I'm typing on my own computer! It's back! But without sound, so Milo and Gus still couldn't do their science this week. You know how I was all mad at RFWP because my Aesop books hadn't come yet? Well, I went back and looked at my checking account, and ....I think I never actually ordered them. Very devoted followers of my blog will recall that the same thing happened to me earlier this year with some stuff from Tin Man Press. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that I am losing my mind. Anyway, I guess I need to order those again. For real this time. But I thought I should clear RWFP's good name here. No shipping problems with RFWP! As far as I know. They aren't very good with imaginary orders, though.
We're finished with homeschool soccer, and this made Thursday much more restful, but we managed to fill the rest of the week right up with out of the house activities. Monday we went to see Toy Story 3 (again) at the dollar movie. Tuesday we had a playdate with some friends from Math Olympiad. Wednesday we had our usual classes at LEO and then stayed for the Halloween party there. Friday was park day as (almost) always. Things still felt a little less rushed than in weeks past, though, and I sat down yesterday and worked out a new post-soccer schedule to try out. But then of course Ari's basketball is starting up soon. And I think I'm going to sign Milo up for Spanish (different class from Ari, so at a different time) and Gus up for a preschool sewing class (he's SO excited about this; he's always asking to take a class) at LEO, so...there's always something to overwhelm us, I guess.
Ari: Got to the next bridge in Life of Fred, missed three questions, threw book in floor and tore up his answers. Rather than yet another talk about how it's okay to make mistakes, that's how we learn, I don't get upset when he gets things wrong, I get upset when he won't even try, etc. etc, I threw my own tantrum instead. Our conflict-averse dog was so concerned on Ari's behalf that he actually growled at me a little (I swear I wasn't going to hit Ari or anything!). So, with help from the dog, I got control of my temper and apologized, and we put Life of Fred away for the day. Sigh. It had been going so well up until that bridge.
Life of Fred should come with a warning sticker: "May destroy your family and turn your dog against you."
But everything else went pretty well, at least. He wrote two summaries from Story of the World and did some dictation from his new book, The Golden Goblet. We did the first sentence in the book for dictation; it has lots of prepositional phrases in it, so we played around with what the sentence looks like when you get rid of them. He took tests on Lesson 12 from Spelling Workout and Lesson 8 from Caesar's English, and did well on both. We read from Paragraph Town and Building Poems, then did an exercise from Paragraph Town wherein Ari rearranged the words from a sentence in The Gettysburg Address to make is as nonsensical as possible.
He had his penultimate classes of biology and Spanish for this session at LEO. He has a research project due next week in biology and a test (!) in Spanish.
In planning news, I'm looking at History Odyssey for him for next year. People seem to speak highly of Level 2, which is what we would get. I'm a bit terrified (yet also intrigued) by how much writing it calls for. But we're talking about 8 or 9 months from now, and, given how much progress he's made with writing in the past few months, I think it's possible he could handle it by then. I'm sort of floundering around this year with finding extra stuff for him for history. On the other hand, we've always done history all together, and I worry he might feel left out if he's off doing history by himself while I do SOTW with his brothers. Must think on it more.
Milo: back to adding (stuff like 48 + 7, 56 + 4) in Singapore. It's getting better. He understands it, can do it, no problem; it's just a speed issue.
He's almost finished with Socks, and then I think he'll read Mrs. Piggy Wiggle to go along with WWE. Except I guess we're pretty much finished with the Mrs. Piggy Wiggle section. Hmm...so maybe not. I'll see what else there is. Writing with Ease is still going well. He doesn't love narration, but he gets through it. I don't seem to have too much to say about Milo this week.
Gus: Is reading some detective book about a kid named Bones. It's by the same guy who writes Cam Jansen. There's a roller coaster in it. Gus is funny when he reads books. He can't stop himself from flipping ahead to look at all the pictures and try to guess what's going to happen. We didn't do any Singapore this week, as it required some prep work that I never got around to. Next week!
