Progress

We started a new reading program [me & Luca]. ABeCeDarian - and it is working much better. I'm very pleased with the progress he's made in a week. He's definitely more interested & it starts on making words out of the sounds right away. So he can sound out mop, sat & tap already! I said, "Luca, you read those words!" And he said, "I did? Hey, I DID!" Very cool!

Luca is progressing rapidly through math now. I started w/Sinapore's early K books & we finished both of those & are now doing the K book A. We are zipping right along & it's giving him more confidence, since he 'knows' some of this already. I like how the present the info in this series. It's a good fit for us.

Niles is reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. His teacher,from the co-op, who he read Tom Sawyer with, recommended it. He started reading it on the way home from the book store. I thought that was very cool!

He also had a light go on re: fractions this week. I sat down with him and he got it pretty quickly that way.

Our friend has emerged!

Overnight

...our friend made some progress!

Caterpillar

We have a visitor on the side of our house.We saw three or four the other day crawling around on the side of the house. I have no idea why this one decided to make it's home there. I think it is a Mourning Cloak caterpillar, aka nymphalis antiopa.

field trip to the NC Natural Science Museum

We went to the Museum today w/one of our homeschool groups. It was a major success and the kids had a great time. :) So did I. I like learning about sharks & think they are fascinating creatures. Our knowledge of them is still pretty limited, so it was fun to learn some new things. For example, they don't all have to move all the time to get oxygen. Their gills do a good job of that w/o needing to move constantly. They have more gills than other fish for that reason. Some lay eggs, some lay eggs inside themselves which hatch inside & leave momma as a live birth & some do live births! How crazy is that!

What's happening here

Niles is reading this book for a class in co-op. I think it's a bit beyond him but the stretch is doing him good.

Luca finished a chapter on Earth in his science book & liked it. Although he was mildly annoyed it involved no experiments. We took a detour to learn a bit about flamingos & what makes them pink during this too. Niles had to come check it out as well, since he didn't know why they were pink either.

Handwriting for Luca is getting better, despite all his protests of I can't do it!! He definitely reminds me of his brothers. None of them particularly like doing school work & would rather complain about it for 10 minutes before beginning anything. Now I usually say something like, 'you can crab for 10 minutes, do the work & then be done or you can do the work in 10 minutes & be done.' Niles gets this better now than Luca & even Nate for some things. ;)

Bentonville Pix, provided by Angela