We finally managed to string a few days together last week--all five of them, in fact! Things went really well; I'm simultaneously surprised by how much we're managing to get done and how long it's all taking us. Which seems incongruous, but there you have it. That's just how I feel. So let's see:
Gus: I'll start with Gus for once. Poor kid.
*started tap class! As usual with any sort of class that he takes, he reported that, "my class was awesome," in a monotone that didn't really go with what he was saying. There were three kids in the class, which seemed really small until we went again today, and he was the only one there this time. So at the moment we're getting a really good deal on private tap lessons for Gus. I peeked through the windows at him some. Tap dancing looks hard. Better him than me.
*working on some book Dave's aunt sent us a long time ago that seems to be extra practice for Singapore 1. He'd kind of a hit a wall with adding past 10 in Singapore last spring, so I'm having him go through this to kind of stall him until he seems ready to pick back up with it.
*reading The Littles. Gets headaches whenever he reads. He's going to the eye doctor tomorrow. I don't know if it's really something with his vision or just his allergies/asthma stuff. I'm hoping for vision because it's more easily fixable.
*still loving those RWP Aesop books. I was kind of hoping the last 3 books would last him 2 years until he's ready to start MCT. But it's not looking good. WWE is going well, too.
*starts drama class tomorrow
Milo:
*cannot think of any part of school that he doesn't enjoy. That seems like a good way to start the year.
*started Charlotte's Web last week and is on the last chapter now, I think. The Indian in the Cupboard is up next. This year the plan is to hit all the must reads he hasn't read yet (I did read Charlotte's Web to him when he was younger, of course, but he doesn't remember much of it) and do the MCT literature.
*working on mental addition in Singapore (he finally made it to 2B). It's going really well. His speed is increasing, and his frustration-induced meltdowns are very rare. I'm hoping to go through 2B quickly and start on 3...by Thanksgiving, maybe? So he'll have more of 3 under his belt before he takes the ITBS in spring. Not that it really matters, since I'm the only one who sees the scores. But he does have to take it, so he might as well be as prepared as possible for it.
*really loving Grammar Island so far and doesn't seem to be having any trouble understanding or retaining anything. I was/am curious to see how this would go, since by the time Ari did Grammar Island he'd had 3 1/2 years of First Language Lessons. Milo hasn't really had much formal grammar; we've talked about stuff as we've done Writing with Ease, but that's about it (we did start First Language Lessons with him, but it was awhile ago, and I don't think we made it too far).
*Writing With Ease going well; he still writes very s-l-o-w-l-y, though. But pretty neatly and without complaining, so I'll take it.
*starts guitar tomorrow. He's doing guitar because we insisted he pick something (in addition to homeschool soccer, which they're all doing again). But once he picked it, he got very excited about it. We bought him a guitar last night. We'd been thinking acoustic at first, but several people told us that electric was easier to start on for kids and that he'd be more likely to stick with it that way, so that's what we got.
Ari:
*really liking (both of us are) Writing With Skill so far. It's very systematic, and Ari likes systematic. I have a 45 minute block of time set aside for writing/logic, so so far he's doing WWS and then filling in any extra time with Mindbenders. I think we'll do another year of various logic puzzles instead of a more official curriculum. Because we have no time! I'd rather have a very writing-intensive year for him than try to fit in a critical thinking course.
*alternating Greek and Spanish, and doing well with/enjoying both. His Spanish classes start up the first week of September. I ordered the DVDs for Spanish with Children, so I'm having him catch up on watching the lessons before he moves on in the book (I think he's on lesson 6 or somewhere thereabouts; he's watched through lesson 4 as of today, I believe).
*started Grammar Voyage and Caesar's English II. I let him drop Killgallon, since he's doing so much other writing, but we're also working through Figuratively Speaking, and he's enjoying that.
*read My Side of the Mountain last week, which ended up being lovely timing as his friend Lula had a wilderness survival themed birthday party on Saturday. He's reading the second book from the Hunger Games series at bedtime. I hesitated to let him read it, as it sounded pretty intense, but most of his friends have read it, so I relented.
