Freedom Knights Academy: Its been a long time!

WOW! I've been gone a long time! We had a great Christmas, but very busy, followed by 2 weeks of sickness! Yup, 2 WEEKS!! Our whole Christmas break, where I had planned to have fun, was spent laying around the house watching TV because every body was sick! It started the day after Christmas and ran all the way until January 3 or so! UGGHHH!! I was very upset about that, but oh well we move on!

Last week we started back on our regular schooling schedule, that was a tough week! After being sick and literally doing nothing it was hard for all of my guys to get back into the routine, hard for me too!

I am making a few changes to our curriculum for the "spring" semester. For Elijah, the reading program that came with his curriculum I felt was weak and below his level, so we switched to Rod and Staff Reading, God Leads His People, which is 3rd grade level. So far that is working well, he enjoys it and the stories, I like that its followed with comprehension questions in a workbook. Towards the end of last semester we were just using chapter books that he wanted to read, but I wasn't really asking questions to make sure he was understanding the story. We will work through this series until he finishes and then move onto the 4th grade reader, I plan on this taking us into next school year, which is ok. Another change for Elijah will be his Spelling, he has really been struggling with his words every week and was missing quite a few. I never knew whether to give the words another week or just move on. So just this past week I decided to switch to All About Spelling starting with Level 1, I have heard awesome things about it! So I am very hopeful that this will help him to understand the reasons behind why words are spelled the way they are.

For Noah I am going to begin a more strict preschool/kindergarten curriculum with him. He turned 5 in January, so I am thinking its time to move into more structured schooling. So we will be doing a Letter of the Week program and Raising Rock Stars Preschool, modified to fit our needs. We are going to cover 2 letters a week, because he already knows some of the sounds but not all. Once that is completed, in about March, we will move onto learning some sight words. We will also be working on writing letters and numbers, along with some early math concepts. Along with his book work, he has found a new love for Starfall, so that will be added into his week as well.

As far as Zach goes, I had planned to begin some Tot Schooling with him, but I am a little overwhelmed with the other two right now. So we will not be doing any thing too formal, just lots of learning play and letting him explore with rice, beans, pipe cleaners and such.

My new plan is to write a post every week about what we have been doing. So far I am not off to a great start! Hopefully I will get myself back on track and be able to do that! Here are a few pictures from our break and last week. Enjoy!