January 3-7, 2011: Week 19

Even though it was the first week back after a long break, school was very pleasant this week, because we had a new kitten to keep us company:

 

The kids got her for Christmas and promptly named her Athena. I was pretty impressed that Greek mythology won out over both Harry Potter and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Besides cuddling with a kitten, here are some things we did:

Ari: Ari picked back up with Singapore this week, working on lessons 5-8 in 5B. I'm a little annoyed with how they're teaching division with decimals and with the systematic vagueness of the textbook. He finished much of I, Robot, but he was getting a little tired of it, so we switched gears this week, and I gave him The Giver. The same day he started reading it, a thread appeared on the WTM boards, asking what age kids should be before reading The Giver. The consensus seemed to be not before 12 or 13. Oops. I hadn't read it in years, so maybe I blocked out some of the especially disturbing stuff. I think we'll just go with it at this point, though, as he's not an especially sensitive kid. Usually. 

He finished Lesson 10 in Paragraph Town, all except for the writing assignment, because I had him repeat the writing assignment from Lesson 9 with a new topic. He wrote a short biography of Isaac Asimov, with much hand holding. Weaning him off the hand holding will save me a great deal of time in the future. He also wrote a summary of the story of Athena's (the goddess, not the kitten) birth this week. He finished lesson something or other in Caesar's English (too lazy to get up and check; it's the one with "spec" in it), but we forgot to do the quiz this morning.

He started reading from History: The Definitive Visual Guide this week. He also started Duke TIP's Growing Up Heroic online course. There was much moaning and complaining about his first journal entry, which was "impossible." The impossible assignment? Make a list of stories you've enjoyed, then pick one of them and list three things that made it memorable. Yep. Impossible! 

He started Galore Park's "So You Really Want to Learn Spanish," and he's enjoying it so far. We're spending a lot of time on Spanish lately. He has his class at LEO for an hour once a week, and then he's spending 30 minutes, 3 times a week, on Galore Park and his homework from class. We also do a workbook page from Puertas Abiertas all together in the mornings, but that's just a 5-10 minute thing. I want to get a portable CD player so he can do Spanish a little more easily. A lot of the exercises require listening to the CD, so he has to haul everything into the office to use the CD Rom drive on the computer.

Ari spent much of the month before Christmas teaching himself to play "Deck the Halls" on the piano. He got quite good at it, but now he wants to continue playing "Deck the Halls," in various keys, and nothing else. We are all very tired of "Deck the Halls" so Dave is forcing him to switch to working out of a book he used when he was a kid. He just worked on it for 30 seconds and then switched back to Deck the Halls." Sigh.

His Spanish and biology classes started back up this week, as did basketball practice and math team.

Milo: is STILL reading Matilda. I seem to remember thinking he was going to be finished with that before Christmas break. Not sure what happened there. He finished the first Harry Potter over the break, and quickly abandoned Chamber of Secrets because it was "too creepy" to read at night. I told him he could read it for his school reading after he finishes Matilda. He's started in on Magic Tree House at bedtime right now, reading a book a night for the past two nights. I'm not sure why I could never interest him in these before now.

He started Singapore 2A this week, and it's...slow as usual. He keeps talking about he hates math, and I keep reminding him that he hated reading, too, until it got easier for him. Of course, he also might always hate math. He sat in on math club this week with Ari, and announced cheerfully afterward that math club was "impossible!" At least he's cheerful when he's declaring things to be impossible, unlike his big brother.

He did Week 8 in WWE2, finished a few pages in Explode the Code 5, started up book two of RFWP's Aesop books, and aced the Lesson 14 spelling test in Spelling Workout B. His (and Gus') Spanish class also started back this week, so he worked on Spanish homework a good bit as well.

Gus: is now reading Magic Tree House books with virtually no help, but often with great reluctance. Probably mostly just to drive me crazy. Anyway, he's ever so slowly making his way through "The Night at Dawn," reading, after much cajoling, 2 or 3 pages at a time to me. He also did a few pages of ETC 1 and worked on Us, Vs, and Ws in Handwriting Without Tears. He's working on Singapore 1A, but I'm trying to mix it up with lots of other addition practice so he doesn't hit a wall with it. Dave is reading Little House on the Prairie to him at bedtime, and they're both very into that (Dave had never read it before!)

Everyone: We read about Athenians and Spartans in SOTW and did the mapwork. Gus and Milo did narrations while Ari worked on his Athena summary. We read "You Wouldn't Want to Be a Greek Athlete," and continued reading D'aulaire's Greek Myths. I started Mary Pope Osborne's adaptation of The Odyssey with Milo and Gus while Ari worked on Growing Up Heroic (he'll read a translation of the Odyssey on his own as part of that).

For science this week we spent an afternoon working on experiments from the various science kits the kids got for Christmas (Wizard Science for Milo and Gus; EcoToys for Ari--he made a hovercraft. sort of) and then played the "Totally Gross" board game Ari got from one of Dave's aunts. And Ari spent forever on his biology homework.

Overall, it was a very productive first week back, I think, and everyone seemed pretty fine with being back to work (though Milo was "tired" a lot when he had to do math, of course).