Our New House and the Beginning of Book Shark 2

It's been a long while since I posted, but with good reason. We've moved! We're so excited and happy. My mom generously loaned us her house for almost five years while my husband got his degree and we are so grateful, but having a home of our own is such an amazing feeling. We don't own it. It's a rental, but hopefully one day we'll be able to buy it. So that's where I've been. Surrounded by boxes, unpacking, and making this space our home.

Sometime during the chaos, we started our new BookShark year. We bought Bess the whole 2nd grade package with the advanced readers, Horizons 3 Math, Sequential Spelling 1, and Critical Thinking Company's Editor in Chief Beginning 1.
Bess will really be in 3rd grade, but the suggested ages for the Bookshark package are 7-9. I always like to stay to the middle or older range. Bess gets so much more out of it that way and feels less pressure.

I bought Handwriting Without Tears just for practice. Her writing is improving quite a bit and we might move to a cursive book mid-year. Editor In Chief was her choice. Bess enjoyed that part of Language Smarts.

For Max we purchased Critical Thinking Company's Mathematical Reasoning Level B and Math Analogies Beginning. We're also starting Reading Eggs soon as we seem to have hit a wall in his reading. I'm not pushing any other subjects for him right now. He listens in on Bess' science and we read tons out loud from the library. As you can tell, we don't use Bookshark for Max but he does sit in on some of the read-alouds.

I love BookShark even more this year. We've gotten more comfortable with the schedule. I love that my prep time is usually less than 10 minutes, and I'm amazed how much Bess is retaining.

BookShark customer service is amazing. They are courteous and helpful. I mistakenly thought I was missing a book from our package, but it turned out to be one which wasn't supposed to be in Grade 2. However, the company had a few left and sent it to us anyway for free. So now I have another reason to love BookShark, as if I needed one!

I'm excited to have time again to blog a little. I plan to post more frequently.

I hope you had a wonderful, relaxing summer. I wish you a great new school year!

Until Next Time!