After a couple of weeks of getting the system worked out, home school is now moving along fairly smoothly. Christian is going to do his first chemistry experiment for home school with the Smithsonian Chemistry Kit Grandma Sarah got for him. He did an experiment earlier just for fun, but this one he is going to write up. All of the reading, math, and history are going well, but I am in the process of making changes to grammar and writing because I can not get it as organized as I would like due to the Sonlight system and when we have time to work together. Even the kittens are going to home school now!

Both Kelly and Christian are blasting right along with Singapore Math. We love the program and it works really well for us. Ditto with Spelling Power, science, cursive handwriting, and the literature and history books from Sonlight that the kids are reading. The biggest challenge now is to find the best way to teach grammar and writing. I have found some good books on grammar that appear like they will be perfect for those topics, but I still have not found just the right thing for writing. Kelly is such a high level writer and is so interested on doing that, that I need to find something specifically for her that is more structured than what we are currently using from Sonlight. While I am at it Christian would be well served with a similar program.

Christian has a lab notebook he will be using to write up his experiments. Right now, we will not be doing the formal hypothesis development and experiment write-ups we will be using with RealScience-4-Kids. Rather he will just write up what the experiment is supposed to demonstrate, his methodology including required materials, and observations he makes while he is doing the experiment. We will do this for quite awhile while Christian is interested in the Chemistry Set Grandma Sarah got for him for his birthday. In addition, we bought a copy of the book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chemistry. It is very well written, very funny, very interesting, and both Christian and I love it. Christian is reading it aloud to me about 3-4 pages per night.

Kelly called city hall yesterday to find out when the next city council meeting will happen. There was one last night, but we had to go to meeting. Hasso Herring, the editor of the local newspaper, The Albany Democrat-Herald, wrote an editoral extolling the educational virtues of students attending and learning from local government events. Kelly would really like to get something published in the “Young Voices” column of the paper that is reserved for the writings of local students. Her plan is to attend a meeting, write about her experience, and submit the article to the Democrat-Herald to see if she can get it published. It is a great idea.

We started potty training the kittens today. We are going to keep a calender of what we are doing and spend 21 days training them. I really hope it works. The kids are going to take pictures and keep a journal of our efforts.