Week in Review: It's Real Now

This week, Gemma finished Life of Fred: Farming. She spent about a week on the last two pages (25 addition problems, multi-digit with regrouping), not because she couldn't do them, but because she didn't want to do them. We started Life of Fred: Goldfish, which I would place at 3rd grade.

I started back to work on Monday. It was a pupil-free day, with a big staff meeting and time to get our rooms ready. As we found our seats for the meeting, the kindergarten teacher, who I think is wonderful and who knows we are homeschooling, said playfully, "So I guess I'm not getting your daughter tomorrow." I smiled and said no.

Santa Monica's schools start tomorrow, and several of Gemma's friends are starting kindergarten or transitional kindergarten. She should be starting with them. But my child isn't going to school. It's real now.

So, while some homeschoolers have planned kindergarten curricula, I'm not planning anything. We're just going to do the next thing.

Some of the next things are Life of Fred: Goldfish, working through the rest of Alfred piano prep level B, finishing Prince Caspian, continuing Duolingo Spanish, having her read the rest of her Jewel Thieves book to me, etc.

One of the (many) DVDs she watched this week was an animated movie about Beethoven (from NEST). She liked it because it had "Ode to Joy," a melody she knows how to play on piano. The song is also on one of her VBS CDs, so we sometimes sing it in the car. I thought the movie was done well, and I'm going to see what other NEST animated biographies our library has.

One day this week, she and Daddy went bike riding at the beach, and another day, he took her to play in the sand with friends.

I'm glad that her classroom doesn't have walls.