Perfect Blend of Girly-Girl and Rough and Tumble Tom-Boy

 My little daughter Danielle is quite amusing with her mix of typical little girl traits and  "Tom Boy" traits.  Here is the cute little play house she built from legos, typical little girl stuff...  well until you look closer:

 

Her dream home has a missile launcher.

 

And the woman of the house drives around armed with a pistol.

 The man of the house drives a car that is part fighter plane.

This and That

Well, homeschool has been going pretty well since we started using Switched On Schoolhouse for my son.  He still needs a lot of help to stay on task, but having everything laid out for us makes that easier.  I am able to point to what is due that day and he knows there is an end in sight, he won't be doing homeschool forever if he stays on task.  I only wish I could be home with him more.  If I was able to work with him more, we could get him done with the 4th grade level before summer, and he'd be able to have a summer break.  As it stands though, we will work the entire summer, just so he will be only a year behind in September.  I have decided that once we get him into the fifth grade level, I am not going to push too hard to catch up, he can just be one year behind in everything but math.  We'll just call him a 5th grader and not stress about it, and he'll be doing 6th grade math by than, so his test scores should show him ahead in that subject.  Later when he is older, if he wants to catch up in order to finish school on time, he can work toward that. 

It is also easier because at times I am able to leave him alone to work, the text-to-speech is certainly not perfect, but it still makes some independence possible for him.

He is working with the One Minute Reader program I blogged about last time as well, and it really seems that it is going to help him.  Of course it is too soon to really judge, but so far it seems to be having some positive effect.  If nothing else it is giving him more practice, and because his sister isn't doing the same thing, he isn't feeling like he's being compared to her.  He is competing against his OWN best speed, not someone's else.

It's been a While!

I haven't posted on this blog for a long time!! I am busy homeschooling, going to work, teaching at co-op, teaching Sunday School, and a billion other things, and I just don't have as much time to write as I would like to have.

A lot has changed in our school lately, we've abandoned things that weren't working well for us, and picked up things that we hope work better.  My son still hasn't been officially tested for dyslexia, but I am more sure than ever that he is dyslexic.  Because I work outside the home, I just don't have the time to keep reading to him, but he needs to move beyond his reading level in subject matter like Science and History. So we've started using Switched On Schoolhouse for him, he can make use of adaptive technology like "Text-to-Speech" and have the computer read the lessons to him, then he only has to read the questions that come after.  However, I do ask him to follow along with the computer while it reads, and I have him read one lesson a day, using the Text to Speech only for individual words he gets stuck on.  He is doing 4th grade level, which is about a year behind where he should be, but the reading problem has held him back in the content areas a little, and the fourth grade level covered content that I felt was an important foundation for the later levels, so he'll just have to work year-round until he's at grade level. He is using Switched on Schoolhouse for Bible, Language Arts, Science, and History/Geography.

To address the reading separately, we are going to start using One Minute Reader which is a program designed to build fluency in reading.  I figure we have covered all the phonics he needs, and what he needs now is practice, practice, practice.  Of course, we continue to cover some phonics through spelling, but really we have been over and over phonics again and again.  Research has shown that repeated reading of the same passage, and choral reading are two of the most the effective ways to build fluency in readers, including dyslexics, and since One Minute Reader uses both of these techniques, we are going to give it a shot. My son is so unfluent with reading, that even though he is "supposed to be" in 5th grade, we had to start him with "Level E", the easiest stage, written at a Kindergarten to early First Grade level.  Hopefully it will work for him.

In addition, he is also reading Pathway Readers, he is doing the second grade level of that, and he can figure them out, he just isn't very fluent with them. 

For math he is continuing with Teaching Textbooks, it has been great for him so far, and is the only subject he is on grade level with. 

My youngest daughter, who is on grade level in all subjects, and in fact a little advanced in reading, is using Learning Language Arts through Literature, The Mystery of History, and reads the Pathways Readers with my son.  For science she does a class at our co-op.  Next year she will move into Switched On Schoolhouse also, but for now we will use what we have on hand for her, and next years he can use the Switched On Schoolhouse that my son is using now, and he will move into the 5th grade level of it.

So there is the catching up on the homeschooling.  In other areas, the big news is that my husband is getting laid off in June.  So I am looking for more clients for my housecleaning business, and my husband is considering further schooling so he can find a decent paying job, while he goes to school he would be able to collect unemployment, and that, along with me working more... will hopefully be enough.