ECC 2nd Edition: Day 2 Continued

Today has gone pretty well. We started with a school-huddle-time. I went over what the plans were for today. And then we talked about schedule options. Some of the kids want to do Bible, Geography, and Science first. Others are willing to do Bible, then the 3 R's, and then Geography and Science. I'm still fleshing out schedules some. My plan tomorrow is to do a full day of ECC and the 3 R's. We'll see how that goes. 

We also talked about Bible verse dictation. My problem is I have 3 kids, 2 of whom are dyslexic. Reading through the verse and finding the words that each of them needs to work on before doing the dictation would take a lot of time. Or, if I made sheets that had blanks for the words I know they know how to spell, and then have the rest of the words traceable, that would take a lot of time, too, for me. So, I have decided (gasp! I'm not going to do it exactly as written!) that we will have 2 days of copywork. The kids get dictation in All About Spelling, so I'm not worried about missing dictation. I will expect perfect copywork (neat handwriting, and no spelling or punctuation mistakes), but it will be something they can do on their own and won't take me way longer than it should. 

I have, in the past, made sheets for Pooh with blanks for the words he does know, and then he traced over the words he did know for the verse dictation, but that is just too much work. Copywork is fine. And, if he knows it has to be neat and no mistakes, it will force him to really look at what he is copying and hopefully improve some things naturally that way.

As for our day... We did spelling (with the other two doing math drill and AWANA), English (with Rabbit doing Spanish with the other boy), Reading (and typing), and then math. While the boys did math after I had gone over it with them, I worked with Rabbit on her English lesson. You know, I don't like it when words can be used more than one way (what is it with those adjective pronouns? Really!). When the hour of math time was up, Pooh came crying because he hadn't gotten that far on working the problems. So, I sat with him and made him really focus on his problems so he at least got as far as Tigger. I used to have to do that with Rabbit - sit right next to her and say (and often write as she answered), "Okay, what is 1 plus 4? Good. Now, 7 plus 5? So, where do I write the 2 and where do I write the 1?" I think I'm going to have to do that with Pooh to keep him focused. It would be impossible to eliminate all distractions. I think eventually he will improve, just like Rabbit.

I'm having Pooh also do a math drill worksheet for part of math drill. Right now he is working on just +1 math facts. I went to the Math-U-See website and printed out a +1 sheet with 25 problems, and I also gave him a cheat-sheet with the +1 facts on it. I told him his goal is to get it done in 2 minutes or less using the cheat-sheet as little as possible. The first time he did it it was 2:27. The second time 2:16. Once he gets down to two minutes, I'll do a +2 worksheet. Then, after he gets that down to 2 minutes, I'll do a +1 and +2 worksheet. I know Calculadders does something similar, but we tried those before and that didn't go well. I didn't give him a cheat-sheet back then, so I may try those again, with cheat-sheets. 

Rabbit had the Module 1 study guide to work through in Apologia Physical Science. I guided her through the math problems. I think I'm going to let her study one more day before she takes the first test. Then we did math (Saxon 8/7 Lesson 97). She got upset with it, but the thing was she was getting the point. This happens all the time. She does the math and gets the answer in her head, but she doesn't get why she got the right answer. Sigh. We worked through it and got it done. (We couldn't go outside and measure shadows because it wasn't sunny. She was actually glad it wasn't sunny for once :) .)

Rabbit had her Pre-pointe class and another Ballet 3 class tonight. It makes our Thursday's hectic with small group and dropping her off and picking her up. But, she is enjoying the dance classes, so we'll let her continue that. Everything I've read about going on pointe in ballet says the dancer should be in at least 3 hours of classes a week, so I'm good with her classes. Plus, we add Worship Dance in September. It's all good.