6 weeks

We have been back in the school routine for 6 weeks.  For Sam, 6 weeks will officially be tomorrow, but close enough. Sam loves school.  He has new bus friends and school friends.  He loves his teacher.  He comes home smiling every day.  I think his favorite subject is computer lab, not gym. I'm completely shocked by that.  He has a new best friend who happens to live right around the corner from us. He is learning letter sounds and for the first time ever is getting excited to learn how to read. He's even memorized some sight words like and, you and is.  I get to volunteer in his class in 2 weeks and I'm very excited to see first hand what his day is like.  Even though he loves it we still get a lot of I don't know's and I don't remember when we ask about different activities.  The thing that has most shocked me is (as of today), he wants to do school at home next year like Ben.  He doesn't know why, but thats his plan for now.  I guess we'll see.

Ben is also doing relatively well.  I was excited to start a new year with a couple new tricks, but I was also a little worried.  We really scaled back on school last spring because of all of the packing, moving and drama.  I didn't want him to go into shock when he saw the difference in the amount of work he has now compared to last year.

He's adjusting really well.  Something I started doing was writing out everything he has scheduled for the week.  If he wants to do 3 days worth of math in one sitting, he can.  He knows exactly what pages need to be done and what problems.  We've also divided his subjects into mom and Ben subjects.  He can do grammar, math and copy work on his own in the office while I'm with the babies.  Some of his reading needs to wait until nap time so I can read with him and we wont be interrupted.  He seems to like this system. Hes been finishing his work by Thursday for the past 2 or 3 weeks.

Each year I'm amazed at the amount of work he has each week, but I think we do a great job of breaking it down into manageable chunks.  Each day he does math, grammar and writing.  We listen to a piece of music throughout the day by the composer we're studying.  Each piece of music gets 2 weeks and each composer gets 13 weeks.
4 days a week we read a poem.  Right now we're reading through poems by William Blake.  He likes these significantly better than the poetry we did last year.  Its nice to hear him have opinions about the poems rather than the blank stares I got from him last year!  We listen to a hymn and /or folk song and try to guess the meaning or a story behind them before looking them up.  Spelling is also 4 days a week. Ben writes his spelling words once or twice for 3 days and on the 4th day I give him a spelling test.  Spelling continues to be his best subject.  This week we spelled: wrinkle, wrist, particle, laughed, difference, distance, product, listen, castle and certificate.
Twice a week we do a picture study.  Just like the composer, we study 3 artists a year and each picture gets about 2 weeks.  He studies the painting and then we talk about what he sees, if it reminds him of anything etc.
Each week he does art.  He'll alternate between drawing the picture we're studying and getting to pick what he wants to draw.  He is also taking an art class at Olmsted Performing Arts that he really seems to like even if when given instruction on their projects he has his own ideas! He writes out his Bible verse from church each week and he also does a short book report each week.  He can pick from a book he reads to the babies or something we do in school. He also does a presentation for us each week.  He gets to pick the topic and gives us 3 minutes worth of information on that subject.  We're working on him with taking notes and practicing, but we've been told by people at church they can see a difference in their conversations with him since starting the presentations.  
Every Friday Jon takes Ben and Sam out for an early breakfast.  Jon does Bible reading with them and then Ben comes home and tells me what they discussed.  I love that set up.
History, science, geography and literature all kind of lumped together.  Ben does a lot of reading. History has focused a lot on explorers and martyrs.  We're reading about Marco Polo for geography. Ben has done a great job of finding everything from the Tigris river to Armenia on the map.   We've been reading about a hermit crab for science and also exploring the different layers of the atmosphere along with learning about the equator and hemispheres.
Literature includes random Shakespeare plays, a book about Leonardo Da Vinci, tall tales like Paul Bunyan and a book called The Princess and the Goblin which he likes a lot more than I expected.
We're also trying to incorporate nature walks, cooking and some french, but we haven't been as consistent with those as I'd like.  
Its a lot, but he can finish everything in about 10-11 hours each week.  He does school at random times during the day. Its a pain to get Sam ready for school each day especially since they couldn't have picked a worse time to pick him up, but it gives Ben a better opportunity to focus so he has plenty of play time when their friends get home from school. I don't want to jinx anything, but we're off to a good start this year.