This week Jonah finished his math lessons. Here's an example of what he's been doing in math this year. He loves math. Most concepts are hard at first but it comes to him fairly quickly. I love this Saxon math curriculum because of its spiral method of continually building on concepts all throughout the year (instead of a more topical/ thematic approach which teaching on the concept of "telling time," for example once or twice in a year then it might not come up again until the following year). It really gives him a lot of confidence, knowing he doesn’t need to master any one topic all at once but build on what he already knows from a few days before.
I told him he could choose an elective once he finished his math for the year. His choices were typing or cursive writing. He has been wanting to learn cursive for awhile so it was a hard decision but he chose typing. He completed his first three lessons today because he was enjoying it so much. He's so excited and taking "staying on home base" very seriously. I love these sweet, simple typing lessons from The Good and the Beautiful curriculum.
We've been doing year - round schooling for many reasons. It provides so much flexibility throughout the year. It's so unbearably hot here in Dallas in the summer and if we followed the traditional schooling schedule we’d be stuck inside the 3 months we have off school so instead we just take off days or weeks all year round whenever we want and we're able to enjoy being outside so much more on beautiful days in the spring and fall too. Year round also allows us to be much more laid back with schooling since we have a whole 12 months to complete a subject, like Jonah's math for example. If he was frustrated with something in math, we have the option to set it aside for a few days to take a break before trying to tackle it again. Or if we finish before September like we just did we can choose fun extras we don't have time for during the rest of the year. This summer we will be finishing up any areas we still haven’t gotten as far as I’d like before starting the next school year in September and we will also use summer as a time to read lots and lots of great books. Reading books is my top priority in our homeschool year round but by summer we’ve finished a couple of subjects already and have extra time to put more focus on reading for fun. Fyi if you have a Half Price Books near you, they have an awesome summer reading program for kids-- read 300 minutes each month of June and July (only 10 mins a day which isn't a lot!) and you're child gets a $5 gift card for each month (so $10 per kid!). My kids did it last summer and loved picking out a new book with their money.