Slow Down, You Move Too Fast....

Slow down, you move too fast. 

You got to make the morning last. 

Just kicking down the cobble stones. 

Looking for fun and feelin' groovy.

(Simon & Garfunkel)

I've had this song running through my head for a few days now, so I'm slowing things down. On purpose. Aiming for much more Tortoise, and much less Hare. First and foremost, The Girl and Reading Horizons. We've been doing the lessons nearly every day, and while she's making progress, I think we'd do better if we slowed down a little. My awesome friend Jessica has offered to send me some of her teaching materials for the program, which, as we're doing just the online version, I don't have. I am looking forward to seeing if we can go more in-depth with this!

Which means, yes, she'll still be working through the program in the fall. But, the further we get into it, the more okay I am with that. In addition to basic reading skills, she's learning spelling, grammar, and all that!

With both kids, I decided we're not quite ready for the Kilgallon materials I listed in this post. With further research, I realized that the Kilgallons assume a basic familiarity with the parts of speech, with clauses, and so on. I'd like to take some time to build that up a little more first, so back to my original plan of using Grammar-Land: Grammar in Fun for the Children of Schoolroom-Shire. This lovely book introduces all the parts of speech and how they work together through a humorous story. Another blogger made free worksheets for it, which we may or may not use.

We're not rushing through history now, or reading, or anything else. We're taking time to enoy the journey!

We are having great success so far though with Right Brained Multiplication & Division! The kids are easily multiplying and dividing by 0, 1, 10 and 11. I think we tackle two's next. And The Boy has finally, with the help of Khan Academy, and yours truly, paper and pencil in hand, figured out how division works. He kept trying to do all the problems in his head, so I made him sit down with me, and go through the process five or six times, on paper. And now he says he "gets how it works"!

He's also very excited about the idea of using Jousting Armadillos! We sat down together and looked through the book online. And  I have to say, they have amazing customer service, and I haven't even ordered anything yet! I did email the author with a couple of questions, and he not only got back to me very quickly, and thoroughly, but then another teacher from the private school that put these books out also emailed me, to answer another part of the questions I asked! The Boy is thinking he'll be doing a Life of Fred/Armadillos combo in the fall, which I think would work well.

So, slow down! Enjoy the journey instead of rushing for the finish line! Stepping off my soapbox now!