we love Math-U-See

We started with Math-U-See yesterday, and continued today. Samuel really enjoys watching the videos and using the blocks, and he even likes doing the worksheets in moderation, but he is a little bored. When trying to decide what level to put him in, I realized that we have not been as systematic in our approach as MUS is. Well, of course not, we unschool! Anyway, we decided to put him in Beta, even though he already know a lot of it, and some of Gamma, too, because he doesn't know everything in Beta, and I wanted him to get some more practice with those concepts and to get used to the way Steve Demme teaches before we get into new material. I think that was a good call, but we will be flying through most of Beta, I think.

Let's see, in other news, we had our big science/history/math lesson that I mentioned before. Since it was a fun project that I thought others might enjoy, I posted it on my main blog, since I am pretty sure that no one reads this one. (Which is totally fine - I need this for ME.)

Shawn read to Samuel from his DK Mesopotamia book last night, and another one on the Ancient World. Oh, and they read some more War of the Worlds, also.

Samuel and I are working on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He isn't quite as into it as I'd hoped, and I blame the movie. He already knows what is going to happen, and it just isn't the same without CGI effects. Well, we didn't watch Prince Caspian, so I am hoping his interest will pick up with that one. I hope so, because I really want to read him The Dawn Treader (one of my favorites) and I hope that they don't screw up the movie of that one too much so that we can watch it!

I had Samuel do some copywork today, which he seemed to enjoy. I decided to start with the Guardian Angel Prayer, since we say that one all the time. He just did a few lines, but enjoyed it enough that he wants to copy all the prayers we say and make his own prayer book. I think he has his mother's tendency to immediately jump from a small, do-able project to, "Ooh, and we could do this and THIS, and then it would be even better," and then get overwhelmed and not do anything. I'm working on it!!!

We recently got some new bookshelves and actually mostly reorganized all of our books. I am taking the opportunity to enter them all into my GoodReads site, and when I'm done, I'll start adding the ones that Samuel has read/is reading into his GoodReads site. Seems like a good way to keep track of what he's read. The widget for the sidebar does not seem to work to well, though. Whenever you enter new books, you also have to re-do the code or it doesn't update. So, I probably won't be keeping the widget very up-to-date. Anyway, as I am entering all our books, it is getting progressively more embarassing as I see how many books I have in the "to-read" category versus the "read" category. I need to get to work!

Let's see, anything else educational going on here? Samuel has been progressing in his reading rather well, using simple books like the Frog and Toad series. I also pull out the Little Stories for Little Folks from time to time. We just got a reading primer from Yesterday's Classics (I seriously want pretty much every single book they sell) and I think that will be our next step. It looks perfect for his level, and has stories I know he will love.

Well, that's it for now!