*started Math Olympiad on Sunday.
Defying easy categorization:
*I toyed with the idea of having Milo do Spanish for Children along with Ari this year, but halfway through the first chapter I decided it would be better to wait another year. So he and Gus are watching Discovery Streaming lessons plus doing this website: https://www.foreignlanguagefriends.com/
*started Song School Greek with Milo and Gus
*history! We're still feeling things out with this. Ari's also doing Mapping the World with Art. He did the first lesson of that the other day while Milo, Gus, and I played around with some Usborne Quicklink stuff. What we're trying for now is listening to SOTW in the car, then half an hour on history days reading aloud and doing the review questions. Then we split up for independent reading (me to Gus, Ari and Milo on their own). And then there's the map stuff for Ari and computer stuff for Milo and Gus. I think we're just doing that once a week, though that will probably mean taking a couple of years to go through MTWWA.
*Science! I'm planning to sign Ari up for PLATO maybe next month, but for now we're all working on a Science in a Nutshell kit about fossils. And watching documentaries about dinosaurs.
Phew! I suspect my weekly reports could get long this year. Or, you know, less thorough.
Showing posts with label Weekly report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weekly report. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Saturday, February 05, 2011
January 31-February 4, 2011: Week 23
This week was a sharp contrast to last week, in that we had very few outside the house plans, so we were able to stay home most of the time and be alternately very productive and very lazy. The weather was awful for most of the week, so we also spent a lot of time inside and watched terrible things on the TV, like Home Alone 3. Well, I didn't watch Home Alone 3, but the kids did. Sometimes, when it's 38 and raining, you just have to let your kids eat popcorn and watch Home Alone 3. Also, you have to make a skillet cookie, so we did that after Home Alone 3 was over:
Ari is unwrapping butter while Gus makes a funny face. And the finished product:
This was all on Friday. We usually finish up school early on Friday and then go to park day with some friends. But said friends (two different families) were ALL going out of town to warm places, so no park day. We thought about going somewhere ourselves, but it seemed much cozier to stay home with Skillet Cookie (Skillet Cookie is like a friend at this point, so it's a proper noun). And THEN, Friday night, my mom watched the kids while Dave and I went to the Waffle House and to see The King's Speech, so it was pretty much, like, the best Friday EVER.
So that's how the week ended. Now to back up.
We did a lot of history this week, but very little science, because we're waiting on a package from Delta Education--a couple of human body Science in a Nutshell kits. We did start reading from David Macaulay's The Way We Work, though, on Friday, in between bites of Skillet Cookie:
We read about cells and atoms (I'm not sure if you knew this, but people are MADE out of cells, which, in turn, are made out of atoms). Atoms, in case you've not heard, are very, very small. Macaulay includes a hard to follow if you are Gus analogy involving a tennis ball, a terrier, and Manhattan.
For history, we read the chapter (26, I think) on the ancient Americas in SOTW, but kept reading about Greece otherwise. It's all the same books as last week, so I'll post a picture of them instead of saying what they are again:
(and this is where the pictures dry up. But next week there will be science and, therefore, pictures!) Ari kept working on "Growing Up Heroic" which suggests he watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding and compare a modern Greek American family with ancient Greek families. It's been a long time since I watched MBFGW, and I'm trying to remember if it's something the kids would actually sit through or not.
Ari did two writing assignments again this week--a summary about the Nazca people from SOTW and a compare/contrast paragraph about Sparta and Athens for Paragraph Town. Next week he's going to do the same assignment again, but this time comparing and contrasting two characters from A Wrinkle in Time. Speaking of which, he finished A Wrinkle in Time this week. He did several sentences from Practice Town, read some stuff about meter in his poetry book (I'm not having him do any of the poetry writing assignments unless he wants to, so much trauma did it cause last year. I had a sneaking suspicion that he secretly likes writing poetry, though, and this was confirmed by my discovery of a notebook in his room, entitled, "Poetry Inspired by Literature" with a series of poems based on A Series of Unfortunate Events), and did two dictation sentences from A Wrinkle in Time, which I used as a springboard for some brief discussion about setting and character.
