Weekly Report for October 8-12, 2012

We had a good week.  Four days with lessons, two of circle time, and one day of changing to cold-weather clothes (which, of course, meant we had warm weather this weekend). One more week of soccer!

Phonics:

R-girl:  she’s in final stretch … started three-syllable words.

Assigned Reading:

M-girl: finished On the Banks of Plum Creek! I’m going to have her finish Grammar-Land next. After that, I may assign the children’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

N-boy: finished Farmer Boy! I don’t know what he’ll read next.

R-girl: is working away at The Cricket in Times Square.  When she finishes, I expect she’ll read The Nursery Alice.

Math:

M-girl: had a week on measurement at just the right time to keep her from being frustrated. 

N-boy: enjoyed working on times sets.

R-girl: has been working on calendar and time.

Logic:

M-girl: worked on several pages of logic.  She’s almost done with the K-2 activities. She worked on some very tricky patterning lessons in this past week.  I think I’m going to give her some Mindbenders from Critical Thinking Company next. I only have the grade 1-2 book, which I presume she’ll find pretty easy.

N-boy: isn’t far behind on this workbook.  I see him doing the same pages to what M-girl did in the past few months.

R-girl: started this book recently.  She finds it pretty easy, except the Venn Diagrams.  She’s starting to see them, though.

Grammar:

M-girl: is doing amazingly well with this.  I just realized this week that there are only 90 lessons in FLL3.  She finds it so easy, we do a lesson every day – she’s half-way done!  What a great curriculum.

N-boy: is almost done with FLL2.  This week we’re going to focus on the composition lessons I skipped last week.

R-girl: is working steadily on FLL1.  She’s had her lessons skipped a few times, so she’s not as close to finished as the other two are.  She has no problem with the content.  Yay for verbs!

Writing:

M-girl: started the Pilgrims Progress lessons.

N-boy: has made great strides this year during Writing.  I see it isn’t completely transitioning to his personal writing, though.

Spelling:

M-girl: completed one lesson with no missed words.

N-boy: also completed one lesson with no missed words.

Latin:

M-girl:

N-boy:

Penmanship:

M-girl: finished! She still needs the chart occasionally to see which letter is which, but she has learned them all and has beautiful handwriting.  Now to work for fluency: speed and endurance!

N-boy:finished X and Y this week.

R-girl: is still working on that pesky b.

History: We caught up on all our map work this week, from Australia through Charlemagne.  We listened to Jim Weiss read about the Vikings on our way to choir.  The kids were fascinated. We tried to think about why Leif Ericcson finding North America was not the same as Columbus doing so much later.  I was fascinated by the Viking settling into Normandy and how they integrated into the culture.  Such good stuff.

Science: We read about the sun and its qualities, first.  Then, in Signs and Seasons, we read more about Polaris and how it is central to the rotating constellations from our (Northern Hemisphere) point of view.

Geography: We learned about plate tectonics and how the flood could be an explanation for all the damage that was done to the Earth’s crust.  We read more about the crust and its movement as well as the different ways plates can be split apart or pushed together.  The children have also started to want us to name places and them find them on the globe. 🙂


Fine Arts: We did art with our friends on Thursday.  We learned about Jan Van Eyck and his improvements to painting.  We learned a new technique called “color wash” with watercolors.  We also had homeschool chorus on Tuesday.  Our piano teacher was on her honeymoon, so no lesson this week, but a lot of practicing.

Read Alouds: We made it through another chapter or two of Pinocchio.  This is our last week of soccer until spring, so our routine should smooth out for a time and reading should be more regular.

Bible:  We read about the Man born blind in The Mighty Acts of God this week.  We continued working on Philippians 2: 1-18 in memory work and our catechism questions.  I haven’t started working on the Shorter Catechism with M-girl because she hasn’t recited the Catechism for Young Children for our elders yet (and probably won’t until the new year alongside her brother), but she already has the first 6 pretty well learned from Holly Dutton’s CDs.