Stomach bugs!

Don't you just love those stomach bugs? Why do they always attack when you are the busiest? Maybe the point is that you are doing too much and need to slow down. OK! I get it, can you leave now. I hope it doesn't make its way around the family. I have the infected child in quarantine. Keep your fingers crossed. Of course very little school will get done today. I am working on little sleep and still have no wrapping paper for all these gifts. Can I just put the boxes under the tree? I ordered almost all of our stuff online so everything is in a box. Hmmmm...... I don't think they will let me get away with that one!

School update since we probably won't get much done today:

Baby Peep: Reading well and with confidence. Math is coming along. We will keep working on counting. He can count up to 116 but ALWAYS skips 15 for some reason. He is starting to add and subtract. It remembers me of when his brother started doing that. It was constant.

DS#1: Mom, what is 18+36?
Me: Why don't you tell me?
DS#1: Well 18 is almost 20. It needs 2 more so let's take them from the 36 making it 34. Now we have 20+34. Much easier. It is 54. You understand mom?
Me (mouth on the floor ): Yes I got it. Thanks.

He was 3.

Anyway, back to baby peep.... he's learning style is neither like his brother nor his sister. I was hoping for one way or the other but that would have made life boring don't you think? He is auditory, but not really; he is visual, but not really; he is kinesthetic , but not really. Back to the drawing board.........

The next child is actually doing quite well. He surprises me all the time. Although he is only 8, his reasoning skills are beyond that and always have been ahead. Just reread the above conversation with him when he was 3. He might of not even been 3 yet. His vocabulary was always very advanced. This child is fully auditory. Everything he hears becomes knowledge. He hears it, processes it, understands it, and then uses it from then on. Math is going well again. I separated him from his sister in Math and he is enjoying it again. We are still doing the review of Singapore Math 5. We will be done the first week of the New Year and then we will start SM 6. I was hesitant to start that since it is so far ahead of his age grade but he is definitely ready for it. We will see how it goes come the New Year. For Spelling I gave him the SWR test to see what level to start with him. Well that was a HUGE surprise. I figured he would be somewhere in second grade, he actually tested 4.9. That is 4th grade solidly. I still think I will start teaching somewhere in 3rd just to make sure. He is enjoying it and I have seen an improvement already. We watched Akeelah and the Bee this past weekend and he is going around spelling all of the words they discussed in the movie. I told you he is very auditory. I wish there was a spelling program based on that method! Latin is coming along well. I actually think we will start Ltin Prep with him after he is done with Latin for Children Level A. I think he will have a lot of vocabulary from LfC this year making LP easier. Classical Writing is helping cement the grammar as well as making Latin easier. I still have to think that over some more but it really appeals to me. Recently on one of the yahoo groups I am on there was a great Latin discussion. I have to print and reread those messages. There was a lot of great information there. I must make use of review more. I started to implement some of that with the oldest and it is finally starting to sink in. As for the writing projects in Classical Writing well we hit a wall. The last couple of weeks of Aesop A and B are all Bible stories and the kids are not into them at all. I had to look for our own stories to continue and I am not very good at it. I think we may just start Aesop B with this child. Since his spelling is improving I may be able to actually understand the stories now.

The oldest peep is coming along. Why do I feel like I have to drag this child along? She is doing well in Math now that we are doing Saxon 76 after I swore I would never use Saxon (that is for another post). She is confident in Math again, so why does she still complain. Everyday, Math lessons take forever. She almost never has anything wrong unless she carelessly copied the problem wrong. But the complaining is still there. Why do I have to do this? I hate Math. I am not good at it! I hate Math. I don't know what I am doing. I hate Math. I could go on, but I will spare you. Where does this come from? I am good at Math and so is her father. Once I get her to look at the lesson and not complain then she is off and running but the complaining just has to be a part of it. Then Latin..... she is finally doing well. She is taking the time to parse the sentences, then translate the words, then write the sentence in a way that it makes sense. She is almost always right too. But she still complains! This is hard. I don't want to do this. We have started doing the Latin together and the complaining has lessened. I hope to set a good example. I get really excited when I get a sentence right. This is all new to me and I have been learning right along with her the whole way. Her young brain is remembering the declensions better than I, but we are making progress. Classical Writing is going fairly well. The grammar is helping her Latin and her Latin is helping her grammar. We still need lots of help in the writing assignment. I just do not know how to make her understand detail. She always wants to just write the events and no detail.

Well that is our update on school. We will finish out the week and then stop until the New Year. I still have not decided if we will start right after the 1st or if we will begin January 8th. There are a few camps going on in our area and I may sign them up for those the first week in January. We will see.