Weekly Report for November 4-8, 2012
We’ve had several mediocre weeks. We’ve gotten a reasonable amount of work done, but not as much as I’d like and a lot more whining than I’d like … you know how it goes.
We haven’t done Circle Time in several weeks and I think we’re just going to not try to pick it back up for the next two weeks. We only have 8ish days left in our 2013 Academic Year. Last week we had the opportunity to spend a day at the zoo with my sister and 1 year old niece. That was fun. We watched the Disney version of The Swiss Family Robinson a couple of Fridays ago; it wasn’t really like the book much at all, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.
In the past several weeks in science we’ve read about volcanoes, earthquakes, geysers, and started to learn about erosion. The children have done some independent reading about these topics too; R-girl particularly likes the Magic School Bus Blows Its Top! book.
In history, we’ve read about Good Queen Bess and William Shakespeare in Story of the World. They read about Sir Walter Raleigh, Pilgrims, George Washington and Lafayette. What? They’re not in the right period? Oh, well.
In math, M-girl is working on numbers of three digits. She’s working on easy multiples to three digits and easy movements between hundreds. I love that MEP uses money and measurements to naturally teach this. N-boy is near the end of Y2 and working on some of the same ideas preparing for what M-girl is doing with three digit numbers. R-girl is working on two digit numbers … moving between tens, ordering, sneaking in some multiples here and there.
For literature, we’ve been moving along. M-girl began On the Shores of Silver Lake She likes to take breaks between Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She’s enjoying it so far. We do narrations and dictations from the book and they’re going well. N-boy finished the A Beka simplified Pilgrim’s Progress. He loved it. He and I worked on an ANI chart thinking through whether Great-Heart should have killed the Giant Despair. The “N” was hard for him (and me!) We need to be more careful with our question. R-girl started Homer Price, which is a bit difficult for her, but I think she’s enjoying.
This week was our Homeschool Book Club at a local library. The theme was “Action and Adventure” stories. They all worked on Story Charts from Teaching the Classics and N-boy did an ANI chart as they thought through their books and what they wanted to say. M-girl worked on finishing The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane which she loved. She made a boat. She also wrote (typed!) her speech. N-boy did his project on St George and the Dragon. He made a diorama and typed (with help) his speech.
R-girl read a book in the “Adventures of Benny and Watch” series, a reader related to the Boxcar Children. She read Watch, the Superdog! She told me what she wanted to say and I wrote it out for her. She dressed one of her stuffed dogs as Watch, the Superdog and made a great presentation.
The kids did a little logic. M-girl and N-boy worked through the Mystery of the Missing Ribbon. The Detectives Club books are a stretch for them trying to put together more than one puzzle to make a deduction. They need more help with them. R-girl worked on a couple more Mindbenders.
M-girl continues to struggle with memorizing “Ozymandias” in grammar. She is not struggling with diagramming adjectives and adverbs, though. N-boy is also working on adjectives and diagramming them. R-girl worked through the lessons based on The Three Billy Goats Gruff, narrating as well as identifying parts of speech and types of sentences. R-girl also worked through two of the narration exercises in Writing with Ease. I’m so glad I decided to have her work on those exercises. In the past few weeks I’ve had her copy her narrations. The others only did writing from their chapters one day this week, but wrote quite a bit today.
In Latin, N-boy worked on Lesson 3. He’s going to work on it more next week. He’s started using Headventureland and loves it. M-girl … I don’t know what she’s working on, but I know she did a little Latin most days this week. R-girl is chugging through Prima Latina to Lesson 19.
M-girl and N-boy practiced typing and I could tell as they were writing their presentations today. R-girl worked on her penmanship and it is really starting to look lovely. She even used some cursive in her spelling lesson – #2 in Book 3 of Explode the Code.
Everyone did piano practices and a lesson this week (under protest some days). For our Composer and Art Study We read in Opal Wheeler’s book about Bach and looked at The Artist’s Garden by Monet.
For our ART with Friends group, we painted with vegetables for the Artistic Pursuits lesson and drew birds for the Drawing with Children lesson. I’m so glad to have a co-teacher who knows what she’s doing!
Seriously, I do realize this looks like a lot. Some of this is from previous weeks. Some disciplines we only did one lesson this week when I would’ve preferred to do three or more. Everyone here (including Mommy!) is counting days till we’re on break, which doesn’t make getting work done any faster. Hoping we have a better week next week!
It does look like a lot- great job! We started a composer & artist study this week & are studying Bach also. 🙂
Looks like a good week. My daughter is memorizing Ozymandias as well. I think it's harder to learn because the end of the sentences don't line up with the end of each line. I googled and found it on youtube. It helped to listen to it being recited aloud.
Tonia, also that it doesn't rhyme. M-girl is uncomfortable with the sadness of it, too. She really feels the desolation. We listened to it from YouTube, too! A Brit reciting it was perfect 🙂
Wow, looks impressive to me! Could you explain what ANI is?
The ANI is a tool for Invention. It is developed by the CiRCE Institute in their Lost Tools of Writing curriculum. This is a middle grade curriculum but we're slowly introducing some of the ideas. The ANI asks a "should" question about your book "Should so-and-so have done such-and-such?" then develops answers using Affirmative, Negative, and Interesting (A-N-I).
Here is a link to a webinar done by CiRCE several years ago that introduces the tool. It takes a while (like 10 minutes!) to get started, though.
My daughter is memorizing Ozymandias as well. It's tough! Perhaps I'll try out the YouTube idea myself.
We had some non-stellar weeks all through September this year. It happens to us all, don't feel bad. It'll pick up again.