Books I've requested for DBall from the local library....

DBall really like cartoons/comics. He was for several weeks "reading" huge volumes of old Peanuts comics. Then he found Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Unfortunately there's only 4 books in the entire Wimpy Kid series.... so now he's back to moaning and complaining about how he hates to read. (clearly the boy gets this from his father- I'd rather read than eat half the time). Today I was searching online for books that might peak his interest, and I ran across a few on Amazon that looked at least somewhat promising. I was able to locate them in our local library system soI "requested" them there, and hopefully in the next few days they will have them ready for me to pick up. Tomorrow would be ideal since it's "library day"- but I'm not overly optimistic they'll all be available by then. Certainly the ones in the actual Springdale library should be able to be gathered off the shelves by then, so he should have SOMETHING to read for the next few days anyway. Here's a brief list of some of the books we're hoping will be worth reading, to an almost 8 y/o who insists he "hates to read":

Andrew Lost On the Dog
Nate the Great
Gecko and Sticky
Lawn Boy
39 Clues Maze of Bones
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Animal Rescue Club
Detective Camp

Well that's a few of them anyway.I hope he likes them. He's going to read them either way, but it would really be more peaceful of me if he didn't feel compelled to complain about it the whole entire time.

A little update......

Singapore math is going well so far. The workbooks are really handy, and it's been review for the most part. I should know more when I actually have to teach him something I suppose. When he does do math, he generally does 2 exercises each day.

I'm using the spelling program Celeste shared with me. It was a lot of redundancy on the child's part though, and the 'tests' were cold tests, as the child had never seen the word ahead of time. This was extremely frustrating for DBall, so I've kept the actual words but devised a new program for using them. It's nothing fancy or ingenious, I just typed the words out with a long line next to them for him to write a sentence with each word. Then he will test over those words tomorrow. Since we're basically only doing 4 days/week of school, he will have two spelling tests per week.

I have found most of the Pathway Readers, with their Teacher's editions and children's workbooks. Unfortunately the issues for his grade/reading level are missing the actual readers.... so I need to write the Amish to secure them, or look for them on ebay prehaps. Fortunately there is a reading program at the library again this Summer, and they would like them to read 3 books per week. At least he won't forget how to read altogether!

He does also spend a lot of time playing with legos, which I figure couldn't hurt him much. He builds all kinds of things, including what the set was meant to build plus whatever else he thinks of. In the last few weeks he's become increasingly more cheerful, and less morose. I don't know if he was depressed or what, but he liked literally nothing, never laughed anymore, said everything was "boring", and moped around every day. I HATED it. I am SO RELIEVED he's reverting back to his original happy personality.

Okay I think that's all for the moment.

Have officially started Singapore math

and so far, so good. It seems so simple, and non-repetitive that I think we will both be able to deal with it well. Of course today's worksheets were completely review for him, but I hope he will continue to enjoy it when he's actually learning new things as well.

DBall informed me today that he does not like Time4 Learning and doing school work on the computer. He requested that I find a Language Arts curriculum that includes a book and worksheets for him to do. PLEASE HELP if you know of anything that sounds remotely like this please!!!

We're occasionally doing spelling, but he isn't enjoying cold spelling words at all. So I've decided to - when I get around to it- print off the words for him and give him a couple days to become familiar with them, then test once or twice a week.

Okay that's all for the moment, but please feel free to suggest away for language arts curriculum!!