Monday, September 14, 2009

Weekly Wrapup: Week 3 (a bit late!)



Here it is, Monday morning, and it just occurred to me that I never did my weekly wrap-up for last week. So here we go. :)

Latin: We are continuing to love it. We just finished our second review lesson. So far Jamie is still having a blast learning.

Math: We are still reviewing in Horizons. Not much to report--we had a week just about the same as last week. I'm hoping we will get into some new stuff soon.

History: We started learning about the Vikings this week, which Jamie is enjoying. In Geography Songs we did the song about the Middle East. I'm still pondering what to sub in for Windows on the World--I have a few ideas but haven't settled on anything yet.

Read-Aloud: We are reading Ginger Pye. I'm liking this book a lot, and so is Jamie. We have the audiobook on reserve at the library and I am hoping it will come in this week so that we can listen to the chapters--between that and all our history reading, my throat is getting sore! :)

Language Arts: Jamie finished up Prairie School, read Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie, and started Riding the Pony Express this week. We have been continuing to work on the "curve letters" in cursive, as well as working with Diamond Notes. He's starting to balk a bit at Diamond Notes now that they're actually making him write sentences--I was hoping that wouldn't happen but I can't say I'm surprised, based on how he has been with creative writing in the past. He can (of course) write creatively all day long when it's at a time and on a topic of his choosing, but for schoolwork? Just forget it, it's like pulling teeth.

Science: Finally, an experiment! I have to say I was confused about the materials list Sonlight gave us for this week. It included a box of pudding and milk when there was no experiment, either on the DVD or in the book, that used them. We did think the experiment with the Jello and the kiwi fruit was pretty cool.

Extracurricular activities: Homeschool bowling club started this week. Originally, we were scheduled to be in the Tuesday at 1 pm club, which would have worked out much better for us schedule-wise. However, only 2 kids signed up for it so they moved us to the Wednesday at 10 club. We can deal with that. Jamie is enjoying it--he's on the bumper league currently, but I think if he keeps improving we will switch to the regular league for the next session.

Hope everyone else had a great week last week!! :)

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Weekly Wrapup: Week 2



Here we are at the end of another week of homeschool. Some successes and some frustration this week, as usual. :)

Latin: I think I have already gushed about how much I love SongSchool Latin. I had been trying to keep Latin to 2 lessons a week--this week Jamie begged to do Latin every day except Tuesday! The 31 lessons in the book are not going to last long at this rate. :)

Math: Things were better this week. I haven't implemented the bingo idea yet, but I may not have to--I think Jamie and I inadvertently hit on another solution together! In Horizons Math there are almost always two rows of problems in each set, and I almost always let him skip one row unless it's something he is having trouble with. So this week instead of just crossing one out to begin with, I gave him a time limit for the first problem set and told him that if he got them done in the required time he could skip the second one. Seems to be working like a charm thus far. :) We will see what next week brings--math is still pretty much review for him as of this week so it's not really challenging him.

History: We have been studying the Byzantine Empire this week, as well as the rise of Islam. We looked at some really pretty pictures of the Hagia Sophia and talked about mosaics and how they are made. Thinking about doing a mosaic art project at some point soon...I saw a neat Magnetic Mosaic kit that looks fun. (Side note: we buy almost all our paper and art supplies from that site I just linked. They are awesome!)

Read-Aloud: We finished up Red Sails to Capri this week. I liked it more than Jamie did, I think, although he enjoyed looking at pictures and video of the Blue Grotto. It is really an amazing site--something to put on the wish list for world travel. :)

Language Arts: Jamie's continuing to like Diamond Notes, although he also continues to balk at more formal writing assignments--I'm hoping Diamond Notes will at least make them easier for him. We are progressing with cursive slowly but surely, and we read "The Long Way Westward" and part of "Prairie School" for readers this week. The dawdling seems to have moved over to LA this week which I really can't explain--he usually is great at doing his LA work.

Science: Jamie is upset about the lack of actual science experiments so far in Science 2, but I assured him there will be one for next week so he's very happy about that. In the meantime, we're still learning about animals. I am often somewhat amused by the notes in the teacher's manual about the Usborne books, let's just leave it at that. :)

Extracurricular activities: Nothing huge to note this week. I did get the forms sent in for Jamie's zoo classes and his classes at the Delaware Museum of Natural History, and I will be excited for him to start those soon.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Latin

I honestly just wish we could do Latin all day long right now. Jamie and I are both enjoying SongSchool Latin SO much. It is a really fun program. I was thinking about going from it to Prima Latina at the end of the SongSchool program, but I was looking at the website for the SongSchool program and I noticed that they have an older kid program that starts at 3rd grade level, so that would be perfect for us! Thinking about it...Jamie has also expressed interest in doing SongSchool Greek after we finish Latin so we will see. :)