Happiness is......

the kids finishing some of their school books!

Dancer finished one of her language arts studies. The first one she did was Julie and the Wolves and used the study guide from Total Language Plus. She, and I, both enjoyed this study. There were a lot of good discussion questions, things that we probably wouldn't have talked about if not for the questions coming up in the study. The vocabulary words were words that could be added to our everyday speech. Often times vocabulary studies have words that are not usable in everyday conversation. We have also perked up our ears when listening to or reading other books. One of the words I didn't notice so often was carrion, which is rotting flesh, and now it seems I am hearing that word everywhere. Another word was Quonset hut and now it seems there is a Quonset hut around every turn in the road. The other part that was good about the study were the dictation exercises. This is something that Dancer has never done before and she really excelled at it. By the end of this first study she had much improvement. This is will be good practice for her if she goes to college and has to take notes in a lecture. I would have never thought to have her work on this skill if it hadn't been introduced in this study.

Spark is also moving right along. He finished his book about dictionary skills. He so didn't like this book when he started it but by the end he looked forward to working in it. It covered alphabetizing, nouns, adjectives and verbs, and of course, looking up words.

He is also coming right along on his inferencing book. This book is just plain fun. The stories and activities are short, and often funny, so it makes a nice transition activity from one of his other subjects to another.