In history, we read about the Israelites leaving Egypt and then about the Phoenicians. We also read Robert Sabuda's "Tutankhamen's Gift" because I forgot to read it a couple of weeks ago when we read about Tutankhamen.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
October 18-22, 2010: Week 12
My computer is all over our kitchen counter right now. Dave keeps buying (or being given, by my brother) new parts every day or two. I think at some point in the very near future we are going to cross over from "fixing my computer" to "making me a new computer." I'm not sure where the line is, precisely. At any rate, it had better be working by next week, or, umm....else? Yeah, it's really out of my computer illiterate hands.
I felt sort of sluggish and unmotivated this week and continue to feel this way today, so perhaps a briefish update this week:
Ari:
*mostly did Singapore this week, after we finally managed to pass the first bridge in Life of Fred. He broke out the protractor for the first time in awhile, and apparently he's become a big fan of angles, as he asked Dave if next week in Math Olympiad they could work on "something with protractors."
*finished The Egypt Game and started The Golden Goblet. We're just going to get all this Egypt out of our systems so we can move on.
*learned some new words and anaylzed some new sentences in MCT. He gets excited when he spots his vocabulary words in the books he's reading, which makes me happy. We didn't do the paragraph lab for this week yet, because "we'll just do school on Saturday" is usually not really true. It's still Saturday, though, so who knows?
*has to write a report or make a display about something for his biology class. He has tentatively chosen the similarities and differences between plant and animal cells for his topic. I predict tears in our future.
Milo:
*is going through his math much faster over the past couple of weeks. Numbers up to 100 in Singapore.
*was moving through The Indian in the Cupboard so painfully slowly that I told him he could finish up Socks for his school reading instead. Today we couldn't find it so he read a library book instead (we did do some of our planned Saturday school).
*loves doing dictation in WWE. Huh. Who'd have guessed it. Apparently, he sees it as some sort of fun puzzle. I am never sure whether to worry about his writing at all or not. He has a really funky grip, which I gave up correcting after Dave's sister saw it and commented that her grip is very similar and that she's always thought it was dumb that teachers spent so much time trying to change her grip and she always went back to her funky grip again. Anyway, so it looks uncomfortable to me, but his handwriting is quite good and he doesn't complain about doing an age-appropriate amount of writing. The only excuse I have for worrying is that he writes really slow-l-y. But then, he does most everything slowly. He takes after his father.
Gus:
*finished Mouse Tales and started reading The Secret Three.
*is flying through Explode the Code 1
Everybody:
*watched Lilo and Stitch in Spanish this week. Then, inspired, they watched My Neighbor Totoro in Japanese.
*Learned about the New Kingdom of Egypt in history. We got an Egypt Usborne Kid Kit out of the free box at LEO this week, so we're going to play around with that a bit soon.
*had their last week of soccer, complete with team photos and pizza party
*went to Halloween Hikes at the nature center and had a great time.
And now I'm going to go take a nap while the kids play Wii!
I felt sort of sluggish and unmotivated this week and continue to feel this way today, so perhaps a briefish update this week:
Ari:
*mostly did Singapore this week, after we finally managed to pass the first bridge in Life of Fred. He broke out the protractor for the first time in awhile, and apparently he's become a big fan of angles, as he asked Dave if next week in Math Olympiad they could work on "something with protractors."
*finished The Egypt Game and started The Golden Goblet. We're just going to get all this Egypt out of our systems so we can move on.
*learned some new words and anaylzed some new sentences in MCT. He gets excited when he spots his vocabulary words in the books he's reading, which makes me happy. We didn't do the paragraph lab for this week yet, because "we'll just do school on Saturday" is usually not really true. It's still Saturday, though, so who knows?
*has to write a report or make a display about something for his biology class. He has tentatively chosen the similarities and differences between plant and animal cells for his topic. I predict tears in our future.
Milo:
*is going through his math much faster over the past couple of weeks. Numbers up to 100 in Singapore.
*was moving through The Indian in the Cupboard so painfully slowly that I told him he could finish up Socks for his school reading instead. Today we couldn't find it so he read a library book instead (we did do some of our planned Saturday school).
