January 17-21, 2011: Week 21

The snow has melted, so it was back to business as usual this week. Some highlights:

Ari:
*spent a lot of time multiplying and dividing by decimals in Singapore. He did well, but I think the plan to go back and do LOF Decimals and Percents once he finishes Pre-algebra is a good one. He can definitely use the practice
*wrote a summary about the war between the Greeks and the Persians for history
*never protests about doing extra sentences from Practice Town; the boy loves his four level analysis
*I think I'm going to drop spelling in favor of more frequent dictation. He's a good speller, I'm not convinced Spelling Workout is improving his spelling at all, and I'd rather he use his limited time on something that's more of a multi-tasker, like dictation.
*started reading A Wrinkle In Time
*is still not a big fan of Growing Up Heroic, but likes it a lot better when I tell him we can just talk about a lot of the journal entries instead of writing them

Milo:
*read a book about the Trojan War and more of Chamber of Secrets
*is reading The Penderwicks at bedtime
*complained very little about math this week!
*is doing great with spelling, and I'm not dropping it for him, because I think he does benefit from formal spelling

Gus:
*is tearing through Handwriting Without Tears in his mad quest to get to start Writing With Ease
*is reading Frog and Toad are Friends
*is having no problems whatsoever with his Singapore 1A...this week he worked on pairs that make 10.

Other stuff:
*Ari and Milo are loving The Fellowship of the Ring (our bedtime reading). Milo asked me, "is it important that Sam is the only one who didn't get attacked by the willow tree and that he's the only one who didn't have bad dreams?" Future English major? I thought it was awesome that he noticed it.
*Gus asked Dave to read The Hobbit to him this week after they finished Little House on the Prairie. They started it last night. Curious to see how that goes
*We did Magic School Bus science this week, using the materials on the Scholastic website that go with each episode. I really need to think about science for next year. Sigh. Science.
*I absolutely can't decide whether to go to the homeschool convention in Greenville, but I'm leaning toward no this week. If I could go with just Dave it would be different. As it is, though, I think I'd rather spend the money on Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.