August 2-6, 2010: Week 2

This week there were no snakes, and it continued to be a million, gazillion degrees every day. As a result (of the heat, not the lack of snakes), my kids spent too much time inside and were pretty much completely nuts much of the time. In theory, we have a rule that they have to play outside for an hour before they can have any screen time in the afternoons, but I have a hard time enforcing this rule when the heat index is 107 and we're out of bug spray. I expected that we would at least go swimming Thursday at my stepmother's house, but then she canceled on us because of an emergency dentist visit. Today I took a page from Smrtmama's book and had them all run down to the cul-de-sac and back before we started school and again before they could turn on the Wii. Ari really hated this. Too bad, kiddo. Show me you can sit still and focus on something for more than 3 seconds at a time and we'll talk about cutting out the compulsory exercise.

Ari: Ari finished exercise 10 in Singapore 5A today, which means we've done math every day so far! This week was an introduction to order of operations and then some of those fiendish word problems that it takes me almost as long as Ari to figure out. "Too bad I don't know algebra," said Ari. Indeed. Singapore word problems cry out for algebra.

I gave him an oral quiz over the first chapter of Spanish for Children, and he started in on the second chapter. He got all the words right on his second spelling test (he's doing Spelling Workout E). I have no regrets about not doing formal spelling with him up until now, but I think it's worth spending a few minutes a day doing it now. He's naturally a strong speller, but that also means he can get big rewards with not much effort in spelling, since once he learns a word he's unlikely to forget it. His other morning independent work is doing Logic Liftoff, Evan Moor's Daily Paragraphy Editing and Daily Math Practice, and...hmm, maybe that's all.

He finished Tuck Everlasting and we "discussed" it. Umm. I needn't have worried too much about that conversation dragging out endlessly, since getting Ari to give more than a one word answer is a monumental task. I think perhaps I need to get better about being flexible and spontaneous. I was all, "blah, blah, order vs. chaos, blah, personal choice, blah, what about the TOAD?!" while Ari was all, "yes. no. shrug." At one point, though, he said, "she never explains why the water makes them live forever. In Harry Potter they explain why things happen." Hours later, it occurred to me that this was an interesting observation and might have been the beginning of a great conversation about fantasy as a genre and why Natalie Babbitt made the choice not to explain why and J.K. Rowling didn't. So then I tried to bring it up again rather abruptly, but the moment had passed. Anyway, it's a start. I'd never read Tuck Everlasting before, incidentally, and I adored it. I might put it right up there with Charlotte's Web, which is the highest compliment I give to kid's lit.

Now he's reading Boy of the Painted Cave and is, thus far, unimpressed. He also started in on a Bible reading schedule for kids that someone on the WTM boards pointed me to. (http://www.pennygardner.com/bible.html)

Michael Clay Thompson stuff is going smoothly so far. He's getting more and more comfortable with doing the 4 level analysis. We're still reading through Grammar Town, and we started the 2nd chapter of Caesar's English.

Milo: Milo finished Singapore 1A and started on 1B. I'd like to get through 2B this year if possible, so I'm having him do 2 exercises a day in 1B right now. We may well have to slow down at some point, and that will be fine, but it's working for now. I need to take some time out to do some games with him to work on addition and subtraction facts. He can do them, but it's agonizingly slow sometimes.

He finished Fantastic Mr. Fox and started on The Strange Museum, which is a chapter book that goes along with Master Reader. The way Master Reader works is there are 4 levels, each one with 10 lessons. So Milo does a lesson on the computer, then reads a story card that goes along with that lesson, and then when he finishes a level, there's a book to read. So he's reading The Strange Museum during school time and also has three (count 'em!) books going aside from that--two Geronimo Stilton books and Stanley in Space. I'm not clear on how he can keep track of 2 different Geronimo Stilton books at the same time, but it seems to work for him.

He's also working on WWE 1 (he's on week 28, I think), RFWP's "Aesop's Fables: My Book about Reading, Writing, and Thinking," Building Thinking Skills, and Explode the Code 5. He's gotten everything right on his first two spelling tests in Spelling Workout B! I don't think of Milo as a natural speller, so I'm very pleased with this. Maybe he's more of a natural speller than I thought. Or maybe I should bite my tongue until the words get harder.

Gus: I was kidding when I said he was on lesson 70something in McRuffy. We just did lesson 61 today. But, anyway, yeah, that's going fine. He's gotten to practicing writing numbers in Singapore, which has slowed him down a bit. Today he told me he's already really good at 3's, so we could skip those. I suggested the practice would be good even for a master 3 writer like him. I've done a rather crappy job this week of finding time to read picture books to him, even though we made a library trip and have a full basket of shiny new books. He listens along with his brothers to all the history reading, and Dave reads chapter books to him at night (they're on Ramona the Pest right now), but I still want some dedicated sit and read story books time for him every day. Part of the problem is that he keeps tricking me into building a marble run or playing checkers instead. Little scamp.

History: Chapter 2 of SOTW. I got the CDs from my friend, but not before I'd already read the chapter aloud, so they listened to me read it and then listened to it again in the car. We finished You Wouldn't Want to be a Mammoth Hunter, read "Croconile," and made a model of the Nile in a baking pan, as suggested in my handy SOTW activity guide. We made a suspiciously similar model 4 years ago--the first time we went through SOTW--but no one except me seems to remember it. We also listened to our Jim Weiss Egyptian Myths CD. We've had it for awhile and listened to it several times before, but now we have a new appreciation for it. I guess. Since no one complained when I put it on.

Science: tweaked! It went pretty well this week. We did a couple more "explorations" online and watched some more videos. I mapped out the first 8 weeks of the year, and next week there will be an actual experiment type thing that doesn't involve the computer. But I'm fairly impressed with the online activities so far. We also got to read about the world's biggest ferris wheel (umm, because it's made of matter...this seemed like a stretch, but, you know, giant ferris wheel--whoo hoo!) We're also reading "How to Think Like a Scientist," which we've read before, but I think it's a good way to start the year.

Etc.: I sent in the forms for soccer, and that's starting up in September. I think I've decided to do swim lessons at the Y on Saturdays instead of doing the homeschool lessons on Fridays. It will be a little cheaper that way, but mostly it won't be another thing to do on a weekday. I was feeling a little overscheduled and panicky there for a minute. Speaking of that, the schedule for LEO came out. They have a new location, and it's 35 minutes away (last year it was just under 20). I was really leaning toward not doing any classes there this year because of that, but I think I'm going to just suck it up and make the drive. So we'll be going there on Wednesdays, and Ari will be taking Intermediate Spanish and maybe Biology. There's not really much of anything this session that I'm feeling inspired to put Milo and Gus in, at least not on Wednesdays, and I'm definitely not driving out there 2 days. And then DH's Math Olympiad club will start up next week. He has anywhere between 5 and 10 kids who are going to show up...it's all a bit in flux at the moment.