Big Breath!

This week I've been testing. Since the girls are TRULY  OFFICIALLY  DEFINITELY  FOR-SURE MOST-ASSUREDLY  NOT-A-DOUBT starting school Monday I wanted to see where Aidan is with Math. She has played Dreambox about 4 times since September but I've noticed that she'd doing pretty advanced things on it so it's worried me that she may have moved beyond 1st grade. I also have been testing Ainsley in little ways to see how she is doing with reading and such.

The results?

Aidan...

 Well, firstly, the Singapore math was probably a waste of money. I should have bought 2A and 2B instead of 1A and 1B. I have the complete standards edition with textbook, extra practice, tests, workbook, and instructors guide but I'm not going to be using them much. I sat down with Aidan with the text booklet for 1A and she answered the questions correctly throughout the whole book. I had supposed I'd trip her up with things that I've never seen her exposed to before... like capacity and such... but LOL she answered them easily. Sooo.... my plans are to "sharpen" Aidan's skills with arithmetic and addition and subtraction so that she can automatically answer everything without using fingers or the abacus.... but other than for this practice I won't be using 1A. After our "sharpening" we will start with 1B. There are definitely things in it that she hasn't done before. (such as multiplication). How long it will take us to go through the book will depend only on how well we stick to the schooling schedule. If we stick to schooling at least 4 days a week then she'll be done with 1B very quickly. I suppose I need to order the 2A and 2B soon.

Ainsley....

Ainsley is definitely able to read some simple cvc words without prompting. However, she's proving to be more difficult than Aidan ever thought to be about "showing" her skills. She seems to like to play "the dumb cute one."  Online games is really the only way I can test her. She loves playing on T4L and Starfall.com. Unfortunately for her I've been so negligent with them that she hasn't played online in months but fortunately for me it has made it easier for me to gauge where her understanding is. One must be careful with hovering around Ainsley when she's playing because she'll "play cute" and deliberately choose the wrong answers. However, because she's so excited to be back online... the false answers were minimal this week. Well, I've been quite a bit surprised this week with how quickly and easily Ainsley can answer questions online. Seriously, on Starfall she can drop and build words to match the picture without a second thought. On T4L the PreK lessons are so easy for her that she just laughs at them... seriously... as in rolling-eyes laughing. (and she's not even 3 yet!) Three times this week I've also had time-stop moments when Ainsley has correctly answered math equations that I've verbally given Aidan. Since it's only been three times I'm chalking it up to coincidences but it has left me wondering. Anyway, I believe I'll enjoy schooling Ainsley this year. Or Maybe Not?? She might decide to never answer me on anything. Hmm? It could go either way.

Anyway....

Ready Set GO.... we're about to START!!