Milo had a good week in math! He's doing 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction without renaming, and he likes it So.Much.Better than the mental addition and subtraction he was doing before. I think with his focus issues, he just has a very hard time holding everything in his head long enough to do something like 24 + 33 mentally. But he's finally quick enough with his facts up to 10 that doing it in columns is no problem. So it was nice to a have a week without despair in math. He's still reading Chamber of Secrets, and I'm not sure he'll ever finish. In other reading, he finished up the first Lemony Snicket book, read a few more Magic Treehouses, and read some of the Ask Me Anything book he got for Christmas. He did narration and dictation from Pilgrim's Progress in WWE this week; that John Bunyon isn't very subtle with the whole allegory thing, is he?
Gus loves his RFWP Aesop books. He also loves math, and tells me so whenever Milo says that he hates math. He's still working on 1A; I pretty much just turn him loose on it while Milo's doing math, and let him do as much or as little as he wants. He took a break from Frog and Toad this week to read to me from his animal encylopedia:
We learned that there's a fish that can swim faster than a cheetah can run, and that the octopus has a really big brain.
Ari is unwrapping butter while Gus makes a funny face. And the finished product:
This was all on Friday. We usually finish up school early on Friday and then go to park day with some friends. But said friends (two different families) were ALL going out of town to warm places, so no park day. We thought about going somewhere ourselves, but it seemed much cozier to stay home with Skillet Cookie (Skillet Cookie is like a friend at this point, so it's a proper noun). And THEN, Friday night, my mom watched the kids while Dave and I went to the Waffle House and to see The King's Speech, so it was pretty much, like, the best Friday EVER.
So that's how the week ended. Now to back up.
We did a lot of history this week, but very little science, because we're waiting on a package from Delta Education--a couple of human body Science in a Nutshell kits. We did start reading from David Macaulay's The Way We Work, though, on Friday, in between bites of Skillet Cookie:
We read about cells and atoms (I'm not sure if you knew this, but people are MADE out of cells, which, in turn, are made out of atoms). Atoms, in case you've not heard, are very, very small. Macaulay includes a hard to follow if you are Gus analogy involving a tennis ball, a terrier, and Manhattan.
For history, we read the chapter (26, I think) on the ancient Americas in SOTW, but kept reading about Greece otherwise. It's all the same books as last week, so I'll post a picture of them instead of saying what they are again:
(and this is where the pictures dry up. But next week there will be science and, therefore, pictures!) Ari kept working on "Growing Up Heroic" which suggests he watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding and compare a modern Greek American family with ancient Greek families. It's been a long time since I watched MBFGW, and I'm trying to remember if it's something the kids would actually sit through or not.
Ari did two writing assignments again this week--a summary about the Nazca people from SOTW and a compare/contrast paragraph about Sparta and Athens for Paragraph Town. Next week he's going to do the same assignment again, but this time comparing and contrasting two characters from A Wrinkle in Time. Speaking of which, he finished A Wrinkle in Time this week. He did several sentences from Practice Town, read some stuff about meter in his poetry book (I'm not having him do any of the poetry writing assignments unless he wants to, so much trauma did it cause last year. I had a sneaking suspicion that he secretly likes writing poetry, though, and this was confirmed by my discovery of a notebook in his room, entitled, "Poetry Inspired by Literature" with a series of poems based on A Series of Unfortunate Events), and did two dictation sentences from A Wrinkle in Time, which I used as a springboard for some brief discussion about setting and character.
Milo had a good week in math! He's doing 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction without renaming, and he likes it So.Much.Better than the mental addition and subtraction he was doing before. I think with his focus issues, he just has a very hard time holding everything in his head long enough to do something like 24 + 33 mentally. But he's finally quick enough with his facts up to 10 that doing it in columns is no problem. So it was nice to a have a week without despair in math. He's still reading Chamber of Secrets, and I'm not sure he'll ever finish. In other reading, he finished up the first Lemony Snicket book, read a few more Magic Treehouses, and read some of the Ask Me Anything book he got for Christmas. He did narration and dictation from Pilgrim's Progress in WWE this week; that John Bunyon isn't very subtle with the whole allegory thing, is he?
