2014-15 Officially Closed

Whew!  I have officially closed our school "year" by completing E15's 9th grade course descriptions and transcript.  Out of all of the options out there, I decided to use HSLDA's fillable form

So easy.

But the course descriptions, grades, grading standards, etc., were hard and long.

They're done now, and we are free to look ahead as soon as I finish this final assessment of our year.

I3 counts accurately to 20, knows the alphabet in both upper-case and lower-case, sounds out C-V-C words, cuts on straight and simple curved lines, knows shapes and colors, climbs, builds, imagines, plays and is a happy, delightful 3 year old.  We never did finish the alphabet quilt we started last fall, but after a break at "J" we picked it back up and worked our way to "Q."  He's taking another break at the moment, but we can happily pick back up during the coming school year.

H5 finished her Sonlight K language arts program, worked her way through an entire all-in-one 1st grade workbook, and generally kept very busy being curious about the world in general.  She's often found trying to sound out words in books and magazines, and she loves to write letters to people she loves.   She's done a good bit of finger-knitting and sewing this year, and just last month she used the circle loom to make a hat for our girl Baby L (no new names yet!) to wear this coming winter.

A8 (aka Nature Angel) is a marvel of self-education.  She daily reads the scriptures and works on her nature notebook--copying maps, text, and drawings.  She is artistically talented . . . actually she's talented at whatever she tries.  I never stop being amazed at her.  I did not help her finish any of the official school books--math, spelling, copywork, reading, science--she started this school year, but we finished a good bit of them--enough to count a successful 2nd grade school year.  In addition, she stayed up at night with the big girls to listen to me read aloud, getting in quite a solid year of American history and literature.

J11 is an academic whiz.  She raced through Saxon Math 5/4 and 6/5 this year--completing them both with near perfect accuracy.  She reads for hours each day.  She writes with style and humor.  Her penmanship is almost calligraphy.  She knits, sews (by hand), and cooks easily and well.  She is faithful in her personal scripture study and prayers. 

S12 loves reading, writing, and arguing.  I need to find a debate club to teach her the art of arguing. :)  She completed a 10,000 word book that I have yet to edit and print (as promised) and is working on another one.  Math has been a struggle for her both academically and emotionally.  She completed one remedial level of math (to fill in some gaps left by Life of Fred), only to be defeated by the next level.  Her goal was to complete both levels in one year, but we paused to work on memorizing the times tables  for the third time.  She is faithful and a hard worker, but the times tables keep falling out of her memory in spite of her best efforts.  She's also showing the same signs of struggling with fractions as E15 has.  Her tenacity is tremendous, though.  Cooking and handicrafts don't come easy to her, but she tries and tries again and does succeed.  She loves her rainbow loom and coloring detailed pictures.  She cares deeply about her spiritual development and works often, if sporadically, on personal scripture study and prayers.

M13 loves no part of school, but she applies herself faithfully to what she is assigned.  We made the monumental mistake of skipping her forward too far in Saxon math, but she persisted and is winning.  She did not finish the entire 8/7 course this year, but she'll finish it shortly and begin Algebra 1/2.  She loves reading, hates writing, and considers penmanship an utter waste of time.  She crafts and creates at the drop of a hat but prefers not to be asked to cook (which I do anyway).  Spelling rules make no sense to her, but she's memorizing how words need to be spelled in spite of her struggle.  She is mature beyond her years.  She faithfully nurtures her personal spiritual development, demonstrating both simple testimony and a desire to understand complex questions.

E15 started the year off with higher than high ambitions.  It has been a humbling year.   We worked together to set, refine, redefine, and re-set goals over and over again.  Via much research I am convinced she has subtle learning disabilities, and via testing we know she is gifted--which makes for quite the dramatic school experience.  For math, fractions and decimals were our original focus.  Fractions took over completely.  We are accepting defeat at this time.  She found success with the Calculus Without Tears program that we will continue next year.  She worked hard at spelling, and is again accepting defeat, but I think I see some progress in her practical application of spelling.  It is a nebulous thing that I cannot prove, but I am sure I see better spelling than I used to.   She is an avid reader, mostly loving fantasy and dystopic novels, but she'll read any genre as long as she hears it is interesting.  Writing is (I believe) an actually painful task for her that is mechanically impossibly tangled, but she has a wry and astute sense of language that comes through the tangle nonetheless.  She claims no interest in science, but cannot help being out of doors and building animal habitats.  She catches, keeps for a time, and releases all sorts of creatures, and managed to successfully raise hundreds of miniature frogs from some eggs she found and brought home.  She hides her spiritual development most of the time, but lets it flash through in moments of brilliance that take my breath away.   

All in all, it was a good year for academics, spiritual growth, and family development.

Comments

  1. Hooray for you! I love these posts where you capture that look at where they are, these are some of my favorite posts from my own blogging days.

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  2. I really, really loved this post. Thank you for sharing! I should do the same thing myself - what a great way to look at the big picture. Thank you for the idea, and for all the great ideas I got while reading about your kidlets' adventures. I've also copied down I3's skills as things to work on with our 3yo.

    Loved this!

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  3. Just popping in to say I'm thinking of your family and praying for you!

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  4. My son and I both suffer from a learning disability called "Dyscalculia". Kind of like Dyslexia for numbers. It makes learning math exceptionally difficult and can be a source of great frustration and conflict. Interestingly, it is often paired with an enhanced ability to read and write. There are several good online resources about it, and I urge you to take a look and see if possibly that could be causing S12's difficulties with math. I'll be thinking about you and your family. :0)

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