These days, it's essential to concentrate on writing. We have to start small, improve the simple sentence, then work on clarity, then work on construction of a good paragraph. Fortunately, my remaining student does love typing her written work, and it's so much easier to understand the writing process when you can see what you are writing and it looks like what you read all the time. Cursive is a struggle, but sometimes we must do it. Writing, and concentrating on the process really should not be mixed with cursive. Once a person actually can pick out the flow of narrative from ones own thoughts, and write what is in the head, it's so much easier to spend time editing than rewriting laboriously. I think we have a good start now. Writing everyday should be a given. Practicing on being complete and clear in expressing what we want to convey will only come with practice. And hey, the inner workings of the wordprocessor are good to learn along the way!

My 12th grader just passed all tests for his homeschool high school diploma! Including the essay portion! I'm really happy about it! Now he's got lots of time to get his behind the wheel and get a job. I'm not really looking forward to that. The house will be empty without him, and his sister will not have the freedom she's accustomed to being able to go places with him on bikes. No way can she go alone in this day and age on a bike anywhere without her brother, or an adult. That means she's going to be stuck home and I won't blame her if she complains.

This is a life changing event for all of us! Hallelulia, and what do we do now????

There seems to be a marked level of maturity that is required for some types of math. You cannot get anywhere with multiplication if they haven't reached a certain level where thinking occurs more readily, or concentration improves. Same with fractions. At some point, one must just decide to go back and re-think how you are doing. There's no point in rushing into things without understanding.

I've got less pressure on the one hand because the driving has begun, and the 12th grader may, just may be going to work very soon. First job jitters don't seem to be evident, yet, but there's still an essay to write, and a finishing test to complete.

Anyone who has ever driven with a 16 year old knows it frays the nerves almost beyond repair. I'm not looking forward to this. Fortunately, he can't find his social security card so doesn't have sufficient ID to get his permit. He did complete driversed.com and it's time. There's no way I will put the two girls in the car when he's starting out. We must figure out a way to do this that doesn't cause me to have a heart attack. Unfortunately, the roads are just not the way they were when I taught my three to drive. These broad avenues in Reston were free of parked cars most days, and there were empty parking lots in abundance in which to practice initial starts and stops. Nowadays, there are parked cars everywhere, and parking lots are full.

I scrupulously stick to the rules when giving tests to these kids. I have been told that there is lots of cheating going on in standardized testing done in the schools, even to the point of prompting kids for the right answers. My conscience just wouldn't allow such a thing. I've stuck to every detail of the rules, even down to the time permitted. I have heard from various other parents that they ignore the time limits. I couldn't do that. Consequently, my darling 6th grader did poorly on math computation, because she's slow at it, and didn't get many done. She did smashing on every other test, including math concepts. I'm wondering how it will affect her overall average.

The 12th grader, 16 going on 12, probably did ok, as he's always done ok on his tests. No genius, I wasn't expecting anything like perfection, and won't have a clue how he did till the tests come back graded. With him, it won't matter. So long as he's not actively working, he will continue to be bugged by me to continue Algebra 2 and other studies I've arranged for him, no matter how much he doesn't want to do it. It's the age, I think. Something about 16 seems to scream "I already know everything!!!" and it's hard to get past that. I'm satisfied that he's a reader, when starting out he was so reluctant. Just reading together daily and reading such good books turned that corner, and no matter how he does with anything else in life, so long as he's willing to read good books and finish them on his own, I'd say that's a success. We are sending for a high school diploma program with material to learn, and testing culminating in an actual diploma, and he should be done quickly. Would be good to take some college course, but driving would have to come first, and he's reluctant to do that! Never knew a 16 year old boy who didn't want desperately to drive. Yet, this one really doesn't want to. Amazing.

I'm finding that the way standardized tests present math problems will be a problem for a forgetful little girl. We are drilling with several different types of problems and working them through this week. It's so easy when going through a chapter in math on concepts or how to do stuff, but then one moves on to something else. Review is something that must be done regularly so these things stay in the head for problem solving throughout life, much less just test taking. Also, one must refresh all the grammar rules, like where commas belong, capital letters, how to best arrange a sentence, etc. No problem with reading or comprehension, of course, because we do so much of that, but writing is something else altogether.

We did Nanowrimo and it wasn't too difficult, but seemed unsophisticated so we have to work at longer sentences, and greater use of vocabulary. We do vocabulary work everyday, and kindles are great for checking words in context as well.

I don't know how the 12th grader will do. But he's finishing up driversed.com and once he's got his permit, we will risk our lives daily for a while. Then he will start homeschool homestudy that will give him a diploma. Just wish it was already ordered. He's got too much time on his hands.

This month we will get back to serious study. Papers must be written, and my guy is studying to pass the GED. That will allow him to either get a job, and/or take classes at the local community college, but we intend to continue studies here anyway. The difference will be he will study what he wants to study, not what he must. He's likely to lose a few jobs before he learns a few basic things I've been unable to teach, but then, learning doesn't always occur when teaching is being done. Driversed.com is also in progress. That process will be long and slow, I think, but you never know. He's always complained about others following too close, so maybe there's hope!

My darling is plunking away at 6th grade stuff, but started 7th grade Teaching Textbooks Math, as she completed the entire 6th already. So, now we concentrate on writing and research techniques. We continue to pursue vocabulary both in a workbook, and with the kindle fire. There's a program on there that flashes sight words so one gets accustomed to recognizing them much more quickly, but I think a similar app to flash prepositional phrases would be extremely useful. It would allow greater increases in speed. Thinking I may contact the maker of that app and suggest it. I'd even be willing to pay a reasonable amount for such a thing.

So, my darling granddaughter and I both got our Kindle Fires that we hoped for for Christmas and just love them. So much you can do on them. Glad it's not bigger, really.

But, for doing our daily reading, we are keeping our old kindle keyboards, because they are easier on the eyes. Oh, I expect if I got to the park or something, I'll have to chose one, but that will be difficult. The fire needs the wifi to do lots of stuff, and the regular kindle just for reading purposes needs nothing. You can always plug in or reach wifi if it's nearby, but for reading, you don't need it.

We read together, frequently and thats one way to improve reading speed. Another is to learn lots of sight word recognition so you can identify a word so quickly your brain can accept it for it's meaning and you don't have to stop and think about it.

Both techniques are used here. Along with comprehension booklets with tests and interesting stories. I love reading, and hopefully, these kids will as well.

Just for fun, I printed up some colorful counting worksheets so my darling little one would have something to do while the older children are doing school each day. Little did I know how thrilled she would be to be doing school, too! She's doing just dandy with counting, and although she wants to skip from 30 to 100 without going all the way, she's just doing great.

Pattern recognition, matching, counting, same and different, are all concepts she's got down already! It's amazing. I also found Kidzui browser for kids, and she spends tons of time online now, learning all sorts of things. We are starting simple word families, and ABCTeach has word wheels for teaching word families. We put a few together today to be ready,but she wanted to do schoolwork on a holiday! Sheesh. We can wait till the others are working first. Then she doesn't feel left out. She loves getting a stamp of a star on her papers, and proudly shows them to mom and dad when they get home from work. She's going to be an early reader for sure. Makes an old grandma feel really good.