> What surprised me was that she now tells me that not
 > only do I have to keep
 > the journal, I also have to keep a time sheet... and
DR> 
DR> (sighing) I was afraid of that....
Well, by now I'm getting used to the time sheet, so it doesn't seem to be as
intimidating a process as when I first started.  
DR> It sounds to me like he *really* enjoys the creativeness. Let's 
see....have
DR> him help you make pudding, then have him run his fingers in it. He can 
"dra
DR> anything, including letters, in it. You can do the same thing with
DR> fingerpaints, sand, or sugar. You can make letters from sandpaper (or buy 
t
DR> at the teacher's store) and have him color over them - it makes 
interesting
DR> pictures! See if he can spell words on signs...STOP, KMART, SAFEWAY, etc. 
T
DR> counts, because it's letter recognition you're worried about, right? You 
mi
DR> "trick" him into this by pointing at a store and say, "what's that store 
ov
DR> there? (he responds) It's KMart? How do you know? Oh, that's right, 
there's
DR> big K in it!"
Thanks for the good ideas.  I'm writing everything down on a list in my 
homeschool journal so that on days when I feel stuck I can refer to the list 
for ideas.  Aaron finally agreed to learn the alphabet when I told him we 
would just do little bits of it at a time.  We are working only on A through
G, and he is finally taking great pride in singing the alphabet song up to G. 
:)  He tries to sing beyond that but doesn't know the letters yet.  We are 
working now on individual letter recognition.  I set up an A table (soon to 
e
a B table) where we can display things that begin with A.  Above the table 
I've got a list of our collection.  In conjunction with this we've been 
reading the A section of the picture dictionary and talking about long and 
short A sounds.  It is going pretty well, I think.  I've been very encouraged 
by his willingness to participate and learn this past month.   Not only 
as
he finally memorized A through G, but he also memorized 1 through 5 and has 
been doing simple addition and subtraction fairly successfully.  Kindergarten 
here only requires 1 through 10, with no addition and subtraction... so we 
re
getting a jump on first grade.  
I expect that as soon as I can demonstrate that he knows all the kindergarten
material, the homestudy advisor will promote him into first grade.  With that 
in mind, I'm planning to go through the "expectations" list she gave me and 
test him on each item, to see where he is and what I still need to teach him 
to get him into first grade level.
 >  1.5             Art/Music
 >  2               P.E.
 > really wants to do science... and it seems that every
 > spare minute is spent in
 > art projects, so we're going way over the mere 1.5
 
DR> But if you can count the "art" as something else,like spelling or 
reading, 
DR> are in luck. Considering how the schools integrate stuff these days, you
DR> should have NO problem.
Yes, I'm finding many activities can go into more than one box on the time 
sheet.  Sometimes I pick and choose just according to what we need to show 
more hours in. 
DR> As for PE...here are some ideas....see if he can make letter shapes with 
hi
DR> body. Teach him to jumprope. Enroll him in a non-competitive community 
spor
DR> team. See if your community has a scheduled supervised play period - ours
DR> calls it AfterSchool at the
DR> Park or something like that, and they *usually* are seen showing them 
ball 
DR> parachute skills or something like that (and ours is free, or very very
DR> nominal charge). Make a daily habit of a 15 minute walk before or after 
you
DR> start "school". And, btw, *few* elementary schools in this area (CA) have 
2
DR> hours of PE per week! They must count recess in that time frame, which at 
1
DR> minutes per day is 1 1/4 hour right there. See if your city rec dept or Y 
h
DR> reasonably priced lessons in some activity - around here, the least 
expensi
DR> lessons are swimming during the school year, and that's 2 hours right 
there
DR> every week for as long as you enroll. Take him to the community pool once 
a
DR> week during the warm weather - 2 hours on a Saturday would satisfy their
DR> requirement easily, and be fun for all of you!
Thanks for the ideas... I'm not sure if there's an afterschool program here.  
There are classes put on by the recreation and parks dept but I'm not sure 
that they are athletic in nature.  We've been doing things like going across 
the street to the little league baseball fields at night just before sunset 
o
play frisbee.  Both Cimeron and Aaron love to play and they *finally* are 
ble
to do this together with minimum participation on my part. :)  Yes, it is 
true... I like to sit and read while they do the work.  Another thing that he 
likes that takes up plenty of minutes is hiking... a good hike is about an 
hour and that's half the weekly requirement, right?   Yes, I am learning 
y
way around this system. :)
Zaynab
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