The Emperor at Home, and What We're Working on Now.

When the Elf was in the first grade, I'd have stacks and stacks of workbooks from Sam's Club. These were cheap, and taught basic concepts well. They were secular, but I was happy with my Bob Jones Bible curriculum (have I not talked enough about that?? I'll have to do a whole post on that sometime) as an integral part of the younger children's day. Emperor would join Elf in the mornings before leaving for preschool most afternoons, and learn the Bible verses and do the activities with him. I'm surprised at how well the Emperor is doing in his classes, and how much he benefitted just hanging out in a homeschool environment during his preschool last year.

Those workbooks were very helpful in that I could give the easy "A is for apple"-type sheets to the Emperor but work on the Venn diagrams at the end with the Elf. Even his preschool teachers (who I am guessing are NO fans of homeschooling!) were impressed with the Emperor's ability to add and subtract numbers.

It's strange. He went four afternoons a week to a special-needs preschool because he's considered to have special needs. But he's very bright and teachable, so long as you don't make "sitting in a chair" or "being quiet" or "keeping your hands to yourself" any sort of a requirement. It would be nice if he learned some of those skills in the next ten years, but I feel that Emperor's public school KINDERGARTEN teachers (and principals, and counselors, etc.) placed far too much emphasis on these skills, but never bothered to notice that the child was mathmatically inclined, or that he could already read. He spent his mornings with a colour sheet or in the principal's office waiting for my arrival because of his "bad choices."

I'm so glad he's home for good now. I think they'd have kept him in kindergarten all year, or even advocated for retaining him so that he wouldn't be a disruption in first grade. No, I take that back. They'd have wanted to label him so they can get mega-money from the state, and then shunt him to some horrible program for emotionally disturbed kids. That's the crap they tried to pull on Elf because they can't be bothered to learn what the word "autism" entails, or maybe spend a few pennies on an aide.

Anyway... Emperor has just about caught up with Elf in every subject, despite being "two years behind" the Elf in terms of public school enrollment. If I am having the children write "a sentence about smog," maybe his sentence will be shorter and he'll forget the capital letter. But he can do it. He is only about six months behind math-wise. They are now taking all their classes together. It makes it much easier to teach that way, although I do have to give each child a different "reading aloud" book, or shorten the Emperor's assignments so that he writes three short sentences instead of five longer ones if we are working on writing stories. I'm more forgiving of his spacing and capitalization, and his penmanship.

But it's a lot of fun as well as work. Here's what we're working on now:

Everyday Mathmatics, second grade (public school curriculum)

Bob Jones English, Grade 2 (we're just beginning this and will likely take over a year to complete)

Bob Jones Social Studies, Grade 2 (begun last November, probably finished sometime in May or June... we keep reading library books on these subjects to go with it)

Alpha Omega Lifepac Science, Grade 2 (begun last December, probably finish May/June)

A Beka reading books, grades 1 and 2

Reading Aloud time (various; has included Winnie the Pooh series and Cricket in Times Square)

Bob Jones Bible, grade 3 (beginning NEXT WEEK).