Freedom Knights Academy: December 2013

This has definitely been a whirl wind month for my family and our town as we settle into our new "normal" and move forward to rebuild.

What you see driving around my town!

Today I will update on some of our school work that has been taking place and where we are headed for 2014!

In 3rd Grade Elijah is moving right along and I am so proud of him for finishing up his math book so he will be moving on to the next level. When we began homeschooling last year about half way through the year I realized that he was not catching on as quickly in math as the program was moving. So last January we switched to Math U See, after taking the placement test we put in him the Alpha level and he quickly moved through that and finished by May. I could really tell it was clicking for him! So this year we began using Beta, and again he moved really quickly and was able to finish it up! For Gamma I am anticipating getting about half way through the book before we end our school year in May, which is fine with me. I feel like he is finally getting caught up to where he should be in math at the 3rd grade level.

In October we visited a Dairy Farm! This is Elijah right after he scared the little calf!

Noah and Zach watching the goats.

Spelling has been the same way for him, we are almost finished with Level 3 in All About Spelling and we will be moving on to Level 4 sometime in January. Once again this is one subject I felt he was falling behind in and we made the choice last January to switch to All About Spelling. That was a great decision for us, he has been making great strides and really catching on to the concepts quickly.

In My Fathers World Adventures in US History, we have begun to learn about the states, we just finished the first 13 colonies. We are having so much fun learning all the cool facts about each state! This week we talked about Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road. When we come back from our Christmas break we will begin learning about the Westward Expansion. Have I mentioned before that I love History and Geography!! Elijah and I are so excited about the things we are learning.

My 3 Little Indians ready for Thanksgiving!

In Kindergarten we have had a rough road this past month. Back in October we began adding in reading lessons, those were not going well! Noah was struggling to remember how to put the sounds together and making them into words. So with much thought and struggle on my part, we have decided to not pursue the reading lessons at this time. I have heard, and been given the advice, to shelve it and come back to it. He is just not ready! On the other hand I found a computer learning program that he loves! ABC Mouse.com!! So he loves doing his "school" on the computer! We are still using a majority of the My Fathers World Kindergarten, we use the Bible lessons, the sound cards and sound discrimination pages, and we are also using the handwriting pages. I have hopes that he will come around before summer to want to learn to read, but I have heard account of young boys not being ready to read until the age of 7, so I am trying to prepare myself for that! Its hard to think of because Elijah was an early reader, and loves to read.

Tot school for Zach has been reading, puzzles, playing with rice, and Daniel Tigers Neighborhood! The poor kid is going through a lot right now, we are getting ready to remove his "babis" (i.e. pacifier) and he is not too happy about that! On a good note though I am so impressed at how much that kid is picking up! He can identify all of the letters in the alphabet and is working on learning their sounds.

Starting today we are on a two week break from school! We will be starting back up on January 6th! I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you all in 2014!