Two weeks, few pictures

I've been lazy about doing photogenic project-type stuff the past couple of weeks, and I'm not feeling motivated enough to scan in the written work we've done, so I'll be wordy instead. Mostly. And brief, I suspect. Maybe.

Ari has finally left money behind in Singapore, and is zooming through both fractions and time. He loves both things, and they're easy for him, so for the past two weeks I'll tell him to do 2 pages and come back to find he's done 6--that sort of thing. I have the Intensive Practice book, too; we've only used it sporadically, but I think I'll break it out for more fractions and clocks next week (Intensive Practice has more, generally more challenging, problems on the same topics covered in the regular Singapore book). Milo's started in on the last book of Earlybird--more adding so far. He's very much got the concept down, and can do sums up to 5 or 6 in his head, usually.

Ari did the first of the "oral usage" lessons in the back of First Language Lessons 3; it's interesting to see to what extent he correctly conjugates verbs without having actually been taught them formally before. One lesson was on...umm, past progressive is it? I have eaten, etc? He knew most of them already, but not all.

In history we learned about various west African kingdoms last week and then explorers (Columbus, Magellan, et. al.) this week. Africa yielded the only project we got around to--a sad attempt to make salt blocks. In Africa, they made houses out of salt blocks. Our salt blocks were still all mushy and collapsed when we tried to take them out of the ice cube trays after sitting around in the sun for a week, however, and we decided that our humid climate is not at all suited to constructing things out of salt blocks.

I was surprised at how difficult it is to find kid's books on Columbus from anything other than a "what a terrific guy!" perspective. Story of the World does at least point out that Columbus wasn't really the first European to stumble across America, so that's something I guess. We read the Value Tale about Columbus--the Value of Curiosity--in which Native Americans are said to have returned to Spain with Columbus because "they were curious, too!" Sure they were. Anyway, so we talked about other perspectives on it and how history depends on who's telling it and all that, and that will have to do unless someone has a picture book suggestion to offer, because I don't think they're old enough yet for the Columbus chapter from Lies My Teacher Told Me.

Ari's reading a book about the first moon landing to himself, and we're reading A Cricket in Times Square at bedtime. I tried to start Matilda with Milo, but I don't think he's quite there yet. If we could get past the first few chapters, things get a bit more fast-paced, as I recall. But I think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or James and the Giant Peach would be a better Roald Dahl introduction for a not yet 5 year old.

I want to try to do the Green Hour Challenge, so this week we went for a walk and found two things we want to learn more about--umm, I think it was our dogwood tree and our creek. Now we have to do the part where we find out more about them. But that brings us to the real reason, or at least the real excuse, why we haven't been very organized the past couple of weeks: it's spring! So we've been doing stuff like this instead:


I forsee a lot of laundry and stain remover in our summer.

Weekly Report: March 10-14

I feel like we did a bunch of running around this week (I think we're coming out of that traditional hibernating time of year, and it's going to be harder to stay home), but we still seem to have done a fair amount here.

I mentioned the moon phases book we made last week, but didn't post a picture, and I just happen to have one, so here it is. And then this week we made sponge painted suns. On the

backs are lists of things we need the sun for. We read about the sun in First Encyclopedia of Space and watched a video on United Streaming about the solar system. We were supposed to go outside and do something with a coin to demonstrate how a solar eclipse works, but we didn't quite get around to it.