Gus loves his RFWP Aesop books. He also loves math, and tells me so whenever Milo says that he hates math. He's still working on 1A; I pretty much just turn him loose on it while Milo's doing math, and let him do as much or as little as he wants. He took a break from Frog and Toad this week to read to me from his animal encylopedia:
We learned that there's a fish that can swim faster than a cheetah can run, and that the octopus has a really big brain.
Friday, January 28, 2011
January 24-28, 2011: Week 22
My, it's been an odd week. Sunday Gus had a mysterious episode of not being able to catch his breath, and then it happened again on Monday and again on Tuesday, so we spent a lot of time at the doctor's office Monday and Tuesday trying to figure that whole thing out. Now we have an inhaler, but of course, it hasn't happened again. Anyway, though, that kind of messed up school for the early part of the week (we're usually at the doctor so rarely that it's not really a big deal that she's 30 minutes away, but it starts to add up when we go there twice in one week). And then the last half of the week was already going to be crazy, so....to sum up, not our most productive week. Wednesday was our usual classes at LEO, and Thursday we had an afternoon playdate plus Math Olympiad in the evening. And then this morning I suddenly remembered at 9:44 that we were supposed to be at LEO at 10 for make-up Spanish classes. We were all in pajamas at 9:44, but managed to leave the house by 9:51 (which still meant Milo and Gus missed the first 20 minutes of class). So there was lots of Spanish this week, anyway. Gus asks if he can have some "leche" all the time now. "I love leche," he muses.
Ari:
*did two writing assignments, both on this week's SOTW topic, which was Alexander the Great, one straight up summary; one assignment from Paragraph Town. He still needs to rewrite the second one a bit. That's one of the things I was planning for today back before I remembered about make-up Spanish classes.
*finally finished the first lesson in Growing Up Heroic. We're going to need to pick up the pace with that, if we're ever going to finish it. I think he's going to enjoy it and get a lot out of it as long as I pre-read and toss out the more touchy-feely journal assignments. I'm pretty much like Ari is about stuff like that, so I understand. Like when there's a wedding shower or whatever, and you're supposed to write down your special, thoughtful, gooey advice for a happy marriage? Yeah, I pretend to forget to do that.
*Worked on Life of Fred and Singapore; doesn't like decimals
*continued to read A Wrinkle in Time
*dissected a sheep's eyeball in his biology class. Yum.
Milo:
*sometimes spends, literally, 5 minutes working out a subtraction problem like 11-7. Other times can do the same problem in 5 seconds. I'm thinking the issue here is focus.
*still reading Chamber of Secrets for school. At bedtime he's working on the first Series of Unfortunate Events book, after tearing through all three Fog Mound books in about 4 days.
Gus:
*is reading a lot of "Frog and Toad" these days
*likes math as much as Milo dislikes it
Other stuff:
*we started reading Alexander the Great Rocks the World this week. Last year we went on a field trip to the Carlos Museum, and the woman who did the tour for our group wrote this book. I picked up her book on Cleopatra also, for later this year.
*Lord of the Rings continues to be a hit with the bigs, and Gus still likes ("no, I LOVE it" he says) The Hobbit. Who knew? I tried to read The Hobbit to Ari about 3 different times, starting when he was a good year older than Gus, before he'd finally listen to it.
*I'm fretting a lot about science for next year. Stay tuned for special fretting about science blog post in the near future!
Ari:
*did two writing assignments, both on this week's SOTW topic, which was Alexander the Great, one straight up summary; one assignment from Paragraph Town. He still needs to rewrite the second one a bit. That's one of the things I was planning for today back before I remembered about make-up Spanish classes.
