What DID we do? Many things. I will tell you about some of them.
Ari:
*officially hates Life of Fred again. I think at this point we've given it a good try, and we're calling it quits (at least for Ari; we may revisit it when Milo gets there). New plan: stop trying to slow down Singapore, and just let him go through it as fast as he wants to (or as fast as he happens to, working on it for 30 minutes or so a day). He'll probably finish 6B sometime midway through next year, and then we'll see where we are and where to go next.
*finished Math Olympiad for the year
*wrote a summary about gladiators
*had an off week from Paragraph Town writing assignments. The week I didn't write a weekly report, he did an assignment where he's supposed to use a key word (or two or three) throughout a five paragraph essay. He used "popular" and wrote about Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It was a pretty big leap, I thought, from other PT assignments, so I gave him a lot of help, but I think it was a good introduction to coming up with a thesis, finding support in the text, etc.
*did a couple of exercises in Killgallon, including the first one where he gets to make up his own sentences. I think it's growing on him now.
*says that his two favorite words are "amiable" and "participle"
*read more of The Hobbit and will probably finish this coming week. I'm not sure what he's been reading at night.
*maybe he hasn't been reading that much at night, actually, because he's been on a moviemaking kick. His latest masterpiece is "Feline Goddess," featuring several clips of Athena the kitten playing. I should send it to her former foster mother.
Milo:
*worked on adding three 2 and 3 digit numbers with renaming in Singapore. He did really well with it. He's getting MUCH faster adding in his head (7 + 8, etc.), and he has no trouble whatsoever with the concept of renaming. Speed continues to be the issue. But, on the bright side of that, he seems to be able to concentrate for a much longer period than he used to be able to, so he can work for 20 or 30 minutes without collapsing in a heap of tears and frustration (you know, as long as I'm sitting right there. If I send him to another room to work, he's nearly always staring into space when I check on him). I'm flirting with the idea of giving him the ITBS this summer to get a better idea of where he is and what he needs to work on before he takes it "for real" (not that anyone sees those scores either. Our homeschool laws are kinda weird) next year. Maybe over the summer. More for summer!
*is still immersed in the worlds of Magic Treehouse, Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson. The Lightning Thief is missing right now, though. Milo loses things a lot.
*is doing very well with WWE. I think I'll have him read The Mouse and the Motorcycle next if ever finishes Chamber of Secrets, so he can find out all the other stuff that happens in it.
Gus:
*is tearing through Singapore 1A. He gets a little cocky and makes mistakes sometimes, because he thinks he knows more than he really does and goes too fast. He does the same thing in reading. He's the anti Milo.
*is reading MTH: Dinosaurs Before Dark to me, for a class he's taking at LEO. He and Dave are still reading The Hobbit at bedtime. They have big plans to read Harry Potter next.
*is ridiculously excited about starting Writing With Ease in the fall. I hope it lives up to his expectations. It's encouraging him to do his handwriting regularly, at least, since I told him he needs to finish Handwriting Without Tears before he starts.
*really loves Royal Fireworks Press' Aesop books.
Other stuff:
*I signed everyone up for homeschool soccer this week. It starts in 2 weeks. Milo insisted, right up until we were pulling into the park to register, that he didn't want to play. Then, at the last possible minute, he said grudgingly, "I guess I'll try it." So they're all signed up. Yay!
*Everyone LOVES Greek Code Cracker. As a consequence, everyone is very excited about starting Song School Greek (Milo and Gus) or Greek for Children (Ari) next year. Ari became a fan of Classical Academic Press on Facebook to help them get enough fans to give out a discount code. Must remember to order this week when discount code comes out.
*we did science! We learned about our eyes and how our pupils get bigger and smaller to let more or less light in. We inserted an (included!) battery into the (included!) flashlight and shined it into our eyes:
*We started Augustus Caesar's World for history. We read some of it while hanging out in the basement waiting out a tornado warning. That's the main reason we homeschool. I remember tornado warnings, lined up in the hallway, when I was in school, and we didn't get ANY work done.
*We still have a kitten:
Oh, speaking of that, I'm trying to set up a thing where we foster kittens for the local humane society, but the woman in charge of the program is proving to be a slow e-mail responder. I wanted some kind of volunteering project for the kids, and this seems like a very good one for shy kids who love animals and are currently kitten-obsessed.
*We let IEW's poetry memorization program fall by the wayside awhile back. I didn't order the CD, and then I decided we needed it, only they don't sell just the CD, AND I didn't want to pay as much as they'd charge for it even if they did, so Dave tried to record the poems and make a CD, but that didn't work, for reasons we can't really figure out....so we've been doing our own poetry memorization program now. We're almost finished memorizing "Jabberwocky" (we have it on the CD that comes with A Child's Introduction to Poetry). Next up is Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening." We read it and talked about it some this week. I might have sort of brought up the idea that it's about suicide. And then I might have started quoting Hamlet's "To be or not to to be" soliloquy. I am not sure how age appropriate all of this was. Particularly for my five year old.
1 comment:
I love how so many of us are starting to look toward what we will be doing this summer!
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