*loves doing dictation in WWE. Huh. Who'd have guessed it. Apparently, he sees it as some sort of fun puzzle. I am never sure whether to worry about his writing at all or not. He has a really funky grip, which I gave up correcting after Dave's sister saw it and commented that her grip is very similar and that she's always thought it was dumb that teachers spent so much time trying to change her grip and she always went back to her funky grip again. Anyway, so it looks uncomfortable to me, but his handwriting is quite good and he doesn't complain about doing an age-appropriate amount of writing. The only excuse I have for worrying is that he writes really slow-l-y. But then, he does most everything slowly. He takes after his father.
Gus:
*finished Mouse Tales and started reading The Secret Three.
*is flying through Explode the Code 1
Everybody:
*watched Lilo and Stitch in Spanish this week. Then, inspired, they watched My Neighbor Totoro in Japanese.
*Learned about the New Kingdom of Egypt in history. We got an Egypt Usborne Kid Kit out of the free box at LEO this week, so we're going to play around with that a bit soon.
*had their last week of soccer, complete with team photos and pizza party
*went to Halloween Hikes at the nature center and had a great time.
And now I'm going to go take a nap while the kids play Wii!
Sunday, October 17, 2010
October 11-15, 2010: Week 11
My computer! It is broken! I am typing this on DH's work computer, but the problem with it is that it goes to work with him every day (also, I hate the keyboard). So I'm hobbling along with my iphone and our little, very slow netbook during the week. This makes science and some other stuff difficult, since we bought the netbook so that I could send Ari off to work independently on it while I sat with the younger kids at the regular computer. A new motherboard has been ordered after extensive diagnostic assistance from my computer engineer brother and after the purchase and return of a new power supply that did not fix anything. If that doesn't fix it, then I need a new computer I guess. I don't want to need a new computer because that will mess up my Disney fund. But anyway. We did school despite the hardship of only sort of having a computer. Actually, it didn't completely die on me until Wednesday, I think.
Ari: is reading The Egypt Game now and enjoying it considerably more than Summerland. He's enjoying it so much, in fact, that he's been inspired to create The Rome Game and play it outside with his brothers for long periods every day. It's a little odd since we've studied Egypt all year and haven't done anything with Rome yet (except what he gets from Caesar's English, but I'll take it. Time outside + imaginitive play + evidence that my kids are really enjoying history = me being happy.
His Life of Fred Pre-Algebra came last weekend, and he immediately took it upstairs and did several sections of it. It's all he's wanted to work on math-wise this week, so he took the week off of Singapore. He got through the first 7 chapters by Wednesday and tried the first bridge Thursday. LOF bridges are a problem for Ari, historically. Yeah--the still are. He missed 2 on his first attempt, tossed the book on the floor, and declared that he quit. We went over what he missed and he gave the second try a chance on Friday...and missed 2 again. Blast it all. There's a good bit of information in there that's new to him, so he's getting tripped up on fairly minor stuff like adding instead of multiplying when he's supposed to square something. Also, the book says it's okay to use a calculator, so he really wants to, but he's not used to using a calculator, so it keeps messing him up. But he still wants to keep using it. Monday will be attempt #3 at the bridge. I might try sitting with him and stopping him if he starts to make a mistake (if he'll let me); it's just a supplement to the Singapore, so I really just want him to have the exposure/practice.
He still needs to take the Caesar's English quiz for last week, because I always think we'll be able to get more done on Fridays before park day than is actually possible. But we did the third lesson in Paragraph Town; the paragraph lab was to write what's outside an imaginary window in a certain order (Ari picked left to right). He really enjoyed that one.
He had Spanish and biology classes at LEO. I haven't looked at the homework yet to see what they're working on in Spanish. In biology, they looked at insects under microscopes, and he learned that he's going to dissect a cow's eyeball in the next session. I'm so glad we're not dissecting a cow's eyeball at my house.
He had his penultimate soccer session. He continues to really enjoy it, so I went ahead and signed him up for basketball at the Y starting next month. It's a little annoying, because you have to sign up not knowing what evening the practice is going to be on. I'm not sure if there's any flexibility if they give you a night that doesn't work. Also, one place it said "evening" for practices, and somewhere else it said 2-5, which I would call "late afternoon." I'm sure it will all work out somehow.