*finally finished the first lesson in Growing Up Heroic. We're going to need to pick up the pace with that, if we're ever going to finish it. I think he's going to enjoy it and get a lot out of it as long as I pre-read and toss out the more touchy-feely journal assignments. I'm pretty much like Ari is about stuff like that, so I understand. Like when there's a wedding shower or whatever, and you're supposed to write down your special, thoughtful, gooey advice for a happy marriage? Yeah, I pretend to forget to do that.
*Worked on Life of Fred and Singapore; doesn't like decimals
*continued to read A Wrinkle in Time
*dissected a sheep's eyeball in his biology class. Yum.
Milo:
*sometimes spends, literally, 5 minutes working out a subtraction problem like 11-7. Other times can do the same problem in 5 seconds. I'm thinking the issue here is focus.
*still reading Chamber of Secrets for school. At bedtime he's working on the first Series of Unfortunate Events book, after tearing through all three Fog Mound books in about 4 days.
Gus:
*is reading a lot of "Frog and Toad" these days
*likes math as much as Milo dislikes it
Other stuff:
*we started reading Alexander the Great Rocks the World this week. Last year we went on a field trip to the Carlos Museum, and the woman who did the tour for our group wrote this book. I picked up her book on Cleopatra also, for later this year.
*Lord of the Rings continues to be a hit with the bigs, and Gus still likes ("no, I LOVE it" he says) The Hobbit. Who knew? I tried to read The Hobbit to Ari about 3 different times, starting when he was a good year older than Gus, before he'd finally listen to it.
*I'm fretting a lot about science for next year. Stay tuned for special fretting about science blog post in the near future!
Friday, January 21, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, January 14, 2011
January 10-14: Week Twenty
In between all the snow-playing and Nook-reading and the having Dave at home-ing, we did a fairly regular week of school. Everything outside of the house was canceled, so that meant we could take it fairly easy every day but still wind up fitting in most everything. The run-down:
Ari: started working on Caesar's English Lesson 12, did a bunch of sentences in Practice Town, and finished lesson 9 in Paragraph Town. He did a few chapters in Life of Fred Pre-algebra, but with DH supervising, so I'm fuzzy on the details. He worked on Duke TIP's Growing Up Heroic. I fear it might be a little...touchy-feely for his tastes. One of his writing assignments this week was to write down one of our "family stories" and then think what makes it a good story and how it tells our family's story, etc. He wrote about getting Athena for Christmas, but insisted on writing it in verse. Umm. Yes, we'll see how it goes. He's still not quite finished with Lesson 1, so I think it also might take more time than I was hoping (there are 20 lessons total, and it's supposed to a be a semester-long course; I was hoping he could work on it for an hour and a half or two hours a week, but I don't think that's going to cut it if I want him to finish before the end of the year). He finished all his Spanish homework for the class that didn't happen, and worked a good bit on his Galore Park Spanish.
He finished reading The Giver, and we had a really good discussion about it. We talked about the anti-Giver arguments in Deconstructing Penguins and we read a positive review by Natalie Babbitt from the Washington Post. He had already brought up some of the suspension of disbelief issues that both reviews mention in different ways, so we talked about that. Babbitt compared the story to a beautiful soap bubble; if you poke and prod at it too much, it will break--but ultimately says it's a story that needs to be told and it's worth overlooking some gaps in the logic. I think Ari is conflicted. He doesn't like overlooking gaps in logic, but he really enjoyed the book.
Milo: more math! I broke up the Singapore with a couple of different games. I should probably keep doing that. This week's workbook stuff was pretty easy for him (it always is, as long as it's not adding or subtracting). He finished Matilda! And then read a book about Hercules (an Usborne early reader), so now he's going to finish Chamber of Secrets for school reading. At night he's reading The Penderwicks--at least until we get to the library to get the next Magic Tree House book (it's in our house somewhere, but we can't find it). He finished week 9 in WWE, did some ETC, and got 9 (out of 10) words right on his spelling test.
Gus: was sick for part of the week, so didn't do a whole lot. Today he did several pages of handwriting because I told him I'd get WWE 1 for him when he finishes it. He's been listening while I do it with Milo, and he likes to whisper the answers to the questions in my ear (so as not to interfere with Milo's answering).
