Milepost

Today I started the school year. This will be Timothy's 3rd year of school and Emma's 1st. I write the following not to brag, but to give you an idea of what you can expect from your children. People today, influenced by state schools, which are designed to produce a dumbed-down and malleable populace, expect far too little of their children. Of course, learning should be fun, and each child is an individual and will learn at a different pace, but I hope this post will give you some idea of what one can expect one's young children to learn.

Timothy is 4 years old. This year we will be continuing the age-appropriate Bible projects in "Plants Grown Up". Our current project is to go through the child's catechism and talk about each question and answer. We are taking several months to do this thoroughly.

By the end of the last school year he had completed the 1st grade math book from Rod & Staff publishers. This means he learned his addition and subtraction facts through 10, how to judge which numbers are greatest or smallest, counting by 2's, 5's, 10's and 25's, pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, cups, pints, quarts, feet, and telling time at the hour and half-hour. If I gave him grades at this age (which I don't) he would get C's. But this is exactly where I want him to be. Math is so repetitive in the early grades that he will get several more years to perfect his knowledge of this skills. And in the meantime he is learning something I never learned in school because it moved too slowly for me at that age. He is learning to stick with something even when it is difficult and even when you make mistakes. This is something I still struggle with; I give up far too easily. Hopefully this training will help him stand his ground in all areas of life. He is moving on the the 2nd grade math book this year.

By the end of last year Timothy had read all the Little Bear books we could get a hold of. He was learning 5 three-letter spelling words each week, as well as learning the phonemes and some spelling rules, and going through "The Writing Road to Reading" by Romalda Bishop Spalding. Again, his work would probably be graded with C's. We will continue in a similar fashion this year, but he will move on to reading Frog and Toad books as well as others of similar difficulty. I have been reading some stories to him, as well.

This year he will continue in "Baby Lambs Book of Art", which he started last year.

This year he is starting "Hey Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!" This series teaches Koine (biblical) Greek to elementary school children. The first year covers the Greek alphabet and how to say one sentence (The Lord is my helper).

I am also hoping to get him started with cello lessons as soon as the cello teacher can fit us in.

Emanuela is 2. This year she will continue to memorize the child's catechism. She has only memorized 4 so far.

We will also be starting my homemade beginners math. Concepts to be learned are larger, largest, smaller, smallest, shapes, sorting, days of the week, months of the year, identifying today's weather, and tracing with a pencil.

I try to strike a balance between encouraging diligence and not overwhelming my kids. But I am encouraged to think I may be doing it right because every day that we are on "vacation" and don't do school, Timothy is disappointed. And Emma, when her own lessons are done, hangs around the table while I teach Tim. And they both exhibit nearly the same enthusiasm about starting school each day as they do about watching their favorite cartoon. I can't expect much more; they are kids, after all. ;-)