Early summer vacation

I've been feeling pretty unmotivated these days what with the baby interrupting almost every task I start and the weather finally brightening up. Somehow this year has completely flown by. Here we are with about two months of school left and less than two weeks till Pascha.

Theo has finished grade one math. He is already reading at a second grade level, probably higher actually, and we can't stop him reading. He is writing at a second grade level too, and his spelling and vocabulary is sophisticated enough I almost never need to help him with anything in his writing. He uses apostrophes and commas and periods and question marks all correctly without prompting. He usually capitalises proper nouns and he's becoming familiar with the concept of compound words. And while his language arts workbooks are largely untouched I can hardly see the point of him doing them at all. We can have them around for summer practice, but since the funding for next year doesn't come available till May and Pascha is almost upon us, I really can't see the point of starting any new projects till after Bright Week. This week I've been taking a sort of Montessori like approach to school and letting Theo pick an activity from the school shelf or else go play outside. This morning he did some pages from his grade two phonics book, but really just for the satisfaction of having done them. They're far too easy.

So for the next two to three weeks I'm hoping to have plenty of outings, lots of play time, and formal school work will only happen for as long as Theo wants it to. As it is, Theo and Georgie will both start swimming lessons next week and with Pascha coming up I feel more inclined to make sure we get plenty of prep for Holy Week.

For those of you who don't know, Holy Week is the week before Pascha (ie Orthodox Easter). And we go to church every night. We've had several conversations about what Lent and Pascha are about, but I think a little more education in that area won't go amiss. They are now both at the age where they are starting to ask a lot more questions about this kind of thing. After Eustace's baptism I decided it was time time that Theo wore his cross too--a point of much resistance for a long time. I chose to use an educational approach to the issue and explained what the cross is and why we wear them. As Theo is also named for St. Andrew I was able to show him different types of crosses and explain about the St. Andrew's cross and  St. Peter's cross. This prompted a more complicated explanation of crucifixion as both St. Andrew and St. Peter were also crucified on different shaped crosses, but other cross shapes are named after saints that weren't crucified. For example Theo now wears a St. Olga's cross. In the course of this discussion however, it became apparent that there was some confusion about the difference between Jesus and the saints, and as both Peter and Andrew were also crucified as martyrs I can see why. So we'll be talking about that a lot this week and next. I always thought the best church education was to bring kids to church, and it probably still is. But I think they're at an age where they're starting to ask a lot more questions that simply being at services won't clearly explain. At least not in a way a three year old can understand. And our children's Bible is rubbish.

We're slowly working through the rest of his Canadian map workbook and beginning work on land and water forms which the Montessori curriculum is helpful with. And at some point I will make an effort to get our garden going in conjunction with our Montessori botany curriculum. This week included a discussion of rainbows as the sunlight reflected through our kitchen chandelier made rainbows all over the kitchen. A book about the water cycle that he took out if the library prompted him to point at a wispy cloud in the park and say "hey look! Water vapour!" So the learning keeps happening. In fact it often seems to happen more when we blow off doing school. We had a fun conversation about what compliments are and the difference between good and bad bacteria and why we take probiotics and what vitamins are. I just never remember to write these things down!

In any case we're going to take it easy for the next little bit while I try to get us through Pascha and figure out what curricula to use next fall.