Friday marked the end of the third quarter of the 2014-15 school year. In just two months we’ll be finishing up completely and starting a nearly 3 month break. This quarter was slightly eventful since we changed math yet again and I made my final selections for next year and started working on 2015-16 lesson plans.

So our third quarter in review…

Religion
We finished watching the Doctrine and Covenants videos and started learning about the latter-day prophets after Joseph Smith. We completed through John Taylor.

History
We started the quarter off learning about South America and then moved on to colonization of North America. We touched on slavery for a week and spent the last month on the Revolutionary War and beginning of the United States.

Science
Most of the quarter was spent learning about the three states of matter. We did some fun experiments. Our science curriculum is very hands-on.

Music and Art
We finished learning about Jackson Pollock and moved on to Claude Monet. We continued learning about Bach.

Language Arts and Reading
Cameron finished reading Narrative of the Life of a Slave by Frederick Douglass and read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, some fairy tales, and is now reading Alice in Wonderland. He learned some literary terms and how to write a literary criticism paper. Now he’s learning how to make a two-level outline. Fritz finished reading Five Children and It and read almost all of Dr. Dolittle. He learned about quotation marks, diagramming questions, and a whole lot more. We switched his spelling curriculum to Spelling Workout. We started with level B and he’s quickly done 9 lessons so far. We’re trying to get him through to a point where he doesn’t already know the words. He has only hit two words so far that he had any trouble spelling. He is getting better and better at narration and dictation. Adrian is continuing to learn to read. He started using Explode the Code and while he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t put up too much of a fuss. He learned about nouns and verbs and is learning to narrate stories back to me.

Math
We switched to Math-U-See about a week and a half ago once we realized that no matter how popular Math Mammoth is, it just wasn’t working for the boys. Since they’ve all already done at least some of what their levels start with, I’m having them watch the video and take the test. If they get 100% on the test, they move on to the next lesson the next day. Fritz has done that every day and will do lesson 8 tomorrow. Adrian got tripped up on Friday because he doesn’t have all of the +2 facts memorized. He got 100%, but was slower with two or three than I want him to be so he’ll be staying in lesson 7 another day or two. Cameron had some trouble with lesson 2 (adding and subtracting negative numbers) so he stayed in that lesson an extra few days (and I think the extra practice really helped him). He’ll be on lesson 4 tomorrow. When keeping a kid in the same lesson more than one day at this point, I’m having them do one new page an done review page each day. 100% on both and they move on the next day. By the third day in the same lesson Cameron figured out slowing down and taking his time and proving he knew the material was the smart thing to do. Every day I also have the little guys do the “G” (enrichment) page and Cameron does the “F” review page since pre-algebra doesn’t have G pages. Cameron refuses to touch the blocks, Fritz hasn’t needed to, and Adrian absolutely loves them. Adrian really likes the videos, too. This is the first math Adrian hasn’t fought me on at all.

PE
The boys are all still taking taekwondo. We just had a tournament (I should write a post about that). The little guys do two hours a week. Cameron does something like 6-10. Cameron also rides his bike pretty much every day. We just signed Fritz up for swim team (starts the second week of May) and our whole family will be able to use the pool all summer. Swim team practices 5 hours a week plus swim meets. Fritz likes taekwondo, but he loves swimming so he is very excited.

Ani
Ani has pretty much finished everything she had planned for psychology. She’s reviewing math trying to get to the level she was at before she entered public school. She really lost math skills over that year and because incredibly dependent on calculators. She’s planned really fun activities for her creative writing kids class. The kids really respond to what she’s teaching them and the moms are very happy with what their kids are producing. She spends a lot of time at taekwondo taking classes and helping in other classes. She’s amazing with the little kids especially. Most importantly, her health is improving so much. Removing gluten from her diet worked wonders. We’ve discovered she also is sensitive to dairy (casein – lactose-free still gives her pain). We’re not surprised since gluten and casein often go hand-in-hand.

