Homeschool Month 7

 This past month of school seems to have flown by. The kids are doing SO WELL! 

Hyrum is really thriving with his schedule and clear expectations. He's finished two units in biology (molecular genetics and evolution), three sections of history (Islam, the Great Schism, and the Crusades), and is working on a unit test in math (fractions, decimals, and percentages). He's got a book report for Lord of the Flies that's due at the end of the week, and it's been good for him to read something different than the YA fantasy novels he usually chooses. He's done really well taking notes and answering essay questions. I'm really really proud of how hard he's been working and the progress he's made academically. He hasn't been quite so dedicated in music and got yelled at more than once for his lazy guitar practicing. After a couple good scoldings from Dad, he's buckled down there too and is already seeing improvement.

Abraham has become a pro at quick paragraphs and writing is no longer a cause for tearful breakdowns. I've started assigning him 5 paragraph essays and while they cause a bit of consternation, he has put really good effort into them. He did a book report last month on Indian in the Cupboard and enjoyed the book quite a bit, so we asked the librarian for a recommendation based on that. She suggested Stuart Little, and he really liked that one as well. I asked him for a short summary and he produced a two page paper. In math he passed a unit in multi-digit multiplication and division, and by the end of this week will finish the multiplying fractions unit. He's really dived into his Blender course this month. He created a lamp and animated it falling off a table, and now he's designing a castle dungeon. He's very proud of his progress with the drums and has enjoyed playing acoustically on his new kit. He has been playing songs from the primary song book on the piano, and that's been fun to listen to.

Mercy continues to read up a storm. She read a little chapter book in a much shorter time than I thought was possible, and then proceeded to further amaze me by giving me a detailed summary. She's also cruising through math and has passed a couple units this month (more with multiplication and division, arithmetic patterns and problem solving, and quadrilaterals). She's been slower than I would like at memorizing her multiplication tables, but the public schools don't even start multiplication until 3rd grade so I'm not too worried. Speech therapy is going well enough. We spend about 15 minutes everyday working on R words, and we recently started working on S. When she's really focusing, she does great. When she's not paying particular attention, she's still hard to understand, so I'm not entirely sure how much progress we are actually making. She passes off songs in Musiah like a Rockstar and is blowing both the boys out of the water if you compare their progress with their age. Also, she doesn't complain about piano practice and it's never a battle, which is such a win in my book.

The three of them worked together one week on a group creative writing project. They wrote a 10 page story and illustrated it using techniques we've learned from our art course.

Also, lots and lots of reading...