last day of Christmas break

Well, I was going to give the girls 2 weeks off for Christmas break this year, but we're all getting pretty antsy and ready to start back to our routines. So, I'm going to be starting up again tomorrow with lessons. That means that today, I am going to be looking at my materials to see what we're covering this week and plan out how to do it each day so that we aren't overloading ourselves and are having fun while we learn. I'm pulling my Sonlight core IG back out, and we are restarting the LA program, so tomorrow will be a completely fresh start for us this school year. I'm also going to get Kimmy started at some basic pre-writing and such since she'll be 3yo in just 2 1/2 weeks. We start the preschool stuff at 3yo, and since I've been saying for a while tht our school years start in January it makes sense that I'd have her start in now.

We're also going to start a new reading program for Melissa that I found free online. Its a reading remediation program for children who are older and not reading, but can be easily adapted for younger kids learning to read. I'm feeling pretty good about it, and will be combining it with our Sonlight LA program to give us the reading aspect of LA.

Scott just read this big front-page article in the newspaper about the public schools and reading. He's now really concerned about how Melissa's doing with her reading because of this article. Let me see if I can get a link to the article online for you to read, I think its a load of BS intended to make parents think the public schools are doing more in this area than they really are. OK here it is:

http://newarkadvocate.com/article/20081228/NEWS01/812280301&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

He read some of it out loud to me, and I just had to laugh about it. I don't agree with this article at all, but there were a few things that I found really funny. There's a section that tells how parents can best encourage reading in their children and help them learn to read, and it starts with "read to your children daily" Hmmmmmmm haven't homeschoolers been saying to do this for years now? Kind of funny really if you think about it.................................

And for the record, I think its great that the paper showed the county schools' 3rd grade reading test scores, but I'd like to know how these schools also did in K, 1st, 2nd, and 4th grades. I bet there's a big difference as they progress through the years.........................