Homeschool Update Kindergarten

These two jokers are doing so well with their Kindergarten year -- with the exception of wanting to do any writing at all. I'm trying not to freak out about that -- considering for James that he was still at a 7 month old's level for his fine motor skills a little over a year ago. Tyler is picking it up, but just doesn't have a whole lot of interest in it.

Thankfully, Momma has a summer full of supplemental work planned for these guys to make sure that we are on track for 1st grade in the fall.

They've done really well learning their math, and letters up to this point... so now we will move on to the second phase of Kindergarten. This is the first year that we've been able to stick with our schooling plan -- and we couldn't be more thrilled that it's going well. There are times that some might think it's not going -- or that they are delayed in certain areas... but I just trust in the Lord that they will catch up and thrive as they pick up more and more concepts over the next couple of years.

I use a really cool planning program (HomeschoolPlanet.com) to keep us on track and it helps keep up with grades and all of their transcripts in terms of days in school and things like that. We will expand what we track as time goes on, but this year it's really more of a pass/fail type of tracking for me... where they are doing their daily lessons and getting 100% for that. Next year we will start marking things incorrect and giving grades based on that, but also making sure that they go back and rework the things that are wrong. Naturally, John and I are the only ones that will see their grades at this point, but I want them to understand what it means to get graded based on the work you put in -- I think that is a positive lesson for kids to know that working hard and doing your best can be rewarded.

I'm just thrilled that this year is working out and meeting our expectations -- it was only 6 months ago that we started this year knowing that it was an important step in knowing whether we would be able to actually pull this homeschooling thing off, and for now -- it looks like we are on track to keep it up as long as they are happy and learning!