It's Working! It's Really Working!

An hour is how much time Catherine spent working on her fable rewrite today. One whole hour of her writing and me not hearing a peep. Not a complaint, not a cry for help, nothing. She came out with two double-spaced pages of fabulous fable and handed it to me with a huge smile.

This is our fifth week of Classical Writing: Aesop (admittedly rejiggered for our purposes) and it just seems to be getting better with each week. Catherine enjoys the work, I enjoy the fact that most of it is independent and the other things I've been slowly adding like Peterson Directed Handwriting and Megawords only seem to compliment the writing. This feels so good!

Math isn't far behind in the feel good department. Life of Fred: Fractions hasn't really been delved into yet but the Primary Math 5A is coming along and adding more to the math seems to make the whole math time more focused and enjoyable (how weird). What I added was Primary mathematics Intensive Practice and Challenging Word Problems. I think the trick was that I only got those two books a week or so ago, after we were almost finished with the first unit in PM so it's all comfortable review. Catherine has a time when she can feel competent and enjoys working the numbers now instead of it always being about learning the next concept.

Science is a ball. The Elements: Ingredients of the Universe is easy to follow and is having unexpected benefits. In five minutes with four quick questions on the bottom of one page Catherine conquered the idea of ratios. It came in handy when I did a quick review of adding unlike fractions. What had caused a little trouble before was now as easy as pie.

I have never had so much stuff click like this before. While not every day is good and productive and cat-fight free, overall we're doing pretty damn good. One month in and there's nothing that I regret buying. Nothing that Catherine hates. I must be dreaming!