We didn't get as far as I had hoped. I hoped we could take off a couple weeks starting now. I let the girls do only math for a week in hopes that they would finish and could move on to spend their time finishing up Greek. It didn't work that way- they just did math and not their other subjects but didn't finish math and now they are a little behind in Greek too. So that was a bad idea. We should have just kept going. Oh well.
The boys are both excelling in math and are very far ahead for their age. They have both started Greek and are getting it. #3 is reading for fun now, but has yet to write much on his own. So for the summer I'm going to focus on writing and spelling for him. #4 is close to reading for fun, so I will focus on his reading over the summer.
I'm going to let the boys take the week off of school. We have a wedding on Friday and family coming to stay with us this week, so I want to spend some extra time cleaning and of course as much time with them all as possible. I would also like to get the garden planted if there is any sun this week. I also need to spend some extra time with the girls keeping them focused and help them finish Greek and math. They will have time to do 1 hour of math and 1 section of Greek each day this week, even with all that's going on. I wish they could take the whole week off too- but they really need to finish up and a little bit each day seems to be more effective than a lot on one day. It shouldn't be too bad.
#1 has been working on review problems getting ready for the test and is happy to find that she is getting most of the answers correct. #2 took the test twice already- the first time she left a bunch of questions blank because she wasn't sure how to do them. The second time she just ran out of time so she definitely needs more practice. I think I'll have #1 do some more practice problems also and they can both take the test on Thursday. I really hope they pass. They have been left pretty much to independent study. I have even had them check their own answers so I think that's why it's taken a little longer. So if I focus on them this week and let the boys have it off, they should get through more material a little faster.
We are finally getting Spanish and French. I made posters with some of the sayings and vocabulary we know and during the sessions had them say things and talk only in the language we were doing. They seemed to enjoy it and I think for the first time realized that they can speak both languages a little. I definitely want to continue that through the summer, but we probably won't be able to this week.
We do need at least 2-3 weeks of no school once the girls finish math and greek and then we'll go to our summer schedule of school 2-3 times per week and focus on things like science, art and sewing. I also signed everybody up for 4-H. It looks like a great program and I think it will be good for us.
I'm curious to know more about how you do multiple languages at a time. I've introduced my kids to both Spanish and French, mostly by reading children's books to them, but I've wondered whether I should just focus on one language until they start gaining some competence.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure this is the best way, but in Europe everybody speaks like 5 languages plus their hometown dialect because they are in contact with so many languages- so I figure if they can do it, so can we. We don't seem to get them confused, we just spend time in each language separately. Greek is the one we write and really focus on grammatically and then Spanish and French are the ones we're trying to learn to speak.
ReplyDeleteWe use Elementary Greek by Christine Gatchell.
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