I remember back in the day I had to require daily readings into my homeschooling.  Now it is asking my girls to put the book down and eat dinner with us!  It is so nice that the reading comprehension has clicked with my youngest, but I do worry she still reads and skims through things a bit fast.  Especially in her school studies I know she will just kinda skip over a word if she doesn’t quite understand it.  So that makes me question when she is reading for pleasure if she does the same.  I have her keeping tracks of the words she might question and then we will use those for her spelling words for the week.  It is like she is in such a hurry for everything.  Just to say she is in the next chapter or half-way through the book.  Telling her to slow down and enjoy it is like telling her to cut of her nose!  When she talks she talks so fast I have to correct her to say things the right way.  Then that upsets her because it makes her forget what she wanted to say.  I thought the phonemic awareness came first before the comprehension.  That’s the thing with her…she keeps me on my toes and living outside the box.

I have changed it up again for writing practice for my girls.  I have them writing a paragraph or more on and subject that is in the daily news.  The tsunami was quite the scare for them.  I think it will be interesting what they write about.  Hopefully this will help them from suffering boredom on trying to come up with something to write about on Fridays.

With the weather getting nicer they are getting spring fever.  Keeping the focus on school is not that easy now.  Good thing that they are ahead and have some of their subjects done for the year.  I was kinda worried when my daughter said I’m done with the whole math curriculum for the year.  She has been whizzing right through it like she was gifted or it was too easy for her.  But then looking at her work it is just that she simply gets it this year and could move quickly through it.  I just love using a curriculum that she move along at her own pace!

I would have to say I think English language is hard to learn.  There are so many exceptions and simply some of the rules don’t apply when suppose to.  With that said my daughter was doing her writing assignment this week when I looked over her shoulder to see some mistakes.  I just let her finish the task and then started to correct it.  I’m realizing that her vowels are being spelled like they sound. For instance “bed” is spelled “bad”!  Scratching my head and think she needs some expansion on short vowels lessons.  There again…another misspelled word or should I say words!  Making compound words when they are not.  I ask her why are you doing that?  Well, mama, it is easier to keep writing the words together instead of stopping and starting over again in cursive.  HAHA!  That isn’t the correct way and she says well it is the way I like to do it!  I had to walk away because she makes me laugh.  She is so sassy and strong headed!  Explaining to her that you need to do it the way the rules apply now so you won’t create bad habits to fix later.

Why are they bad?  You can read it can’t you!?!

My youngest one now is reading a book that has more to follow.  To her this is big girl books!  I am thinking this is a good thing for her to build vocabulary.  The reinforcement is something she has always needed to keep her mind fresh.  These entertaining word playing games are the best for her.  It is nice that my daughters have different taste in reading material because I get to hear about them.  For awhile my youngest was trying to read what her sister liked and it never kept her attention.  I just encouraged her to find her own style and maybe reading will be more fun.  It is all about mysteries for her!

I know I have mentioned before that my oldest daughter applied to go to Cyber Academy which is part of our public school system.  Well we are awaiting for the call to say she has been accepted.  In the meantime she has decided to start a blog about this whole experience of going to school.  Writing has not been her strong suit and I am partly to blame.  When it came time for a writing assignment her brain would shut down and I would cave in and let her skip it.  My bad!  In preparation for the blog and just to simply help her with school she will be staying with the homeschool writing curriculum.  She has already improved so much.  She is such a go-getter I know she will succeed in this new endeavor!