Not so bad

Well it did not go to badly yesterday. Our morning started with listening to the terrific New testament on CD I bought for Brent for Christmas. It is in the style of old Radio plays but true to the complete text of the New Testament. Awesome!
In school we started with math, as usual and that went well so we moved on to spelling. I have not taught spelling yet this year so we did the Spelling Power placement testing. I am very pleased with the results as R is one level ahead of where we left off and B is two levels ahead. Today we did the more specific tests and those were the final results. (R{10}is level C and B{13} is level G) We also managed to get in some handwriting, blogging/journaling and French. Not too bad for the first day back.
Today we started with our prayer and Bible reading: Ps. 1 and 2 & Matthew 10 & 11
I have finished the spelling placement and the boys are working on their math.
Science: We are finishing our reading for Module 3 and I need to print out the pre-test and tests for them. I love this module, we are learning about non-obvious variables, blind and double blind studies, graphing and interpreting results. Cool! I have decided to use science as exam taking practice. Easy choice considering that there are exams for each module. I am going to set them up formally to take these tests, this is not something we do very often, but I think it is important for them to know. They both plan on continuing their education, so they will need to know how to write an exam as well as how to study.
Handwriting: I have been using Handwriting Without Tears with R (10) and I have kind of let handwriting slide with the eldest. Today he decided to handwrite his spelling test. Big mistake. So I am doing some remedial handwriting with him using the same curriculum. I wish I had found it before he learned to handwrite because although he has some pretty letter formations, often the curly letters he writes are easy to mistake for other letters or letter combinations. Not so good.
Grammar/Punctuation: I will go over a page or two of The Usborne Guide to Better English. I hope.
Writing: 20 minutes of blogging
Geography: finishing off our unit on Canadian Geography

I need to get to the library and renew my card so that I can order all the books we need for our Canadian History unit.
I was flipping through a book I bought a year or two ago, The Usborne Guide to Better English: Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation. It is terrific! In five minutes of flipping I learned tons of things that I am doing wrong in my own writing. How embarrassing! It is a fun little resource and it even includes some activities and tests, so I think I will read it with the boys and we can do the activities. It is the least dry English book I have ever seen and it offers a very common sense approach to the subjects that makes so much sense to me. The book is British, so I am not sure how it would line up with the American standards of Grammar and spelling, but for us canuckleheads it works perfectly.