After talking to a few people about how we charted Mckenzie's reading and mentioning that there might be photos of it on the blog, I realized that indeed, I did not have any recent or complete photos of it on here. Sooooo, here it is.... These are the books that he read between September and June. We haven't added any new ones to it as we seem to have come to a screeching halt in the 'schooling' since Summer began. When he and I look at this, we're both so proud and it's so encouraging and helpful to see all the work he accomplished. These books were (all but 1) read out of his own motivation and desire. I had nothing to do with which books, the pace, the timing etc... It was all his own incentive. I'm so proud of where this young man is now. When we first started the whole reading thing in grade one the outlook was beyond grim. It was brutally painful every night trying to simply go through letters and sounds and short beginner books. It was a Canadian parent version of torture, for all of us. I'm so thankful for stumbling on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books at a garage sale. They began the love of reading. Slowly, picture by picture, then a few words here and there until he was reading and re-reading the books and eagerly awaiting new ones to be released. And now here he is, reading large complicated books, usually over 500 pages and some with over 50 chapters. Flying through them at a pace that catches us off guard every time. His love and passion for Rick Riordan books to be specific is fantastic. He's one book away from the last book of the last series. Oh boy. Since he's read The Hobbit, we just gave him the first Lord of the Rings book along with another story about the gold rush and the Yukon. Hopefully we can find a new large series of books that he'll fall in love with - soon.
As for the rest of the Summer, well, I had high hopes for keeping up with only 2 subjects; math and Language Arts. I've failed. We've let it all fall by the wayside. My thoughts are that Summer is for fun, not 'work'. Let kids be kids. However I wanted to try to add just a couple of really quick lessons periodically just to maintain some basic things. I've had these hopes before, which was one of the reasons I was unsure if I'd be able to homeschool. I could never get my act together. Now I'm realizing that it's just a Summer thing. We've still got some time yet, maybe I'll get one or two quick reviews in there. OR, maybe not. I've given up the guilt. What will be will be.