Milo: is reading The Indian in the Cupboard. I let him bail on Pippi Longstocking after 2 days of reasonable effort. Since he's liked pretty much every single other book he's ever read, I guess he's entitled to mysteriously dislike one. He's enjoying TIITC, but it's kind of slow going. I think it's probably the most challenging thing he's read yet.
Speaking of bailing, I lasted about a week in my "make your own WWE" plan. After all my big talk about how using the workbooks was kind of a crutch for people who didn't have the time or energy for picking their own passages...as some character or other says in Diane Keaton's directorial debut, Unstrung Heroes, "a crutch isn't a bad thing, if you need it." They were talking about religion, not homeschool curriculum. But you see, I had already bought WWE 2, so it was just there on the shelf, tempting me. So we're using it. I might, as a compromise with my guilty conscience, assign some of the books used in WWE for him to read. Anyway, we just did the first two days of week 1, and he did well. I was worried about the copywork getting longer, but so far it's fine. We haven't tried the first dictation yet, though...
Singapore was all about patterns and telling time this week, so he breezed through it. His spelling list this week focused on long O words...he missed "those" on the test, and promptly used it that night when he played hangman with Dave. I ordered the rest of the Aesop books from Royal Fireworks Press 2 weeks ago, and we're still waiting...I'm starting to get a bit impatient.
Gus: is reading Mouse Tales now, having finished Mouse Soup. Dave is reading Tale of Desperaux to him at bedtime, and sometimes he reads to Dave, too. I keep suggesting he try a Magic Treehouse book or something on his own, as I'm pretty sure he could handle it (I almost never help him with words in the level 2 I Can Read books, which I think are at about the same level), but he's not really interested.
Lots of work with patterns in math this week. He did several pages in Explode the Code, and we read bunches of library books.
We learned about the Middle Kingdom of Egypt in SOTW. Ari wrote a lovely summary, and the other kids did narrations. We read the last of our extra books about Egypt, and the kids watched Ancient Egypt: Engineering An Empire on Netflix instant viewing. (We recently switched from the 3 out at a time to 1 out at a time, but I think I may have to switch back; we've been doing lots of family movie nights, which doesn't leave any space for getting the non-instant documentaries, and it's kind of driving me crazy). We're all kind of over Egypt at this point, and I'm looking forward to getting to Greece in a few weeks. I'm thinking of getting the Duke TIP online course about Greek mythology for Ari.
Ari: is reading The Egypt Game now and enjoying it considerably more than Summerland. He's enjoying it so much, in fact, that he's been inspired to create The Rome Game and play it outside with his brothers for long periods every day. It's a little odd since we've studied Egypt all year and haven't done anything with Rome yet (except what he gets from Caesar's English, but I'll take it. Time outside + imaginitive play + evidence that my kids are really enjoying history = me being happy.
His Life of Fred Pre-Algebra came last weekend, and he immediately took it upstairs and did several sections of it. It's all he's wanted to work on math-wise this week, so he took the week off of Singapore. He got through the first 7 chapters by Wednesday and tried the first bridge Thursday. LOF bridges are a problem for Ari, historically. Yeah--the still are. He missed 2 on his first attempt, tossed the book on the floor, and declared that he quit. We went over what he missed and he gave the second try a chance on Friday...and missed 2 again. Blast it all. There's a good bit of information in there that's new to him, so he's getting tripped up on fairly minor stuff like adding instead of multiplying when he's supposed to square something. Also, the book says it's okay to use a calculator, so he really wants to, but he's not used to using a calculator, so it keeps messing him up. But he still wants to keep using it. Monday will be attempt #3 at the bridge. I might try sitting with him and stopping him if he starts to make a mistake (if he'll let me); it's just a supplement to the Singapore, so I really just want him to have the exposure/practice.
He still needs to take the Caesar's English quiz for last week, because I always think we'll be able to get more done on Fridays before park day than is actually possible. But we did the third lesson in Paragraph Town; the paragraph lab was to write what's outside an imaginary window in a certain order (Ari picked left to right). He really enjoyed that one.
