Academic Year 2011 in Review (M-girl)
M-girl had a great year! She improved in every skill area. While my curricular choices don’t tend toward the flashy, I’ve been pleased by their effectiveness. In particular, M-girl’s writing, both in legibility and thought, are cleaner and more beautiful.
M-girl is very bright and gets easily frustrated at even a little bit of difficulty. I need to challenge and encourage her more to be patient and keep working and thinking. She also needs help improving her independence and diligence (hm, wonder who she gets *that* from).
English:
- First Language Lessons 2 (we have a little bit of FLL1 to finish) We got most of the way through FLL 2. M-girl finished learning the list of prepositions … now to keep them in her head over break.
- Writing With Ease 1 has been a great way to improve M-girl’s handwriting, writing, narrations, and recall.
- McGuffey Readers & CLP Nature Readers (reading practice) were used sparingly. She reads a lot and has done a lot of reading this year both assigned and unassigned. She finished Little House in the Big Woods, The Cricket in Times Square, and is working on Pilgrim Stories for assigned reading. She has read many other books and is happy to read aloud to her brother and sister, too.
- Spelling Power has been a good choice for her. She’s a “natural speller” from her phonics training and wide reading, Spelling Power lets her only study words she misspelled rather than working on a list of words she could already spell.
- Explode the Code has been assigned as independent work, and the only issue she has with doing it is actually doing it. I’m considering dropping this entirely, I don’t think she needs it and would prefer to change up her independent work.
Penmanship: Cursive First has been *wonderful* for M-girl. It isn’t flashy or exciting, but M-girl has enjoyed learning cursive and all her writing has improved. We should work to finish learning all the letters and connections.
Math: MEP with Math Mammoth supplement (mostly for when we’re stuck and need more practice). I think I’ve raved about MEP enough recently, but, seriously, we love MEP. The Math Mammoth pages I’ve assigned are not nearly as well received and the supplementation has not been necessary. This is one of the big changes I’m making next year. M-girl, in particular, really likes MEP. I wish we had finished Y1, but we’re very close and should hit Y2 in stride.
Latin: Prima Latina has been one of her favorites. She does this independently and likes the independence of the video. She dislikes the independence of the actual work which has tripped us up a couple of times. We have four or so lessons to finish in the new year.
Logic: Critical Thinking Activities then Lollipop Logic … but only to Lollipop Logic if we finished the CTA book. She really likes these activities and they make her think. We’ll keep going and try Lollipop next year.
Geography: Evan-Moore Beginning Geography is another workbook that she has really liked doing and has actually taught her something. I don’t like workbooky things, but these activities are well designed and fitting.
We love MEP too! We took a break last term to do SCM's Pet store Maths, but we'll be back into MEP5 next year. It is a great match for us.