Somewhere along September and October, I lost track of time. My blog lagged behind but, you know, we still homeschooled. The biggest change for us as far as school was that we switched math curricula for 8th grade. My daughter was finishing up Math Mammoth 7B this semester when I realized we were just going in circles.
One of the black bears who venture onto our patio
She needed more pre-algebra concepts but Math Mammoth 7B was starting her on Statistics and Probability. Those are great topics, but not what my daughter needed. We bought Saxon Math 8/7 and liked it a lot. It gives her step-by-step more pre-algebra practice and we can advance quite fast.
Now, we do two lessons a day. At the end of every lesson, there are 30 problems to solve and we skip around. The spiral approach works well until it gets all boring. I definitely stay away from kill and drill. If a child knows a concept, there is no reason under the sun to make them solve such problems every day.
We have not had a chance to go hiking that much, but we hope to get back on track soon. The weather has turned to fall and I look forward to tomato soup in my thermos as we hit the trails.
My son has been driving more and more and I like being chauffered around. Last week, he brought us to co-op for the first time. He wanted me to drive us back home, but he was very proud to have driven non-stop for over an hour. Yes, our co-op is that far from our house. What can I say? Everything is one hour away for us. I have had to accept that and move on a long time ago.
