Back to routine...

While I like to think I am a fly by the seat of my pants kinda gal (which I very well am from time to time)...I also KNOW one thing about myself and that is I like structure. I like routine, I like knowing what to expect, I like checking things off my list and getting excited by that list diminishing.

The past two weeks we've done school only on 2 occasions. But that's okay...when I started the school year I actually documented in my school report that we were going to take these two weeks off completely...so adding two days into the mix will only allow us to finish the school year two days earlier!! :)

While it's been nice to do things at our leisure, I've also allowed a bit too many freedoms with the TV time and Wii game playing time. Two things that I definitely don't like too much of in our household. When we homeschool all of our morning is spent doing schoolwork, then lunch and then some active playtime, there really isn't much "time" left in the day for technology brain drainers.

So I've spent the last hour preparing for our first official day back to school tomorrow. We have officially completed 98 days of school thus far, more than halfway thru the required amount of school days for the county!!!

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, just hope the kids we be as equally as excited...probably not! LOL

Ethan is still going strong with most of his subjects. His handwriting continues to get prettier and prettier. He still asks me to teach him cursive, but I don't think I'm ready to tackle that just quite yet. Probably next year. We received his 2nd grade math curriculum...we are about 20 lessons shy of starting that one. The nice thing too is that probably 1/4th of the 2nd grade book is 1st grade review material. Since we are not starting this after a long summer break we'll be able to jump right into it 1/4th of the way through. He's about 9 lessons shy of finishing up Reading Made Easy, a GREAT phonics curriculum in my book, and his reading level has just sky rocketed compared to where he started at the beginning of the year. We are going to work on the special sounds/spelling rules for a bit.

He's still enjoying doing the book adventure club I found online. Saturday he read enough books and took enough quizzes to officially earn enough points for a Chocolate Bar from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory! They are sending me a coupon in the mail...he was very excited!!!

I had purposefully NOT started a reading program with Ashton yet b/c he just wasn't quite ready. About 3 weeks ago we picked up 100 EZ lessons and started doing one lesson per day and he is picking it up with flying colors. We should hopefully be done with the book by the end of the school year. I catch him often sounding out words on a building or books around the house. He really is doing well. I'm so glad we chose to wait. Just those few short months not pushing him really made the difference with allowing him to feel relaxed and not pressured. He's looking forward to reading like his brother.

Overall, I feel like the boys are doing remarkably. I have nothing to compare them to, nor do I really wish too, but I just feel like we are staying the course and continuing to improve daily. Homeschooling is quickly just becoming an extension of our life. We are learning together. I thought I was going to be the one teaching them, but ultimately we are ALL growing in various ways. It's awesome!