He had Spanish and biology classes at LEO. I haven't looked at the homework yet to see what they're working on in Spanish. In biology, they looked at insects under microscopes, and he learned that he's going to dissect a cow's eyeball in the next session. I'm so glad we're not dissecting a cow's eyeball at my house.
He had his penultimate soccer session. He continues to really enjoy it, so I went ahead and signed him up for basketball at the Y starting next month. It's a little annoying, because you have to sign up not knowing what evening the practice is going to be on. I'm not sure if there's any flexibility if they give you a night that doesn't work. Also, one place it said "evening" for practices, and somewhere else it said 2-5, which I would call "late afternoon." I'm sure it will all work out somehow.
Milo: is reading The Indian in the Cupboard. I let him bail on Pippi Longstocking after 2 days of reasonable effort. Since he's liked pretty much every single other book he's ever read, I guess he's entitled to mysteriously dislike one. He's enjoying TIITC, but it's kind of slow going. I think it's probably the most challenging thing he's read yet.
Speaking of bailing, I lasted about a week in my "make your own WWE" plan. After all my big talk about how using the workbooks was kind of a crutch for people who didn't have the time or energy for picking their own passages...as some character or other says in Diane Keaton's directorial debut, Unstrung Heroes, "a crutch isn't a bad thing, if you need it." They were talking about religion, not homeschool curriculum. But you see, I had already bought WWE 2, so it was just there on the shelf, tempting me. So we're using it. I might, as a compromise with my guilty conscience, assign some of the books used in WWE for him to read. Anyway, we just did the first two days of week 1, and he did well. I was worried about the copywork getting longer, but so far it's fine. We haven't tried the first dictation yet, though...
Singapore was all about patterns and telling time this week, so he breezed through it. His spelling list this week focused on long O words...he missed "those" on the test, and promptly used it that night when he played hangman with Dave. I ordered the rest of the Aesop books from Royal Fireworks Press 2 weeks ago, and we're still waiting...I'm starting to get a bit impatient.
Gus: is reading Mouse Tales now, having finished Mouse Soup. Dave is reading Tale of Desperaux to him at bedtime, and sometimes he reads to Dave, too. I keep suggesting he try a Magic Treehouse book or something on his own, as I'm pretty sure he could handle it (I almost never help him with words in the level 2 I Can Read books, which I think are at about the same level), but he's not really interested.
Lots of work with patterns in math this week. He did several pages in Explode the Code, and we read bunches of library books.
We learned about the Middle Kingdom of Egypt in SOTW. Ari wrote a lovely summary, and the other kids did narrations. We read the last of our extra books about Egypt, and the kids watched Ancient Egypt: Engineering An Empire on Netflix instant viewing. (We recently switched from the 3 out at a time to 1 out at a time, but I think I may have to switch back; we've been doing lots of family movie nights, which doesn't leave any space for getting the non-instant documentaries, and it's kind of driving me crazy). We're all kind of over Egypt at this point, and I'm looking forward to getting to Greece in a few weeks. I'm thinking of getting the Duke TIP online course about Greek mythology for Ari.
Friday, October 08, 2010
October 4-8, 2010: Week Ten!
If this is week 10, that means we're over a quarter of the way through the year. How exciting! I went on a quarterly homeschool stuff spending spree last weekend; I ordered Explode the Code 2 for Gus, a couple of "You Wouldn't Want to Be..." books for history, Life of Fred Pre-Algebra for Ari, and the rest of the Royal Fireworks Press Aesop books for Milo. So something for everyone!
Ari and I both finally finished reading Summerland. Ari complained a lot less about reading it at the end than he did at the beginning, but it never really grew on him as much as I had hoped it would. I remain a fan, though it's kind of a hot mess of a book. "How about," thought Michael Chabon, "a great American Huck Finn-esque road novel about, like, believing in yourself and stuff, and then, in case that doesn't scream 'American!' loudly enough, I'll throw in baseball as an extended metaphor. But since it's a kid book, I don't have to be all subtle about it, I will just tell you, repeatedly, that baseball is just like life! Doesn't that sound amazing? But also! Sasquatches and fairies and Norse mythology and a dig at the designated hitter! Because why not?!" But I kind of love it anyway. When it's good, it's very good. Like here, one more block quote from Summerland, as I go through my withdrawal:
But don't worry, Ethan perks up and gets back to the business of saving the world soon after. And the world being terrible, cruel, and unbelievably wonderful all at once is one of my favorite things for books to talk about. So, to sum up, Summerland, is kind of like life and baseball: messy and convoluted, losing almost as often as it wins, but a lovely thing to behold nonetheless.
