Its Been so Long!

Its been so long since I've updated.  It seems that lately I am too busy homeschooling to have much time to blog about it.  My son's dyslexia evaluation is scheduled for next month, which was the earliest they could get him in.  The test is a formality though.  I've already been told based on questions I answered that it is 90% sure that he is dyslexic.

Meanwhile, he is plugging away with his reading.  We are past the halfway mark for Saxon Phonics 2, and I swear this curriculum is exactly what he needs.  I wrote a review about it HERE.   For those who don't know, my screen name on most sites is Thrice Blessed.

On Friday my son is seeing a developmental ophthalmologist  who will thoroughly test his eyes, this is because often visual tracking, and binocular vision difficulties accompany dyslexia, and can make it even harder to overcome.  The vision difficulties are usually reversible, leaving the child to only deal with the brain/processing problem of dyslexia, rather than continuing to struggle with both  processing difficulties and vision difficulties.

On another note, since my son's reading is improving with the Saxon Phonics, I've decided we should now begin to try to catch up in other areas of academics, areas that have been somewhat neglected as we focused so much time and energy trying to get him reading.  

One of those areas is Language Arts, things like writing, grammar, and reading good literature, which have, in my mind, always been important elements of "education".  So to address this we are going to start using Learning Language Arts Through Literature. 

We will be starting with the Yellow Book.  The Yellow Book covers third grade skills, and my son is in fourth grade approaching fifth grade.  I would love to be able to skip this level, and put him in the fourth grade book, but he still needs so many of the skills in the yellow book, we are going to work through the summer, and once we finish Saxon Phonics, we are going to try to do two days worth each day in order to catch up.  In the Yellow Book, my son will learn third grade grammar and punctuation, will practice some spelling patterns, will review some principles of phonics, will read and study some quality children's literature, and will learn cursive handwriting.  My youngest daughter will do it right along with him, I know she is capable.  In fact, I think she could probably handle the fourth grade level, even though she is in second grade.

We are also going to start doing some history, which we have been neglecting this year.  We will go through This Book together.  

I plan to do most, if not all of the reading on this one.  There are review questions at the end of each chapter, which we will discuss.  I won't be testing my kids on them.  Again, my daughter will do this with us.  I hope to finish the History book before summer, so that during summer all we have to do is Language Arts.  Then next year, I would like to do Mystery of History, Volume 1.

For Science, we may or may not start something this year.  The children are both taking science at the co-op, so we don't really need to do it.  However, I am considering THIS for next year.  

I am considering teaching it at the co-op, which is just once a week, and then also using THIS at home.  

I know that is two science programs, but I think we can handle it, and the plus is that we already own both!  The "Considering God's Creation" one will review earth and space science, and since it been almost two years since we covered that, I think the review is good.  It will also add depth to the Biology that we will study once a week at co-op.

Well, I hope to post again soon, for now I have to get to bed, because tomorrow I work and the come home to homeschool the kids.