History: the SOTW chapter this week was on the Greek Gods, so we skipped it since we're covering it in more detail with Jim Weiss CDs and the Du'laire's book. We did some reading, though.
Other stuff: Everyone worked on piano a good bit this week, since our piano teacher was home every day. Ari's working on a song from a book Dave used as a kid. We made more progress with Greek Code Cracker. We did the first lesson from PHP's new Bible curriculum, Telling God's Story and made some Roman coins for the activity. It's a 1st grade curriculum, so a bit simple for Ari, but I think it will work for now.
Ari: started working on Caesar's English Lesson 12, did a bunch of sentences in Practice Town, and finished lesson 9 in Paragraph Town. He did a few chapters in Life of Fred Pre-algebra, but with DH supervising, so I'm fuzzy on the details. He worked on Duke TIP's Growing Up Heroic. I fear it might be a little...touchy-feely for his tastes. One of his writing assignments this week was to write down one of our "family stories" and then think what makes it a good story and how it tells our family's story, etc. He wrote about getting Athena for Christmas, but insisted on writing it in verse. Umm. Yes, we'll see how it goes. He's still not quite finished with Lesson 1, so I think it also might take more time than I was hoping (there are 20 lessons total, and it's supposed to a be a semester-long course; I was hoping he could work on it for an hour and a half or two hours a week, but I don't think that's going to cut it if I want him to finish before the end of the year). He finished all his Spanish homework for the class that didn't happen, and worked a good bit on his Galore Park Spanish.
He finished reading The Giver, and we had a really good discussion about it. We talked about the anti-Giver arguments in Deconstructing Penguins and we read a positive review by Natalie Babbitt from the Washington Post. He had already brought up some of the suspension of disbelief issues that both reviews mention in different ways, so we talked about that. Babbitt compared the story to a beautiful soap bubble; if you poke and prod at it too much, it will break--but ultimately says it's a story that needs to be told and it's worth overlooking some gaps in the logic. I think Ari is conflicted. He doesn't like overlooking gaps in logic, but he really enjoyed the book.
Milo: more math! I broke up the Singapore with a couple of different games. I should probably keep doing that. This week's workbook stuff was pretty easy for him (it always is, as long as it's not adding or subtracting). He finished Matilda! And then read a book about Hercules (an Usborne early reader), so now he's going to finish Chamber of Secrets for school reading. At night he's reading The Penderwicks--at least until we get to the library to get the next Magic Tree House book (it's in our house somewhere, but we can't find it). He finished week 9 in WWE, did some ETC, and got 9 (out of 10) words right on his spelling test.
Gus: was sick for part of the week, so didn't do a whole lot. Today he did several pages of handwriting because I told him I'd get WWE 1 for him when he finishes it. He's been listening while I do it with Milo, and he likes to whisper the answers to the questions in my ear (so as not to interfere with Milo's answering).
History: the SOTW chapter this week was on the Greek Gods, so we skipped it since we're covering it in more detail with Jim Weiss CDs and the Du'laire's book. We did some reading, though.
Other stuff: Everyone worked on piano a good bit this week, since our piano teacher was home every day. Ari's working on a song from a book Dave used as a kid. We made more progress with Greek Code Cracker. We did the first lesson from PHP's new Bible curriculum, Telling God's Story and made some Roman coins for the activity. It's a 1st grade curriculum, so a bit simple for Ari, but I think it will work for now.
Friday, January 07, 2011
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:
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).
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).
Sunday, December 05, 2010
November 29-December 3, 2010: Week 17
The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are sort of weird...three weeks between breaks, so the first week feels off because we're just coming back from a break, then there's the second week where (perhaps) we'll finally get back into a groove, and then the next week is the last week before a two week break, so who can get anything done then? Plus, of course, it's almost Christmas and your husband is tutoring kids who are about to fail math every night of the week and there's too.much.to.do. You know how it is. Fortunately, we're pretty much on track with everything, so I don't feel too much of a need to panic over these three weeks being less productive than they might be.
