12/6/2011

My daughter has officially passed the half way point of third grade. Yahoo!

In Indiana, we are required by law to school for 180 days and last week we marked off the 90th day of school for third grade.

It's been a while since my last post about third grade (which you can find here), so here's an update.

• We continue to LOVE our curriculum choice for this year: Sonlight.
• My daughter continues to do very well with Math (which still baffles me, since last year it was her least favorite subject and now it is her favorite do-first-thing-each-day subject).
• We have moved through American history from Indians to colonies and to the Revolutionary War, having read a handful of excellent books dealing with that time in history.
• My daughter has learned all of the lowercase cursive letters and will begin work on capital letters next week.
• We've memorized about 10 scripture verses/passages ("we" includes my daughter, myself and my son).
• Recently we've spent a few weeks doing experiments with radish seeds and sprouts. This kind of hands-on learning is great fun and helps in understanding as we can actually see "scientific" things happening (Do you know what phototropism, geotropism and hydrotropism are? You probably do but may not know them by those names).
• My daughter has taken strides in creative writing and in public speaking (something she dreads). When she has an assignment that is intended to be done in front of an audience, Dad is usually her audience. At this point, that's all she can handle. Though she did allow me to videotape her giving a "speech" last week so that was improvement.
• Attitude remains a struggle. A poor attitude coupled with procrastination has derailed our homeschool days on many occasions. We have a few good days and then a bummer of a day. There have been many times when I've said "THIS has got to be a record for the longest homeschool day ever" only to have a worse day come our way.