Now, discussing Summerland with Ari was, predictably, like pulling teeth. Sigh. Maybe by high school he'll open up a bit more?
As if finishing Summerland weren't enough for the week, he also finished lesson six in Caesar's English (and got 23/25 right on his quiz), did a lesson from Spelling Workout, started reading Building Poems, and did lesson two from Paragraph Town. The paragraph lab from this lesson had him making lists a famous person he admired. He, of course, chose Milo. Sure, fine. And then he was completely stumped when it got to the part where he was supposed to say what he admired about Milo. Because Ari doesn't do sincere very well. Unless he's sincerely angry about something. I think we need to work on being funny but still actually completely the assignment. This is probably a more difficult skill than just saying something nice about your brother, but whatever.
He's got maybe another week or week and a half of Singapore 5A (and that's with some slowing down to give him extra time to work on his homework for Math Olympiad). Hence my Life of Fred order. I think we'll try doing 3 days of Singapore and 2 days of LOF and see how that goes. He is secretly excited about LOF; I can tell because he's not so good about keeping secrets. He really loved the story and the humor before (when he was doing Fractions); if I can just somehow keep it low pressure, it will all be good. Anyway, Singapore this week was all about ratios.
Milo is never going to finish Singapore 1B. This is probably not really true, but it feels that way. I am trying to fight my lingering fears that he's somehow behind. Singapore is, after all, a relatively rigorous math curriculum, and he'd be a very young second grader this year were he in school. And going at Milo's pace is the whole point (or one of them) of homeschooling, right? right. So. It's introducing multiplication and division now, and, mysteriously, Milo strongly prefers that to adding and seems to be faster at it. He STILL reverses numbers constantly (not letters ever), and I'm starting to wonder if that's something to worry about. Because, you know, I need things to worry about.
He finished up Sideways Stories from Wayside School this week and then read Tomie DePaolo's 26 Fairmount Avenue, which I gave him primarily because it's short, and I needed something I could read fast and pull copywork and narration from. Which I did, and that went well. Today he started Pippi Longstocking, and, for the first time ever, complained after a few pages that he didn't like it. He insists that it's not too hard; he just doesn't like it, so I had him push on, and eventually he said it was getting a bit better. So we'll see how he likes it after another day or two of reading. Ari LOVED Pippi when he was Milo's age or a bit younger; he read all three of the books in quick succession.
He's started on ETC 5 and is still moving through Master Reader (we haven't been doing it every day, so it's slowed down).
Gus is doing ETC 1 and seems to really enjoy it. He read "A Kiss for Little Bear" and most of "Mouse Soup" this week. He's doing a few pages of Singapore Earlybird a couple of times a week. He's a bit frustrated because there are no "pluses" in it, and he feels that stuff like learning the names of shapes is not really math. We got to a section on patterns this week, and he was delighted. "This is real math!" he said, "patterns!"
In history, we read about ancient Africa and watched some Anansi videos on Discovery Education Streaming.
Milo and Gus learned about compounds in science; Ari did more microscope stuff and had to draw and label a plant for his science homework.
We have two more weeks of homeschool soccer before I get my Thursdays back. The kids have really enjoyed it. I'm a bit surprised, particularly in Ari's case, at just how much they've enjoyed it. I'm toying around with the idea of signing Ari up for basketball for the winter (he's tall!), but we'll see.
We've had light attendance at the last couple Math Olympiad meetings for various reasons, but it seems to be going well.
And season 4 of Friday Night Lights is now available on Netflix instant viewing, so I'm off to watch that and drink wine and eat a brownie. Whoo hoo! Friday night!
