Ella

Ella has just been going gangbusters on the schoolwork lately. She takes to everything with such enthusiasm, except her reading of the Phonics series. Even that, though, has been done much more readily lately. She reads a whole book now each day (16 pages) rather than half, and she's quite impressed with herself (lots of "hey, I'm already on page 11!"), so in some ways the thing she likes to do least is having the strongest effect. But yesterday, she listened with enthusiasm to the geography section of What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know, which lead to me getting down the globe, and then we have two map puzzles that she just had to do. Then she got into the directions: North, South, East, and West, and started looking at maps to find where the compass is printed, and how ornately. I've got to find a web resource to download color-in map printables. And I've got to hunt down Madison's old compass that we used to have in the car.

Ella loves Handwriting without Tears. She's always been justly proud of her handwriting, focusing on it as she does.

And she also likes the Ancient Greeks, even Greek culture stuff other than the myths. She doesn't get the philosophy or politics parts at all, but that's ok with me.

It takes Ella much less time to do schoolwork than Madison, not simply because I give her slightly less (she's technically only in kindergarten, you know) but she really gets down to business and gets done what she needs to get done.

I'm very proud of her.