Overview
The third quarter was a success. We are looking forward to finishing up the year and having a nice long break (though we’ll still be doing math until they finish the levels they are currently in and Adrian will continue learning to read over the summer as well). It really is fun teaching these three boys and it’s so wonderful seeing Ani get healthy enough to actually concentrate on what she is trying to learn.

I read The Well-Trained Mind a couple weeks ago taking lots of notes and gave the kids reading and math assessments and debated and finally ordered the rest of everything we need for next year and a few things for this year.

For the rest of this year, we’re switching to Math-U-See for all three boys. Math Mammoth was great at first, but then we got to a point where it was trying to teach 3 or 4 different ways to do something (like multi-digit multiplication) 3 or 4 days in a row (hello, terrible implementation of Common Core!). This spelled disaster for Fritz. Even if he already intuitively understood one of the methods, having it explained to him in different ways in rapid succession confused the heck out of the boy to the point he could no longer figure out how to do it at all. The second half of Math Mammoth pre-algebra is supposed to come out this spring with no specific release date. Cameron is almost done the first half so we don’t really have time to wait and hope they release it on time. I think the videos and blocks and other manipulatives will be very useful for the boys, so back to Math-U-See we go. Ani didn’t mesh very well with Math-U-See when she was little. The blocks bugged her and she mostly refused to use them. She decided she wants to try Math-U-See Algebra II next year, though, so all four will be using Math-U-See by fall.

Based on the outcome of the reading assessments, I am switching Fritz from Spelling Power to Spelling Workout and adding Explode the Code and Beyond the Code for Adrian right now.

A few other changes will occur in the fall. The way we do reading, at least for Cameron, will change a bit. Instead of assigned bits of reading a chapter a day, he will have an amount of time he needs to read and will work through a list of books and will discuss them with me. I will probably not do that with Fritz, but keep him doing reading the way he did this year (read a chapter, answer comprehension questions) for one more year.

Cameron and Fritz will be adding word study to their day. Cameron will be doing Vocabulary From Classical Roots A & B and Fritz will be doing Vocabulary From Classical Roots 4. All three boys are adding cursive handwriting. Cameron will be using New American Cursive, Teach Yourself Cursive, Fritz will be using New American Cursive II, and Adrian will be using New American Cursive I. I’ve never taught cursive to a kid as young as Adrian (he’ll be 7). We’ll see how that goes.

Cameron will also be adding grammar study using Voyages in English, grade 8 and formal logic using Traditional Logic I. In addition to the regular outlining he does to add to the history I do with all the boys, he’ll be going through four Jackdaw primary source document portfolios (Reconstruction, The Russian Revolution, The Easter Rising: Dublin 1916, and Cold War and the Super Powers) at the appropriate times during the course of the year. I think the Easter Rising one will be especially meaningful to him since he has visited Kilmainham Gaol where many people were jailed following the rebellion and saw where some of the participants were executed. Adrian will also be adding Writing With Ease 1.

Religion, with all three boys, will move on to modern day prophets and their teachings. Since there is no curriculum that covers those, I will be making it up pretty much as we go along (since we have General Conference in October and April, very current teachings can be added through the course of the year). In science, we’ll be switching to Elemental Science Physics for the Grammar Stage. Unfortunately, Pandia Press doesn’t have a Real Science Odyssey curriculum for physics so we were forced to find something else. The only other thing we are adding is Classical Academic Press Latin for Children A for the boys. I’ve used part of that in the past with Ani (and Cameron was along for the ride). We got stuck at the same point twice. Hopefully with the boys being a little older it’ll go better this time.

I might start using spiral notebooks for their assignments. It sounds like a pretty good idea. Everything else we’ll continue on with the curricula we’ve been using (First Language Lessons 1 and 3 on to 2 and 4, Writing With Skill 1 on to 2, History Odyssey Early Modern on to Modern, etc.).

Ani is planning to move from unschooling to a little more structured school as she finishes her last two years of high school and prepares to enter college. Mostly, this is through live classes from the Well-Trained Mind Academy and a correspondence class or two from BYU Independent Study.