Science For A Big Kid

Sissy is in the 7th grade now...sigh...

Last year I started giving Sissy more independent work and encouraging her to read through things and try to figure them out on her own. This was difficult for me because she seems to struggle with pronouncing some words as well as understanding what they mean. I did not want to make school MORE of a difficult process for her. She seemed to do well. I still read history and science to her as I was already doing it for the younger girls, but she was in charge of the rest of her work and I had her read some chapter books that I thought she would struggle with, but she did fine.

This year I am giving her a print out each week of what I would like her to do by the end of the week - except for history. We still do this as a group. She has been VERY responsible about it and will even work ahead a day or so on some subjects.

This year she is doing Apologia General Science which is intended to be for a 7th grader. The book looks like a college textbook and honestly I expected to hear some whining about how hard it is, but so far so good.

Yesterday she did her first experiment, which she is supposed to do on her own and then write a lab report about what she did and what she learned. This is much more reading, thinking and then writing (her most difficult subject) than she has done and she is just plugging along. This year she will be taking a class at our co-op in which she will do all the experiments in the class that correspond with the reading. We do not start co-op until September 20 so I wanted to her to do one or two experiments with me at home and work on writing a lab report so we could talk about it. She did a great job.

It is hard for me to see her growing up. She is such a wonderful kid. I genuinely love spending time with her, talking with her, sharing with her. She is responsible, motivated (with most things), caring, focused on God - and I know most of this is due to the fact that she is growing up. However, I find myself preparing for the fact that she is really only going to be a "kid" for 5 more years. Sigh....