Weekly Report for October 21-25, 2013

I know it’s been a while since I posted a weekly report. One week we were preparing for vacation. The next week we were on vacation. The following week we did a little school as we recovered from vacation and prepared for M-girl’s ninth birthday. Last week we had full school, and it was painful and we didn’t complete all assigned, but we accomplished a lot.

This week was back to normal amounts of prodding and working … this is what we must do. We only have four weeks remaining in our Academic Year, so this is the final push. We only did two days of Circle Time, though. I’d like to get back to at least 3 days and preferably 4.

Monday we enjoyed a “Ketchup Day.” We did Circle Time and completed the work from last week that was incomplete. There were new math lessons and new chapters to read, but we made Monday an light day that way.

This week in Math, M-girl worked on the hundreds place value. She’s getting a good sense of how the hundreds column works and how to approach numbers with it. N-boy is working on enhancing his skills with division and understanding when to divide. He also practiced order of operations. R-girl is working on place value in the tens column. In logic, M-girl and N-boy learned about the value of paying attention to the instructions. If you don’t keep track of the phone numbers, you’ll chose the wrong person at the end of the mystery. They did *not* like that they got the wrong answer. R-girl continues to work on MindBenders that are too difficult for her, she needs a lot of hand holding, but figures them out eventually. I suspect I’d be able to give her these last couple of books again and have her work through them.

For Literature, M-girl finished Rabbit Hill. She created an ANI chart and wrote a paragraph -draft on Thursday, edited it on Friday- about the book:

Willie Fieldmouse should have run to tell Father that the New Folks were planting bluegrass. He wanted to please Father, who loved bluegrass. Also, it was good news that the Folks were gardeners. Finally, it seemed the Folks took good care of small animals.
-M. Garrett, Age 9

She typed it herself and is, IMO, justly proud of her work. I gave her off Grammar for Thursday and Friday while she worked on doing her essay. Now to choose a new book … hmmm. N-boy is still working through the A Beka adaptation of Pilgrim’s Progress and enjoying it. He did two narrations and two dictations from it this week.

N-boy taking dictation.

Yesterday, R-girl finished The Nursery Alice. She enjoyed it and laughed that it was all a dream. She’s also been working through Writing With Ease I. We’re only doing the days with narrations, and this week I started writing her narrations and she must copy them. It has gone very well.

R-girl copying her narration.

We’ve also been listening to The Tanglewoods Secret read by my sister. The theology is rather Arminian, but we’re enjoying the story and it gives us something to talk about. At dinner, we’ve gotten back into the habit of reading and have picked Man of the Family back up. I look forward to returning to a regular schedule as soccer season is done.

Rounding out the language arts, N-boy is working on types of sentences -and diagramming them- in Grammar. He is continuing to practice typing in Nitro Type, as is M-girl. R-girl is working on direct and indirect quotations in grammar and is reviewing lower case letters in cursive. R-girl started Explode the Code Book 3 this week. I think this is helping her spelling.

All three children are doing well with their Latin. M-girl is working on Lesson 12 of Latin for Children A. She and I worked through Libellus de Historia chapter 2. She doesn’t like it, but I think it is excellent practice. N-boy is working on Lesson 2 from Latin for Children. He worked in the Activity Book and his Assignment book. R-girl completed Lesson 18 in Prima Latina. She likes Latin, just doesn’t love all the writing.

This was a History reading week. I’m not sure they got a lot of reading done, but some. There were fewer books on Queen Elizabeth I than I had expected, but that’s OK. M-girl and N-boy also learned about four states in their Geography book.

We read the 5 chapters in our Science book about earthquakes and volcanoes. We didn’t do any projects, but they talked through the ideas in the book. We also watched The Magic School Bus Blows its Top! on Netflix one day.

We did a lot of Fine Arts this week. Everyone did piano practices most days. We had a lesson this week. On Tuesday, we completed reading Handel in the Court of Kings by Opal Wheeler. We love these books! We pulled out the excellent version of The Messiah that we own and the children loved listening to it. We also looked at Monet’s train station painting in the Simply Charlotte Mason Artist Study pack. I love these packs! Finally, on Thursday, we had our Art with Friends group. We learned a third way to make prints from the Artistic Pursuits book. The other teacher also did a lesson from Drawing with Children discussing lines and showing the children how everyone’s picture will be different even using the same instructions. Very nice.

The School-Age portion of our Art with Friends group.

We finished our week watching the Disney Swiss Family Robinson movie. We had listened to the book on our vacation. The movie was so very different from the book! The children couldn’t get over the differences. They were terrified by the tiger and the pirates.

I love that I can look back and say we had a great week, even when I know we had difficulties and frustrations during it.