Handwriting Thoughts

When we were back in Ohio, my Dad dug up a box in their basement filled with old school papers of mine, all the way from 4-year-old preschool to 4th grade. I had a lot of fun looking through them there to see my great art talent,esp. in preschool (there are some great "self-portraits" that had the boys cracking up "Mom, you look like a potato!" [peels of uproarious laughter]) , but I didn't really go through all the worksheets until 2 nights ago here at home. Since Mom faithfully saved about every paper I brought home, I have a very clear idea of exactly what I studied when, and it's given me lots of comparison points for the boys and their schooling. I can definitely say that Nathan and Luke are way ahead in math, and I never really saw any history, per se, so I think they're ahead there too. But let me just say that I had great handwriting in second grade (pre-cursive), so that has really inspired me to make that more of an emphasis, since their handwriting is definitely not that great. Now, when we started cursive in third grade, my handwriting definitely went down a notch, since, being left-handed, the whole "slant" thing was quite difficult. There were SEVERAL handwriting papers that were graded "B", which was very rare for me! By 4th grade, my cursive looked very rushed and choppy. It's no surprise, really, that I stopped writing in cursive completely in high school. My printing always was nicer! Now, I think cursive is a little bit obsolete. Very few of my friends write in it anymore. I think I'm not going to make a very big deal about it for the boys. I doubt they'll seriously be considering a career where beautiful cursive is a requirement (IS there any such career?).

English was another area where I think Nathan is a little behind where I was in 2nd grade, so we're working more on that too. I had more "formal" science, esp. in 3rd and 4th grade, although by that I mean pages of definitions and so forth--not really experiments, as far as I could tell. Since we have read TONS of science-type books, I think that they have picked up a lot of the vocabulary naturally, without having to do tons of workbook pages. Next year we'll do more with energy, molecules, and so on, which are areas about which there just aren't that many books for kids. I was also very impressed by the Bible that I had. My 2nd-4th grade years were spent in Okinawa, Japan, and I went off-base to a Christian school there, but my Bible learning was certainly comparable to anything I would have had back in the States. I was particularily impressed by what we studied in 4th grade. We did a year-long geographical survey of Israel, and how how the geographical features figured into events of the Bible. I had forgotten all about this, but I have always had a clear picture of a map of Israel in my mind, and I've always known where the Sea of Galilee, Mt. Hermon, Mt. Nebo, etc. were when I heard and read about them, so I guess I have my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Freeman, to thank for that!