutting out manipulatives.  This week I plan to knock out the math and English, viewing the videos, setting up activities, etc.