homeschooling log 2010: chapter one.

So, I've decided that this school year I will try to record some highlights of our schooling each week.

Today my son started eighth grade. He is in Year Four at The Classical School, and his class meets every Tuesday. He spends the rest of the week getting all of his assignments completed and ready to turn in at the next class. For the first day of school, he needed to have three books read and two book reports written. The three books were "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis, and Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a Book." He was not impressed at all with the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but loved the other two books and did book reports for those. I remember reading Adler's book because it was listed in Susan Bauer's "The Well-Trained Mind," and it is definitely a keeper for the bookshelf. I was really happy that Bobby liked it too.

He had all of his assignments completed and had a pleasant first day of classes. He said that they spent the bulk of the day watching Francis Schaeffer's video "How Should We Then Live?" and he took the time to tell me all about it while we were on the road to Ohio. I loved hearing him recount all of the information they had discussed in class.

My son has become quite the model student. He got straight A's last school year, and now I don't have to constantly stay on him about doing his homework. He knows that he's going to have a Latin exam every week, so he gets on the ball and does his Latin homework and studies for the quizzes right away. He read all of the summer books online, and I did not have to remind him once. He takes the initiative now and gets his work done independently. That is a huge help now that I am schooling Ian and Natalie.