One Down

The first week of school is finished. One down, 35 or so to go!

We started off with a short schedule, each child only having a few subjects, Grammar, Math, Logic and Art. The grammar and logic curricula, and the Artist's math curriculum are new to me this year. So the slow start is to benefit me as much as to ease the kids into the school year.

So far I am very pleased. Math U See seems to be a huge benefit to the Artist. She has not gotten lower than an A on any of the papers or the test yet, and most unexpectedly, she announced yesterday that math was fun now! That is a huge change in itself. As the work gets more complicated, the good attitude and growing confidence should help her through.

I still like Saxon math, and I am going to keep up with Saxon for the Engineer. When he gets to sixth grade math I will figure out what to do next. That is the point at which I tried A Beka math with the Artist. Not a good move.

The grammar books have great information -- I am very impressed and glad I switched to Shurley Grammar. It is much more teacher intensive than the former program. That is good, because I will not need to rely on tests to tell me how the kids are doing. The preparation and teaching time required of me is something else. I'd been spoiled, and now I need to re-work my daily tasks to be sure the kids get what they need in the grammar realm.

So far, I like the logic text, but we are working slowly with it, so I do not have enough of an experience it to write about it yet.