My home schooled son is doing amazingly well this year. He is a happier person and we are all less stressed. He takes pride in learning. He has this drive now. He is soaring academically and making progress socially. He is enjoying the opportunities he has by being home. He's been on several trips with a homeschool group. We are lucky enough to have a woman who schedules some pretty awesome trips.
My cousin is a teacher and said she will do my son's evaluation at the end of the year. She is also going to look over our stuff half way through so I can be sure we are doing okay. Maybe then I can relax. I'm not as uptight as I was though. The past few weeks have been great. It seems like everything is falling into place and I can see how much he has accomplished already.
When I first looked at the Abeka Arithmetic book I thought it moved too quickly from one concept to another, and it does. But the thing is, it constantly reviews. I don't think he will learn it and forget it as a lot of kids do when they finish a chapter. Long division, multiplication and fractions are abundant throughout the entire book. I feel confident he will master these skills by the end of the year and retain them.
Spelling has been our biggest challenge. I think the Abeka Spelling is a more advanced level than what he was used to in our public school. I don't know what the most commonly used spelling curriculum is, but if all HS spelling is like this then it's no wonder all of those homeschoolers win the spelling bees. We are using sequential spelling as well so hopefully that will improve his skills. I'm looking for study methods or games to use with the traditional Abeka spelling.
My son likes the stories in the Abeka readers. He enjoys reading now! He likes the faster pace too. He used to spend a week on one story. Now he reads a story a day in addition to the short stories in the Read and Think sheets and the speed and comprehension reader. I like the idea of all the information he is absorbing by reading so many different stories. We read other books together, but even if he didn't get any other reading beyond his curriculum, he would be fine.
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2 comments:
I'm glad to hear your first year of homeschooling is going so well. My son is in 3rd grade...we've used ABeka the whole way. ABeka math in my opinion is one of the better math programs and it's been working out well for us even though DS was having a hard time memorizing math problems.
While I still use ABeka's spelling lists, I've stopped using their spelling curriculum. We say-spell-say the words together each day, he writes them for pennmanship and then I test him. If he gets any wrong, I'll have him write them a couple times each and we move on to the next list. It's been working out nicely for us this way.
I enjoyed your blog...God bless you and yours...Ann'Re
Thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings.
I hadn't planned on using Abeka, but I bought some used books justto see what they were like, and liked them. After the fact, I thought how much easier it would have been to go with Abeka for everything - the whole package. Then, I bought Switched On Schoolhouse Spanish for my son - SOS might be easier yet!
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