Homeschooling

I have to say things with Big Kid are going amazingly well. When we started schooling at home in July he hated reading, I could barely read his writing, his grammar and language arts skills in general were awful... and he had a general distaste for anything that could be considered "educational". Six months later he now asks for more new books, and when he gets them he dives right into them. His writing is improving greatly, or at least his printing is. We haven't even attempted to start handwriting yet, the public school just sort of ignored it...

He is amazing with math, logical problems are his forte. He enjoys science as long as I can insert hands on projects here and there. We decided to go with life science this year, and it's a rather dry book, but it's secular and that's what I wanted. I have started him doing a "word quiz" every day out of a reader's digest collection of their quizzes, and it's teaching him how to use a dictionary and broadening his vocabulary like crazy!!

Social studies is just amazing as well - I truly don't understand what the huge difference is between me and school. Is it the one on one? The interest I take in what he is learning? Whatever it is the gap is huge. He talks about how beautiful Russia is when we read a book about it, how he never knew there were so many beautiful places in the world. We have studied the US, South America and Russia so far... can you imagine what he will think once we have studied all the continents?! I love that he is soaking in so many facts about so many things, in all subjects. He was excited to learn in our Russia book that bears aren't just carnivores, they are also herbivores. I love watching my son learn so much so quickly! He now has me record specials on tv about this animal or Pearl Harbor (yep, asked me to record Tora Tora Tora, I was floored), or about how our galaxy was formed.

Education is a beautiful thing!