We did 2 chapters in Story of the World this week, as I realized we're going to have to pick up the pace a bit if we want to finish by June so we can start the Winterpromise American history stuff (and we do. Or at least I do, because I just ordered it a couple of days ago and I'm bad at waiting). We learned about Joan of Arc and a bunch of other war stuff. I was never a huge fan of history in school because my eyes glaze over and I can't keep things straight when it comes to the war parts. And there are so many war parts. I'm completely fascinated by political history, and I'm interested in daily life kind of stuff (and my best papers in grad school were of a historical criticism bent). But not war stuff. The kids don't care much for it, either, at least not so far. The Joan of Arc parts seem to be what sunk in the most with everyone (including me). There's an absurd game suggested in the SOTW activity guide, wherein kids are supposed to put all their stuffed animals together in a big mob, designate one of them as the Dauphin, and then have someone come in pretending to be Joan of Arc and try to guess which animal is the Dauphin in disguise. The connection between this and the real event seems tenuous at best, since there is no pretense that God is guiding the process, but I suppose it does make an impression. So the kids set everything up and I came in to try to guess the Dauphin (it was the panda), and then I thought that perhaps it was such a great game that the kids would entertain themselves for hours (or at least 20 minutes) doing it themselves. But no. There was some sort of Dauphin-guessing catastrophe with much screaming about 15 seconds after I left the room, and all the fun was over. Alas. They also watched (and very much liked) an animated video about Joan of Arc on United Streaming. And we made pop-up Tower of London cards! About 2 hours after this picture was taken, Gus got ahold of the glue and dumped it all over the back of Ari's card ("me glue it!"). I salvaged the tower itself, but the rest of it's a goner.

Gus woke up early from his nap, so of course he had to make a pop-up Tower of London card, too.














I got ahead of myself on math predictions; turns out Ari has just finished up the money stuff and is about to do a few pages of review before moving on to fractions, and Milo just finished EB 2a on Friday (we tend to only do math a couple of times a week for Milo. Our general pattern is that I'll do stuff with Ari while he does Headsprout (and Gus watches) until he gets bored. Then when Ari's working independently, I read a couple of books to Gus and Milo. Then Ari plays with Gus while I do either math or handwriting or some other workbook for a few minutes with Milo). Math pages in the slide show below.

Ari starts up an art class this coming week. He's not at all looking forward to it, because he doesn't look forward to new things, but I think he'll enjoy it once he gets used to it. That is his general pattern. His friend Lula is in it, too. He and Lula have kind of a weird relationship, which I think is mostly because they both like to be in charge and because Milo has a big crush on Lula, and Ari doesn't like Milo taking orders from someone else. So I think it will be good for the two of them to be in a class where Milo is not and where neither of them is in charge.

Ari and Milo have been planning a "rocket party" for their (4 day apart) birthdays for months now, but now that things are really getting down to the wire (only 3 months to go), the planning has kicked into high gear. Here is the (front of) a sheet Ari carries around with him everywhere for taking notes about the party:

He can't think of anything yet for "Other Important Stuff." hee hee.

Hey--I only skipped a week this time!

So...a two week update. Much better than 4 months, yes?

Ari's still doing money stuff in Singapore 1B this week. Next up is fractions, I believe. He'll be happy to be finished with money. My in-laws were in town last weekend; my father-in-law is a mathematician, so Ari likes to show off in math whenever he's around--making up secret codes for him to solve and stuff like that. Ari and FIL have a historically sort of...weird relationship. Ari is and always has been very shy, but before he got his hearing aid he was very, very, very shy and pretty much didn't speak to anyone outside immediate family. So he would talk to my MIL, but not my FIL. And instead of handling it like the grown-up in the situation, my FIL tended to do stuff like ask Ari one question, then walk off and sulk somewhere when Ari didn't answer him immediately. The dynamic was further complicated by the fact that my FIL speaks very quietly and even people with normal hearing have a tough time understanding him sometimes (and, of course, at the time we had no idea there was a hearing problem). ANYWAY, things have improved dramatically over the past year. Ari talks to Grandpa all the time and is glad to have him around. My FIL does not sulk so much. But I still have minor quibbles with how he interacts with Ari. Ari made a point of hanging out right next to Grandpa and counting by 4s while he was here. He counted by 4s up to 300, I think, while Grandpa said not a single word and acted as if he didn't even notice. Later, after Ari had gone to bed, he started bragging to me and Dave about how Ari had counted for him. Yeah. So tell ARI you think it's great. It's nto a big deal, really. It's just that I know Ari really wants him to be impressed, and I know that Ari's self-esteem can always use a boost; he's never going to ASK for a compliment, but it would mean a lot to him to get one. So, at any rate...more math. He's also working through, on his own, for fun, a multiplication book I picked up at a yard sale or somewhere. And we have Multiplication Rock checked out from the library. It, umm...rocks!

