Okay so I was wrong...

I decided not to wait until next week to start school. I had been telling Dakota we were going to start this week and I wanted to start regardless if I had all the materials or not. There is plenty he needs to work on so I figured we could just get busy on some other stuff besides the Heart of Dakota curriculum. I ordered the 5 books I need from Books-A-Million on Monday so hopefully they will be here next week.

Math
I have taught Dakota his times tables but he doesn't remember them because it's not something we went over and over again so I thought we would start out with "relearning" those. I wasn't sure where to start - what he remembered or what he needed help on so I just started quizzing him on all the times tables. Once we got done with that it was the craziest thing - he was struggling with 4's (you know -- 4x7, 4x6, 4x9....) but some of the higher numbers he still remembered.
I was glad to hear that though because it won't take him too long to memorize those and once he does we can move on.

Spelling
I've been using a book Natural Speller by Kathryn Stout to teach Dakota spelling the last couple of years. We tried the whole phonics thing for several years because that is how I learned and I still remember the rules and I've always excelled at spelling. But he was not getting it. He hated that. Ever since I switched to Natural Speller he does much better.

I started out on Monday going through the "homophones" word lists just to make sure he knew how to spell each word and how to use each word correctly in a sentence. (Homophones - words that sound alike but have different meanings. For example: sea, see; horse, hoarse) We knocked out a bunch of words because he knew them all. He only had to work on a few - four I think. I was pleased with how well he did!

Writing
I handed Dakota a notebook and gave him 30 minutes to write or draw whatever he wanted. This is completely out of his comfort zone. He hates writing and he doesn't feel comfortable drawing. He likes to draw but he is a perfectionist and when it doesn't come out like a Picasso
work of art he gets upset and won't draw anymore. I knew if I forced him to get started and assured him it was all good - no grades given, no criticisms, whatever he drew or wrote was completely up to him - then he would actually take longer than 30 mins.

One hour later I had to make him put down his pencils so we could move on to something else. I promised him he was going to have this time everyday to continue his "masterpiece." :-)