Our New School Year

Sounds odd to start mid year, but it all began in April so now every year we change grades in April. Alex is my oldest. When he turned 2 we decided to homeschool. We had great fun :o) The year he turned 5 my mom in law was working for a charter school in CA and they said he could begin Kindergarten on his 5th birthday if it was before mid May. Well, it is. April 24th to be exact. Consequently, he began 1st grade the following April and so on. Then Tylor turned 5 when Alex had just begun 1st grade so we started him in Kindergarten around that time as well. Our baby was ready and willing to do school with the boys so she started Kindergarten November of the year when she turned 4.

That brings us to Spring of 2010. I now have 1 starting the 4th grade and 2 starting 3rd grade. The children are excited, as we begin our new adventure in school. And if you know me at all you know how sentimental I am about my children growing up. And although I would keep them babies if I could, I love to watch a new stone be turned this time each year. So yesterday I ordered all the new school stuff :o) YAY!!!!!

One of the most exciting things I see is that my daughter is 6 and is now going to begin the 3rd grade. How amazing is that? I marvel at how smart my children are. How much they learn, how fast they pick concepts up.

So while we move ahead, our Homeschool group is coming to the end of their year. We are spending the next 2 months getting ready for promotion to the next grade level as well as our science fair. Each child chose a different topic, but we are learning them all together. So the Rouge children have 3 different science topics they are writing reports on, making posters, taking pictures and so on.

Even though we take the spring slow around here, waiting on school supplies, I know that we will be busy learning together. And that is what God has called this family to do.

Happy Spring Everyone!

Holy Potatoes

I need to take a moment to talk about how proud I am of my children. They have been very diligent this year and have gone above and beyond what I have asked of them and are finished with both their math and phonics books. I will be spending this week getting new books for the children.

Alex is reading at an 8th grade level. For Christmas I got him 2 chapter books and my mother in law got him 6 chapter books. He has read through all of those and the ones we got for Tylor too. He is now onto library books :o) What a great hobby for any child to have and love. He also finished 3rd grade math this week, so he will be moving onto 4th grade math and I think that is super exciting. He will be getting into decimals and fractions and that is the part of math I love. :o)

Tylor has showed us this year that his reading is right there with Alex's. We were not sure, because he didn't want to read as much as Alex. But for Christmas we bought him some chapter books in the 6th grade reading level that are more his style and less of Alex's style and he blossomed. YAY!!!!! I am so glad to see him excited about reading too. He finished 2nd grade math and is moving onto 3rd grade math. He loves to do school. His subject is more history and geography. That boy loves geography. It is great! He has had such fun learning all 50 states and their capitals along with where each one is.

Melodey has shown us that when you have 2 older siblings and you are with them all the time, you gain the knowledge too. She just finished 1st grade phonics and started 2nd grade reading. She loves to write and has beautiful penmanship. I think she is well on her way to learning cursive with Alex this year. She also is very mathematically minded. She will be moving onto 3rd grade math with Tylor. She loves math and doing all those long pages of problems that Saxon Math provides. How funny! I never liked doing that kind of stuff, but I have known since she was a toddler that her subject would be math.

We also have been working on and will continue to work on Bible Characteristics. We learn the word and the definition along with a Bible verse for each one. We have done Accountability with Ecclesiastes 12:14, Alertness with 1 Peter 5:8, Attentiveness with Proverbs 14:22 and are working on Availability with 2 Timothy 2:21. It has been amazing seeing God work in their lives as they learn His holy word.

We are also working keeping track of and learning about the weather all over the United States, Dinosaurs and the food pyramid for a Science Fair this spring. We are staying busy and loving every minute of being together. What a blessing in our lives to have this time to teach our children and love what we are doing.