iggyschool

Still doing the same old stuff around here. Iggy is learning about punctuation from his Basher book and the Grammar Ray Punctuation comic. We are still doing grammar and language arts worksheets verbally (he tends to go quite fast if he's allowed to say the correct answer, rather than write it).

We have a lot of fun with these worksheets. The reading comprehension workbook for second grade ends each story with the question "Which of these makes the best ending?". Some "best endings" are quite obvious, but others....Iggy and I scratch our heads and then do what only a homeschooler can do without penalty - we cheat! We look at the back of the book! And we still can't figure out why the author of the worksheet chose the ending as the "best"! Then we have a good laugh and move on.

We are working on penmanship with Printing Power from Handwriting Without Tears. If he is only focused on writing the letters themselves, he does quite well. It has been helpful for me to have him write the letter in the air, with his fingers, as a warmup. He is still trying to unlearn all of the backward and bottom to top strokes he is naturally prone to. Lucy has her own penmanship book and scribbles in it while Iggy does his lessons.

Iggy begged off from minute math drills and flashcards and asked to do his math this week at the online site time4learning.com. Iggy's working memory deficits really show when he is trying to do math "work" (his practical math skills are pretty great - knowing how much allowance he has, for instance). Bless his heart, he isn't behind, but he's not ahead either. I remember how difficult certain math concepts were for me - multiplication tables, for instance. Telling time for another instance. We'll just keep working on it and I will present the information in as many ways as I can. And I will continue to adjust my expectations.

We are now on the second CD of the audiobook A Short History of Nearly Everything. From that we've had discussions around the age of the earth, fossils, radiation, and the atomic weight of the elements.

Iggy is still doing a short piano lesson with Larry every night. He's doing swim at Chesapeake twice a week. And he's got a big part in the homeschooling play as Zebulon Zook from the Planet Mirth.

We've also talked a lot about the changing of the seasons. This wasn't something he was very interested in until recently. He seems very awake to the idea of the holiday season. We're looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas and seeing all of our friends and family.