Half-baked Homeschool

I have composed this post once already, but I erased it after I read it. Reading an end-of-year assessment in prose is a real snoozer. I'll try a more visually organized format, which may still be boring, but at least it's easier to scan with your eye.

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to include in my state-required assessment. Oh, I could look it up, but that would mean dedicating more time to this. And I've already spent way too long fighting with Blogger as I tried to single-space my Reading list.

So these are the highlights of what Bearclaw accomplished in 2nd grade language arts over the past school year:

Curricula:

Writing - Writing With Ease: Level 2
Grammar - First Language Lessons
Spelling - Spelling Power
Handwriting - homemade worksheets
Literature/Reading - see book list


Skills and Knowledge (acquired this year):

Writing

• narrates both short and longer (avg. 800 words) of read-aloud material unaided
• copies up to three sentences from dictation, with correct use of captalization and punctuation
• composes brief book reports with a beginning, middle, and end
• writes legibly; beginning to write with greater speed

Grammar and Spelling

• identifies and gives examples of: nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, articles, contractions, and preposition
• spells words containing spelling patterns typical for second grade
• uses and spells some common contractions and abbreviations correctly

Reading/Literature

• reads assigned books at an average Lexile level of 800-1000
• reads voluntarily at least 30 min./day

Reading List

The Knight at Dawn - Osborne

"Beowulf" from Favorite Medieval Tales - Osborne

The Sword in the Tree - Bulla

The Viking Adventure - Bulla

The Making of a Knight - O'Brien

The Minstrel in the Tower -Skurzynski

Castle Diary -Platt

Robinhood of Sherwood Forest - McGovern

Raisel's Riddle - Silverman

Baboushka and the Three Kings - Robbins

The Apple and the Arrow - Buff

Pedro's Journal- Conrad

Fine Print - Burch

The Whipping Boy - Fleischman

I'm glad that's out of the way. On to history tomorrow.

I set up this blog last fall. And here it has sat unused until now. Oh, I played with my template, rearranged elements, and fiddled with the description a bit, but I didn't actually get to the posting part.

Initially, I thought a blog would be a great way for us to chronicle our homeschooling activities. But autumn slipped by, and it didn't make sense to start tracking our activities when we were wrapping up for the holidays. I'd start it in January, I claimed, but the new year yeilded no new inspiration about the blog. Before I knew it, it was May, and the school year that I had planned to track with my posts was over.

Summer now seems like the right time to get started (I've exhausted all of my other seasonal options), but it doesn't supply that easy "school year kick-off" post as a natural launching point.

Thankfully, the state of Georgia has given me something to do here, since I am required to write an assessment of my students' academic progress over the past school year and keep it on file. I plan to make my first few posts that file. So, my original plan stays somewhat intact. I will simply share our homeschool highlights in review and then branch out from there. Should any state or county school official ever need to check it, they may come away with a great recipe for grilled pizza dough, too.