Ari and I both finally finished reading Summerland. Ari complained a lot less about reading it at the end than he did at the beginning, but it never really grew on him as much as I had hoped it would. I remain a fan, though it's kind of a hot mess of a book. "How about," thought Michael Chabon, "a great American Huck Finn-esque road novel about, like, believing in yourself and stuff, and then, in case that doesn't scream 'American!' loudly enough, I'll throw in baseball as an extended metaphor. But since it's a kid book, I don't have to be all subtle about it, I will just tell you, repeatedly, that baseball is just like life! Doesn't that sound amazing? But also! Sasquatches and fairies and Norse mythology and a dig at the designated hitter! Because why not?!" But I kind of love it anyway. When it's good, it's very good. Like here, one more block quote from Summerland, as I go through my withdrawal:
And in that moment he felt--for the first time that optimistic and cheerful boy allowed himself to feel--how badly made life was, how flawed. No matter how richly furnished you made it, with all the noise and variety of Something, Nothing always found a way in, seeped through the cracks and patches. Mr. Feld was right; life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game in which even champions lost almost as often as they won, and even the best hitters were put out seventy percent of the time. Coyote was right to want to wipe it out, to call the whole sad thing on account of darkness.
But don't worry, Ethan perks up and gets back to the business of saving the world soon after. And the world being terrible, cruel, and unbelievably wonderful all at once is one of my favorite things for books to talk about. So, to sum up, Summerland, is kind of like life and baseball: messy and convoluted, losing almost as often as it wins, but a lovely thing to behold nonetheless.
Now, discussing Summerland with Ari was, predictably, like pulling teeth. Sigh. Maybe by high school he'll open up a bit more?
As if finishing Summerland weren't enough for the week, he also finished lesson six in Caesar's English (and got 23/25 right on his quiz), did a lesson from Spelling Workout, started reading Building Poems, and did lesson two from Paragraph Town. The paragraph lab from this lesson had him making lists a famous person he admired. He, of course, chose Milo. Sure, fine. And then he was completely stumped when it got to the part where he was supposed to say what he admired about Milo. Because Ari doesn't do sincere very well. Unless he's sincerely angry about something. I think we need to work on being funny but still actually completely the assignment. This is probably a more difficult skill than just saying something nice about your brother, but whatever.
He's got maybe another week or week and a half of Singapore 5A (and that's with some slowing down to give him extra time to work on his homework for Math Olympiad). Hence my Life of Fred order. I think we'll try doing 3 days of Singapore and 2 days of LOF and see how that goes. He is secretly excited about LOF; I can tell because he's not so good about keeping secrets. He really loved the story and the humor before (when he was doing Fractions); if I can just somehow keep it low pressure, it will all be good. Anyway, Singapore this week was all about ratios.
Milo is never going to finish Singapore 1B. This is probably not really true, but it feels that way. I am trying to fight my lingering fears that he's somehow behind. Singapore is, after all, a relatively rigorous math curriculum, and he'd be a very young second grader this year were he in school. And going at Milo's pace is the whole point (or one of them) of homeschooling, right? right. So. It's introducing multiplication and division now, and, mysteriously, Milo strongly prefers that to adding and seems to be faster at it. He STILL reverses numbers constantly (not letters ever), and I'm starting to wonder if that's something to worry about. Because, you know, I need things to worry about.
He finished up Sideways Stories from Wayside School this week and then read Tomie DePaolo's 26 Fairmount Avenue, which I gave him primarily because it's short, and I needed something I could read fast and pull copywork and narration from. Which I did, and that went well. Today he started Pippi Longstocking, and, for the first time ever, complained after a few pages that he didn't like it. He insists that it's not too hard; he just doesn't like it, so I had him push on, and eventually he said it was getting a bit better. So we'll see how he likes it after another day or two of reading. Ari LOVED Pippi when he was Milo's age or a bit younger; he read all three of the books in quick succession.
He's started on ETC 5 and is still moving through Master Reader (we haven't been doing it every day, so it's slowed down).
Gus is doing ETC 1 and seems to really enjoy it. He read "A Kiss for Little Bear" and most of "Mouse Soup" this week. He's doing a few pages of Singapore Earlybird a couple of times a week. He's a bit frustrated because there are no "pluses" in it, and he feels that stuff like learning the names of shapes is not really math. We got to a section on patterns this week, and he was delighted. "This is real math!" he said, "patterns!"
