Summer - Week 2

Well, week two is just about at a close and I have to say that, aside from my cold, it's gone really well. We continued on with spelling, math, and reading aloud just about every day. Tuesday was an exception because the kids got it in their heads to write their own Harry Potter books. Cameron's was called Harry Potter's Book of Werewolves and Other Things. He filled it with pictures and descriptions of favorite things from the wizarding world. Cassia wrote one called Butterflies and Fairies which she filled first with the fairies from the Tinkerbell Movie and then from butterflies taken from a field guide. They literally spent all day working on them. Wednesday, after I made them do schoolwork first, they wrote second books! Cameron's was Cameron Potter's Book of Spells by Nicholas Flamel and Cassia's was Hermione's Book Book. Cameron's, obvioiusly, listed spells and their magic words. Cassia's was true genious though - she brought out practically all of our Dr. Suess and Little Golden Books, dumped them on the table, and copied the title and a picture from her favorites. And I think this was a 20 page book she made!

It was so funny though. Copying those spelling word definitions from the dictionary was pure and complete torture. You seriously would've thought that it was cruel and unusual punishment from the way Cameron went on about it, but when the writing was something he wanted to do? He wrote all day long for two days. Now, I know all my unschooling friends will remind me that there is no need to force them to do writing and spelling when, as they've just proven, they will do it willingly when they are interested but having to spell out every, single word for an almost 8 year old was too much for me. He really was seeming to have no sense of how to spell things at ALL and I can already see the improvement in just these two weeks. He's been keeping a chore chart for a Cub Scout badge and the entries were almost illegible three weeks ago, but this weeks was neat and orderly. Of course the spelling was atrocious because he couldn't read the words from the previous week's chart and didn't put a thought into how the word should actually be spelled, but we're working on it. While he was writing his Spell Book, he did actually make some decent efforts at spelling the words correctly before asking me for help.

Cassia finished her math book this week and started on Primary Math 1B. She was so excited to start the new book today that she did five exercises. The kids also took a spelling pre-test today and Cameron got them all right! Cassia missed two. One because she transposed the letters (sotp instead of stop) and one because she glanced at Cameron's paper as I marked it as all right and then changed one of her answers!! The funny thing is that it was right the first time and she changed it to be wrong. LOL. She was very upset to hear that. The child takes any lack of perfection very hard though. It was seriously tragic for her to get less than 100%. I think she might really be Hermione Granger!

And speaking of Hermione, we finished The Sorcerer's Stone today. As soon as I closed the book, Cameron grabbed it out of my hand and ran to replace it on the shelf and bring out The Chamber of Secrets. But then he didn't want to read it. ?? Cassia was actually the one who begged to start it and then to read "just one more chapter." I think my general rule is that I will not say no to someone who wants to read. It's not even a majority rules thing, like Cassia was insisting, it's just that it would be wrong as a homeschool parent to stifle a desire to read or be read to. If anyone doesn't want to listen, then the house is plenty big enough for them to find somewhere else to be. Of course Cameron didn't want to miss any of the story so he stayed and listened.

We're leaving for the long weekend tomorrow evening and I'm still up in the air as to what we're going to do during the day. Part of me wants to go to Park Day since it's been about three weeks since we've been there. But the saner part of me keeps reminding me that I have a miserable cold that got much worse after we went to roller skating on Monday and that we really should spend the day packing the car and such (seeing as how I'm blogging instead of doing that now). We also need to take those spelling tests, do some math, and read some more Harry Potter because I am really liking the consistency of working daily. So we'll see if sanity or desire wins out.

Have a Happy 4th of July!!