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We're starting the "Writing With Ease" homeschool writing course. I gave my five year old the book with the page open to copy the sentence, "The deer and the rabbits would be shy and swift." He took over an hour. The teacher at school said he wasn't doing his work she gave him so every so often I said, "Come on. Don't take all day. Why do you have to be told a hundred times to do your work. The teacher's not going to tell you a hundred times. If you have to do your work just do it." (He's a staller on a lot of things.)
He finally got it done. I started to read the "explain to your student" part- these sentences are from the book Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingles Wilder about a family in Wisconsin...
He said, "I know. I already read that part." I said, which part? He pointed to the whole two pages. Oh. He took so long writing the sentence because he was busy reading about how to teach kids grammer. lol

That's great, La Tex!

Taught my 7 yo dd to play chess today. I only had to go through the pieces once. She immediately got the game and how it worked. We have only played 2 games so far but she is catching on quick! I'm really impressed that I haven't had to re-explain any pieces/movement at all. She even set the board up all by herself on the second game without any help from me.

Wonderful. It's great to hear how well your daughter is doing.

DS7 really wanted a math camp, so we signed up for one at the local university. The site said they did placement testing the first day, but they placed him in the grade placement (rising third) without testing. He rated the first day a 5 out of 10, but spoke up himself at the end of yesterday and got himself into the rising 6th grade pre-algebra group for today and rated it a ten!

DS5 got skipped!

No, not really. He got skipped in swim lessons. We weren't sure which one to enroll him in, but he WAS missing some key skills (back float, for instance) so we put him in a pretty easy level. Holy cow, did he ever improve. The swim instructor, young and a bit green, could NOT stop gushing about him all week long. ("He's the STAR! He's just INCREDIBLE!") She told me after the last lesson that he should definitely skip the next level, although they don't usually allow that.

The thing is, I don't think he's unusually skilled at swimming compared to other things. What he has that his sister doesn't has is the ability to use his smarts to immediately learn new physical skills, such that he just catches on to anything athletic very fast. The mind-body thing translates (I envy this; I don't have it.) He likes it all. Anything. Whatever. I still think of the time we went to a festival where they were selling (light, not heavy wooden) boomerangs. DS was 4 at the time and really wanted to try. The guy was like...sigh...okay (obviously humoring him). He showed DS the technique and how it worked and how to throw it, robotically. DS picked up the boomerang and did it perfectly the first time. I thought the dude was going to fall over.

DS5 is LOVING summer school. This is the first time he has gone to school all day and I was worried it would be too much. Apparently I had no reason to worry. He is having so much fun that he has asked to stay late and not get picked up until 5:30!

The summer curriculum is full of field trips, visits from experts, special projects and hours of outdoor playtime.

Today a beekeeper is coming to talk to his class and he was so excited he couldn't get to school fast enough.

dd 2 yrs. 9 mo. has written several letters on my walls and drumset

DS16m just "counted"!! He counted bristles on his brush, four of many, but said "da, da, da, DA!" Putting his little index finger on each one as he counted- so cute!

Adorable, squishys!