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!