Changes over the Summer

Can you believe that summer is almost over? I certainly can't.... makes Christmas seem so much closer and I am not ready for that part of the year yet....

Before we get to that, a new school year will start very soon. Am I ready? I am not sure.
Our school year ended with a few struggles. It was hard to motivate Coqui to do his school work, especially because I wanted to finish certain things, and that was after the public school had ended already. If you remember this post (click here) when I told you that Coqui is not really into Maths and has trouble understanding it - he is more of a speller. Well, apparently that has changed....

Well, something in his brain must have clicked over the summer, because all on his own, he started adding and subtracting numbers. When I heard that, I was actually quite perplexed.... I mean how many hours have I tried to explain to him that 1 plus 1 is 2 and 2 minus 1 is 1. Right? Now he can add 5 plus 5 and 6 plus 6, and can even subtract all on his own - explaining things to his grandma! Great. I guess my hard work does pay off, just a bit delayed....

He also spells out more things. For example, he surprised me and his grandma in being able to recognize all the colors spelled out. You know the coloring books that have numbers on the picture and you have to match say the 1 with blue and the 2 with red and so on.... well, he can read most of the colors! I am amazed.

I guess going to the zoo and Aquarium helped him getting more into the science. And I don't want to say too much, but I think we are expanding our little co-op that we did through the summer, art and Spanish, into everything else, like Maths, Science and Sign language.... We are not sure how this will work, it will be a longer morning though, and it will be tough with all the babies around. So I suggested that I will watch the babies while the big kids will learn, and are being taught by the host (of the location that we are using). But it is all still in the planning and we have to see how things actually will work for everyone, like a time and all the supplies needed. I feel very fortunate that we are a part of this group, the women (and men) are great.

So I guess, the only thing I have to decide on is when to actually start our school year. Because we are still on vacation, and we started the summer a bit later than the public school, I am shooting for August 25th. I used to start school in the middle of the week - I guess with a shorter week it was easier to get the kids used to being back in the school rhythm. that date gives me a full week of being back at home.... we'll see.