New Term

The kids had their standardized testing last week. They take the Standford Achievement Test through our homeschool co-op. I'm not too worried about Nathan and Luke, other than just careless mistakes, but this was Caleb's first year of testing. I didn't want him to get some wild hair and fill in the bubbles willy-nilly, or in a pretty pattern or something! We'll see when the results get back in a few weeks . . .

But now that we're done with testing, I feel like it's the start of our "summer term". We're doing a few things differently right now. For one thing, we're going easy on math. I never thought I'd say that, but we're not actually doing math every single day. The reason for this is that Nathan and especially Luke are really far ahead, and I'm not sure that's the best thing for high school. We pretty much school year-around, with short breaks every 6 weeks or so, and that means that when we finish a book, we just roll right into the next one--skipping the first 30 lessons or so that are just review of the previous one. Now that's all catching up to us. Nathan, who is finishing 6th grade, is on lesson 57 of Algebra 1/2. Luke, who is finishing up 4th grade, is on lesson 32 of Saxon 7/6. So if Nathan were to finish Algebra 1/2 in the Fall, and go right into Algebra 1, then do Algebra 2 in 8th, geometry in 9th, trig on 10th, calculus in 11th, then I could probably pull together a linear algebra course or something like that for the last year. But do I want that? He would need to keep his calculus fresh for college, especially if he goes into engineering, which is what he is leaning towards now.

Luke would be finishing Algebra 2 by 7th grade, and that just seems ridiculous. So we're just stepping back and slowing down. The boys think they have died and gone to heaven, LOL.

We are also slowing down in Latin. We're done with Latina Christiana II, so we're ready to move into Henle Latin. That's a high school course, and I don;t know that we need to rush right into that, so we're just reviewing vocabulary and grammar chants daily, and I give Latin review sheets that I've made up every week or so. Also, we'll be working through Ligua Angelica this summer, which Memoria Press calls a "Christian Latin reading course". I had kind of forgotten I even had this, but something made me think of it, so I pulled it out. It is a bunch of Latin hymns, and the kids translate them and see the various cases in action, so to speak. I think that Nathan and Luke have the depth of understanding to be able to do it pretty independently now, as opposed to a few years ago when I actually bought the program! It will be a good review for them.

In place of Latin, we've started Greek! The 4 boys and I have all learned the alphabet, and I'm debating how much farther Caleb and Jonathan will go. They will be starting Prima Latina in the Fall, but they are really enjoying doing Greek now. I know Caleb especially really feels like one of the big boys. Each day I've been transliterating English words and writing them with Greek letters for them to translate, and Caleb has been doing great at that! I think that's pretty much the level I'm going to keep him at though. We're using Elementary Greek, which looks like a wonderful program for Koine Greek, but I think it would be too much for him as we get deeper into the grammar of Greek.

As an interesting Greek aside, did you know that we Americans mispronounce most of the letters of the Greek alphabet as opposed to how a real Greek person would pronounce them? My parents have a Greek officer living with them right now, and when we were back home on spring break, he led us through the alphabet. For example, the letter that looks like our letter u is called "mu", which we would all say as "moo". But they pronounce it as "me". Or tau, which looks like a letter t, is not pronounced "taw", but rather "tuf". So we say the alphabet the Greek way, but I make sure they know how Americans say it all too, just in case they join a fraternity in college or something, LOL.

Those are the main differences. We're plugging on with grammar (Rod and Staff), spelling, and writing, and we're going through a Bob Jones science book with everyone. We're not doing any history except library books now, and we'll start back with Story of the World Ancients in the Fall, this time with Caleb and Jonathan as well.

Speaking of Caleb and Jonathan, I am really making them a priority, since I felt they got the short end of the stick with this last pregnancy, especially as I had to do so much exercising there at the end. They are definitely not as far ahead as Nathan and Luke were at those ages, LOL. Jonathan is not sure he likes this added emphasis on his schoolwork . . . Good for his character, I always say. He is definitely the naturally laziest one so far!

So that's where we are. Summer is a more relaxed time just because we have other things going on. Nathan and Luke will be doing a camp at the Air Force Museum the first week of July. The kids and I will be out there a week or so early to drop them off, and then they'll stay out there and spend some special time with Grandma and Grandpa. They will also go to Camp Caleb the end of July, and while they are away, the other kids and I will most likely be doing the tutor training for Classical Conversations at one of their parent practicums. That will be fun for Caleb, Jonathan, and the girls too, as they will have special classes as well (just the nursery for Faith, of course! They don't start classical education quite that early!). In the middle of July, we are very much looking forward to my sister-in-law Melinda and adorable niece Emily coming out to visit for a week. We will definitely not be doing formal school while they are here!