Someone told this girl she could grow up... and she actually listened...
We started 3rd grade (!) this month and I just can't believe it. It seems like she just walked into preschool last year!
This year we are doing Build Your Library- Medieval Times as our core curriculum, which is perfect since we'll be in the UK soon and can start putting places to stories in real time like we did with Ancient History this last year! She requested a different math curriculum than what we did last year (Singapore Math) so we're trying out Beast Academy and hoping its comic book style will engage her and bring her back to, if not loving, at least liking math.
Our goals for the year are:
- enjoy learning together!
- less fussing/complaining
- more hands on learning and field trips
- to have the funnest time possible
- more Daddy involvement
- more outdoor/hands on experiments with nature
- more learning on the go
Her personal list of things she wants to learn this year:
- religion and spirituality- how people made up their beliefs and how they began
- weather and how it forms
- how fast light travels and how far it can go
- rainforests
- how eyes see
- how life started-more evolution
- engineering
- robotics
I, personally, am super excited about her list. We ask her every year what she wants to learn about to give her some control over her education and to encourage her interests. I love that she wants to learn about evolution... growing up in the south we didn't really use the "e" word, so Christopher and I are along for this learning ride too!
I did some assessments the other day... just to see where she falls as far as grade level is concerned and I'm super happy with where she's at!
We did a reading age assessment and she came out to be reading at a 12 year olds level and as far as comprehension is concerned- on the Macmillan reader level she scored Intermediate (I can't find a grade level equivalent for this but it was suggested books like Dracula and Jane Eyre as readers for her...)
On MobyMax we did the Language assessment and she scored at a 4th grade level (spelling killed that score...haha) and she scored at a grade 2.5 in math (and measurements took care of that score-- which I knew and we're working on).
Obviously there were no assessments for history or geography at this level or for awesome traveler skills, but it is nice to get sort of a baseline on the big ticket items and know where we need to focus on to make sure she's up to scratch with her peers for certain things.
Everyone asks if we're going to keep up with homeschooling and I think we are probably in it for the long haul. We all love the freedom it affords us, but more importantly, I really think its just the best fit for her. We have some pretty strong suspicions that she's sporting a brain that is Neurodiverse in some way (looking into that more when we get settled in the UK) and I just don't see traditional school being a place where she can thrive.
We're super excited for the move to London and to see what sort of amazing opportunities Europe affords us as home educators. I'm already on a few facebook groups and the classes and groups that meet are diverse and plentiful so I think its going to be a wonderful few years!