In history, we read about ancient Africa and watched some Anansi videos on Discovery Education Streaming.
Milo and Gus learned about compounds in science; Ari did more microscope stuff and had to draw and label a plant for his science homework.
We have two more weeks of homeschool soccer before I get my Thursdays back. The kids have really enjoyed it. I'm a bit surprised, particularly in Ari's case, at just how much they've enjoyed it. I'm toying around with the idea of signing Ari up for basketball for the winter (he's tall!), but we'll see.
We've had light attendance at the last couple Math Olympiad meetings for various reasons, but it seems to be going well.
And season 4 of Friday Night Lights is now available on Netflix instant viewing, so I'm off to watch that and drink wine and eat a brownie. Whoo hoo! Friday night!
Sunday, October 03, 2010
NotAWeeklyReview
This is the part of the year where I get back from Disney and, apparently, need a month to regain the ability to blog. This might have something to do with the fact that I've spent much of my free time for the past week trying to figure out ways to get back to Disney World next September and reading Disney stuff obsessively (like Disney Travel Babble. She went to Tokyo Disneyland and writes about it with much humor and detail. Also, her husband's a puppeteer. And they got married at Epcot. I would like to go to Tokyo Disneyland and get married at Epcot, but both of those are pretty unlikely. Unless Dave dies and I find some rich guy to marry next).
Anyway. We went to Disney World, and it was superfun. I took 763 pictures and wrote captions for many of them. This is faster than a full-scale trip report.
We have managed to get some school done, despite the lack of documentation here. The kids wrote stories speculating about what happened to the people of Mohenjo Daro. I can only find Ari's right now:
And we did other stuff. Oh--on the way down to Disney World, Ari asked, "is it okay if I work on my Spanish homework while we drive?" Why, yes, son, I suppose that would be all right. He's very conscientious about homework (this is the first year he's really had any substantial amount of it). It's cute.
So now I need to be getting ready for the week. I managed to clean off the schoolroom table, and then I needed to take a break and blog. I mostly need to get writing assignments ready for the week. This week will be the first week of coming up with dictation and narration stuff on my own for Milo, which means I need to read what he's reading. But I'm also way behind Ari in Summerland right now. Milo's just about finished with Sideways Stories from Wayside School. I may give him Pippi Longstocking next. Must figure it out. Must get off computer.
Next week: a real update!
Anyway. We went to Disney World, and it was superfun. I took 763 pictures and wrote captions for many of them. This is faster than a full-scale trip report.
We have managed to get some school done, despite the lack of documentation here. The kids wrote stories speculating about what happened to the people of Mohenjo Daro. I can only find Ari's right now:
One morning, the people of (city's name here) [sic] couldn't find their children. They searched all over (city's name here). They even ventured outside of their walls. Those who looked outside the walls never came back. They continued, stopping only to eat and sleep. After ten days of searching they gave up. The next morning, they woke up to find that the walls had fallen, the buildings on fire, and some houses destroyed. They left the ruins of a once peaceful city, never to return. They never found out that a very powerful empire had enslaved their children and burnt their city.And, again, miraculously, no tears. I think (knock wood) we might have a sort of breakthrough with writing going on here. He's regularly writing short summaries of history readings and the like with no complaining. Exciting!
And we did other stuff. Oh--on the way down to Disney World, Ari asked, "is it okay if I work on my Spanish homework while we drive?" Why, yes, son, I suppose that would be all right. He's very conscientious about homework (this is the first year he's really had any substantial amount of it). It's cute.
So now I need to be getting ready for the week. I managed to clean off the schoolroom table, and then I needed to take a break and blog. I mostly need to get writing assignments ready for the week. This week will be the first week of coming up with dictation and narration stuff on my own for Milo, which means I need to read what he's reading. But I'm also way behind Ari in Summerland right now. Milo's just about finished with Sideways Stories from Wayside School. I may give him Pippi Longstocking next. Must figure it out. Must get off computer.
Next week: a real update!
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