My weekly review will also, at least this week, be less thorough than in other weeks. This is not everything we did this week; it's what I can remember/motivate myself to write about with the nasty head cold I woke up with this morning.
Milo: still working on Matilda; he should definitely finish it up before Christmas break, maybe with enough time to get in a couple of Usborne readers about Greek mythology that I have waiting for him. He's reading Harry Potter at bedtime, and probably will be for awhile. He has one more review in Singapore 1B, which he'll finish this week. Then I think we'll spend the rest of the time doing a lot of addition and subtraction practice.
Ari: still reading I, Robot; I need to go read it, too, as I'm pretty sure he's ahead of me now. He did a narration from it this week. He was supposed to do a history summary, but that was one of the things that didn't happen. But he did tackle the most ambitious writing assignment thus far in Paragraph Town; he had to pick and research a topic, then write an essay of at least 2 paragraphs about it. He chose....Mario. I turned him loose on Wikipedia. I'm not thrilled about Wikipedia being the source for one of his first research papers, but, at the same time, I'm not sure there's a better source of Mario history out there (and he was so freaked out about doing the assignment at all that I wasn't about to steer him away from a topic he was excited about). There is, in fact, a lot, of information about Mario on Wikipedia, so I talked him through whittling his topic down to something manageable. The final essay is passable, but it veers a bit too close to summary (something the assignment specifically instructed he not do). It's a little tricky for him, since most of his formal writing up until now has actually asked for a summary.
Gus: I think I'm not going to order Earlybird B for him. I pulled out the textbook from 1A this week and went through the first few lessons of that with him, and it went well. I think we're going to stick with that (and the workbook, which I need to order) and just go really slowly through the number bonds, and make sure he has them down before we move on. At least that's what I'm going to try.
And Gus turned 5 on Saturday. Five! I discovered a great new cake-decorating trick, whereby I can make a cake for absolutely any theme imaginable. All I need is a color printer, cardstock, and popsicle sticks!
....and the birthday boy with the cake (with flammable Mario figures removed for safety):
My weekly review will also, at least this week, be less thorough than in other weeks. This is not everything we did this week; it's what I can remember/motivate myself to write about with the nasty head cold I woke up with this morning.
Milo: still working on Matilda; he should definitely finish it up before Christmas break, maybe with enough time to get in a couple of Usborne readers about Greek mythology that I have waiting for him. He's reading Harry Potter at bedtime, and probably will be for awhile. He has one more review in Singapore 1B, which he'll finish this week. Then I think we'll spend the rest of the time doing a lot of addition and subtraction practice.
Ari: still reading I, Robot; I need to go read it, too, as I'm pretty sure he's ahead of me now. He did a narration from it this week. He was supposed to do a history summary, but that was one of the things that didn't happen. But he did tackle the most ambitious writing assignment thus far in Paragraph Town; he had to pick and research a topic, then write an essay of at least 2 paragraphs about it. He chose....Mario. I turned him loose on Wikipedia. I'm not thrilled about Wikipedia being the source for one of his first research papers, but, at the same time, I'm not sure there's a better source of Mario history out there (and he was so freaked out about doing the assignment at all that I wasn't about to steer him away from a topic he was excited about). There is, in fact, a lot, of information about Mario on Wikipedia, so I talked him through whittling his topic down to something manageable. The final essay is passable, but it veers a bit too close to summary (something the assignment specifically instructed he not do). It's a little tricky for him, since most of his formal writing up until now has actually asked for a summary.
Gus: I think I'm not going to order Earlybird B for him. I pulled out the textbook from 1A this week and went through the first few lessons of that with him, and it went well. I think we're going to stick with that (and the workbook, which I need to order) and just go really slowly through the number bonds, and make sure he has them down before we move on. At least that's what I'm going to try.
And Gus turned 5 on Saturday. Five! I discovered a great new cake-decorating trick, whereby I can make a cake for absolutely any theme imaginable. All I need is a color printer, cardstock, and popsicle sticks!
....and the birthday boy with the cake (with flammable Mario figures removed for safety):
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