Moving Right Along

Well, we have now had a little more than two weeks of home school, and everything is going swimmingly. We finally got access to the Online School system last week or so and have been doing whatever parts of everything we can without books. Our books should be here Friday - at least I got an email from UPS saying that something is coming on Friday for Charlie that weighs something like 57 pounds, so I assume that's it.

Charlie loves being at home for school. He goes to the actual school for his therapy on Wednesdays and everytime he tells me "I'm not going to stay, I'm not going to school there, I am only there for 30 minutes" so maybe he disliked school there more than I knew.

He is flying through math lessons like a crazy person - he loves math and the beginning of 1st grade math is so easy for him that we have been skipping the lesson parts and going straight to the assessments - if he gets every question right on the assessment I tell him he has "tested out" of that lesson and we move on to the next one. If he misses a question he has to do the lesson. I limit him to either an hour of math a day or 4 lessons, whichever comes first. :) He doesn't love Language Arts quite as much - he doesn't like to write. Right now we have only been doing the spelling and grammar parts of LA since I don't have the reading, vocabulary or handwriting books yet, and couldn't find them at the library. I've been making him write out his spelling and grammar even though I could let him type, just so he gets the handwriting practice, since his writing is just really really bad - practically illegible. The spelling is actually kind of a joke for him, he can spell almost any word you throw at him, but he said he didn't want to skip it, or test out, so who am I to say he has to? :) I think he is fascinated by the structure of words. He loves strange spelling rules like ph=f, kn=n, that sort of thing and will repeat them throughout the day. He likes history and science as well, we haven't done any music yet (there is apparently a CD and video in one of those heavy boxes) and art... well, he's not a big fan of drawing either. The art lessons are very history and theory related, but there is some drawing. I tried letting him use clay to make things instead, but he wasn't that interested in that either. He did ask for some special markers we saw at Wal-Mart the other day, so I will try getting some and see if he will be more up for drawing some pictures with those.

We haven't done much in the way of social things yet, although there are a bunch of field trips coming up in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I have Todd take him out back, beat him up and steal his lunch money, so it's just like being at school. :)

Ok, that's it - and here is a special note for Gram - I cut my hair over the weekend, it's now all one length, just barely past my shoulders, and back to my natural color to boot. :)