Milo just finished the Singapore EB 2A this week, so he's ready to start the last book of that. It's just getting into adding (with visual help--using a timeline, counting objects). He already had the concept down, so it's all pretty easy/fun for him. He does, however, have this weird block where he can't count to 20. He skips over 15 and 16 every time. I guess he'll get it eventually.

I did some ordering from Rainbow Resource for next year the other week. I mostly bought our math stuff, but I also got a few logic/critical thinking books. These, it turns out, are too fun to save for summer. Ari is doing Logic Safari, which is lots of those little puzzles where you check boxes to tell whether Mary, Sam, or Tom is the one who wore the blue sweater to the zoo. This is about the only thing I remember doing in my 4th and 5th grade gifted program. I'm not sure how useful the whole thing was, but I did do exceptionally well on the now gone analytical thinking section of the GRE. And Ari loves them. Milo is doing Lollipop Logic, with a bunch of different types of puzzles (so far it's mostly stuff like, "X out the things that don't belong" and "Put these steps in order").

Milo's chugging along in Headsprout. He's on lesson 25 now (out of 80)...he gets bored with it fairly quickly, so it often takes him 2 or 3 ten minute sessions to finish one lesson. But he's definitely getting the sounding out thing now, which he never did before, so I'm impressed with it (of course, whether it's Headsprout or just a matter of him being ready now I'll never really know).

History...last week was our first week using the SOTW CDs instead of me reading to them. I think it's going to work well. I play them in the car, and they actually listen intently and retain information! And then we have plenty of time at home to get crafts and projects and readings from the library done! I've stopped trying to do formal narrations for history this year. We're getting Susan Wise Bauer's new writing program for next year, and I'm hoping that will break the process down into manageable steps for Ari and build up his confidence. He has it in his head that doing narrations is much harder than it really is. So for now we're just talking about what we read, and sometimes they ask to get the narration box down (it has lots of different ideas like, "make up a play about what we read" and "write a letter to nana about what we read"). Last week we made Byzantine Icons:

Only we haven't had a chance (because it's always raining when we remember) to take them outside and spray the sealant stuff on them, so they're not quite finished. And then this week....Black Death masks! Because nothing says fun like pretending you're a doctor wearing one of these masks while trying to fend off bubonic plague, right?





In science, we learned about the moon this week, and made a phases of the moon book to go in our super-cool, rocket-shaped pocket book. Last week we made an astronaut with a Manned Manuevering Unit. The astronaut can move up and down and spin around:

















So those are the highlights of the week, I guess. Planning for next year: I ordered a bunch of chemistry stuff the other week from Amazon. I got the Usborne Science Enclyclopedia, and I think we'll mostly use Super Science Concoctions for experiments:

It seems like it will be simple enough for Milo to follow along easily. I thought about buying a prepackaged curriculum for science, but everything I was looking at either seemed like not at all what I wanted or seemed like something I could

easily put together myself. Now I'm waiting for Winterpromise's catalog to come out so I can order history stuff, and then we'll be pretty well set. Ari will still be doing First Language Lessons 3 and he'll start on the writing program. I'll have to wait until Milo finishes Headsprout and decide what Language Arts program would be good for him. All the math stuff is here already. I'm just trying to decide if we can handle adding Latin in or not. They'll probably do Spanish at the homeschool center near us, so maybe we should hold off on Latin. Hmm....I also need to look at money and budgets and whatnot and try to decide what outside activities we can do. Ari's taking a homeschool art class starting in a couple of weeks, so if he likes that we'll probably keep it up. And then either keep doing gymnastics or switch to Capoeira (which we need to try out and see what we think...it's a Brazilian martial arts thing--I have a friend whose son takes it and she highly recommends it. I'm not super impressed with Ari's gymnastics class these days). Milo is probably going to want to play soccer in the fall. And then someday poor Gus is going to need to do something, too. I get all panicky because we're leaving out piano. Panicky is not necessary, though, I think.

Okay! Back next week! I hope!