End of Year Homeschool Report - Joshua - 2007

This may be very boring for those who do not know Joshua personally. It is included here for the benefit of close relatives. Also, because a homeschooled child does not get a school report, I think it will be nice to have a written record of my assessment of my children's accomplishments in times to come!

Bible and Belief
Joshua is familiar with many of the well-known historical narratives. He can retell many Bible stories in his own words, such as Jesus calming the storm, and Jesus' parable of the houses built on the sand and rock. He uses his knowledge of other narratives in his play, for example asking Anna to pretend to be John and to baptise him in the bath [said practice which led to him getting an ear infection and has since been curtailed].
Joshua has memorised Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1-4 along with several other verses.
Joshua knows many of the words in the Lord's Prayer and recites what he knows along with our church congregation on Sundays. He has also memorised the core words of the minister during Holy Communion and has, on occasion, initiated play-acting of Holy Communion at meal times at home. Joshua prays readily in familiar circumstances (such as meal time grace) and also talks informally to God about personal matters both with his parents and when he is alone. He also encourages others to join in communal prayer times.

Character
Joshua has continued to develop his wonderfully manly attitude of protection and caring for his younger siblings, although he can often be bossy also. At times Joshua is too easily upset by circumstances and struggles to regain self-control, but can usually do so adequately after taking time out alone in his room. He is generally obedient and polite, but does find it difficult and frustrating to leave a task he is involved in, especially if it is of a creative nature such as building with Duplo blocks or drawing and colouring his own pictures. This can be a source of conflict between Joshua and his siblings, so I need to be careful in my choice of timing for activities, so as to prevent him becoming be exasperated beyond bearing, in order to avoid unnecessary arguments.

Literacy
At the beginning of this year, Joshua knew a few letters, really only those in his own name. Now, he can read many CVC words which use the Basic Code ("short") vowel sound. Often he needs to sound out the word from its letters, and he has recently begun to read some words without this step, or after only decoding some of the letters aloud. Joshua has also begun to read a few words which have blended consonant pairs and clusters (CCVC, CVCC etc) as well as those with consonant-vowel blends (VC, CV, CVC). He is familiar with the use of [s] for the /z/ sound, reading thus: "i...sss...iz" and the use of [e] for /ee/, reading thus: "w...e...wee". He can also recognise two consonant dipthongs: [sh] (which is in his name, and so was familiar early) and [th].
Joshua is sometimes unenthusiastic about a set reading task but usually surprises himself with his own ability and is gaining confidence. He enjoys reading words and numbers from signs and other non-page sources. His attention span for the still difficult task of decoding words from an unfamiliar source is limited to less than 15 minutes, which has improved greatly from the beginning of the year.
Joshua writes very neatly when tracing, shaping all letters correctly according to the example. He finds some letters which have slanted lines, such as w and z, to be difficult to form. Occasionally he writes the descender before the circle in the letters a, d and g, which needs continued enforced correction (ie, erasing and re-writing the letter). Joshua's free-writing (writing without an immediate visual example or lines) is clear and readable although his letters are not consistent in size. Joshua can write a short sentence of about 8-10 words in one sitting before his hand becomes tired and his concentration wanders. Unsurprisingly, he prefers a task of reading and writing a sentence over the same task with a list of unrelated words.
Joshua knows that a sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, and that a capital letter also marks the beginning of a proper name. He can discriminate between capitals and lower case letters and identify full stops.

Literature
Joshua listens enthusiastically to picture books (especially those with rythmic prose) and episodic/chapter books (such as The House at Pooh Corner and Tan A Wild Dog) when they are read aloud. He follows the central flow of action although he misses some plot subtleties. This has been demonstrated through his answers to comprehension questions and through his oral narrations, as well as such things as identifying previously unseen images as relating to a particular familiar story or rhyme.
He uses many words and phrases that he has heard from these books in his play and in everyday conversation, demonstrating a knowledge of their meaning (for example, "festival"). He asks questions about some of the vocabulary that is above his present level.

Mathematics
This year, our mathematics curriculum has been purely ad hoc, such as counting incidental objects and reading the numerals on letter boxes and freeway signs. A while ago I put a bit of effort into teaching Joshua to rote count into double-digit figures, and he can now do this with fair success, although he still stumbles over twenty. When my mother was visiting a fortnight ago, I showed her (and Joshua) the mathematics books we will be using next year, and as he attempted a few random tasks, we realised that Joshua can mentally calculate with a fair degree of competence simple addition and subtraction sums with the digits 1-5. He can also perform similar calculations with the digits 1-10 if he has fingers or some other manipulative to help him to visualise the problem. Wow! I was impressed with my little boy's ability.