Let's talk homeschool tonight

I have so much on my mind. Unemployment, the mammogram, a big issue at work that blew up today and could be potentially bad, insomnia. If I think about bad things I'll cry. I'm thinking about homeschool.

By the way, the mammogram isn't a bad thing. I was just thinking about the markers they use that are like a cross between a band-aid and a pasty. They use it to mark a particular place that I don't want the search engines to pick up the word for but it rhymes with ripples. Anyway, how the worst part of the whole thing is removing them afterward. Didn't want anyone to worry, I have no to reason to suspect I'll get anything but an all clear letter in a week. I am curious though, does anyone else's radiologist use those things? It is so weird.

Where was I? Ah yes, homeschool. (And thank you for sticking through that last paragraph.) Violet is in 5th grade this year and we are starting to see some real progress. A much more mature attitude towards school. She asked to pick up spelling again. And she's doing pretty darn good with it. We are using the word lists from Sequential Spelling, but only doing 10-15 words a week. We go through them and she writes them on the white board. Any she misses she writes in her notebook. We do that about 3 times in a week. We're also adding looking the words up in the dictionary for practice with that. If she nails a word, we do the Sequential Spelling thing of adding the "ing" or "ed" to it. If she's struggling with it, we don't. It is working really well.

In math we backed up and practiced addition. Now we're moving into some multiplication and division. Again the attitude is better than ever. She still freaks out sometimes. But I've noticed it is the workbook that makes her freak out, not the work itself. She's calmed down since I've been stressing not to immediately panic, but to take a look at what the question is.

We are loving The Story of Us for history. The Story of Science is starting to grow on Violet. It started out slow. And she's still loving Latin Minimus. We're almost ready to move into Secondus. I'm thinking of trying Critical Thinking's Root Words workbooks. I love their other products we've tried. Has anyone ever used them?

She's reading more books on her own. Partly because I've had a lot of work commitments and that is something she can work on by herself when Mr. I is around. It must be hard for him to jump in to a subject that we've always done together and have any idea of our methods. But they do well with making up their own stuff. When he doesn't have time to make up stuff, she's happy to read.

I have her reading a biography of Grace Hopper, the Mother of COBOL. My absolute favorite woman! I saw a really, really cool biography of her when I was in college and fell in love with her. I wish I could find it to show Violet.

We have some other subjects going here and there. Swimming class is her PE. We're reading a lot of things out loud. She is still working on grammar in Editor in Chief (also by the Critical Thinking Company).

In short, when we get around to having school, it has been going really well. Now if we could only get around to it a few more days a week...