Muslims, Christians and Barbarians

We have had an awesome start to the homeschool year.  DJ is studying the Middle Ages, and will round out his first lesson pathway tomorrow, with a Venn Diagram and a writing assignment on his blog, about the Muslims, Christians and Barbarians.  He has not been able to do any blog writing in a real long time.  That is the beauty of no longer using FLVS, lessons do not take three hours a day to complete.  For his Earth Science lesson, he moved onto the Troposphere, which that chapter should be complete tomorrow.  For Math he got a 75 on the adding and subtracting positive and negative number chapter.  This was an awful chapter when we did FLVS.  It took him two lessons to get through it, and is very happy with a 75 on this particular topic.  Not all the Math lessons have a test with them.  So, I will have to make Math tests for him each week.  He has completed four chapters in the Math book already this week.  If it seems like we are ahead, we are, which is good because next week Earth Kids begins, and so does Run Club.  Both of these activities are during school hours, so we need to keep on track.  DJ finished the first week of Language Arts and will have a Grammar test tomorrow.  He is reading, The Outsiders. 

Caitlin's pathways do not take as long as DJ's, so she has whizzed right through hers.  She started a unit study on Fall/Autumn to use up time for her History class.  For Science today she did renewable resources, which we have covered in the past, and for History she did Archaeology.  Again a topic we have covered.  She has an Archaeology unit study for in the future.  A couple years ago she buried a lunchbox with some of her toys in the backyard.  She forgot about it until the dog dug it up a few weeks ago.  She was so excited to see what was in it.  I guess the dog is an Archaeologist.  She is doing excellent on Spelling, one of her weakest areas.  I highly recommend AAAspell  it is awesome and free.  They use it for spelling and vocabulary.  DJ spells awesome but needs to enhance his vocabulary.  For Language Arts Caitlin is reading, Charlotte's Web with related activities.  Today, she had to write a short story about a spider using certain words.  Writing is another area she needs improvement, so that is good for her to be doing.  To round it out Math.  Caitlin does quite well in Math once she relaxes and just does it.  I am really pushing the Math with her, for some harder Math topics. 

Well that is the end of our school day.