Weekly Report for September 24-28, 2012

We had some rough patches this week, but overall had a successful week.  I didn’t do a report last week, I think.  We did only a little on Monday and none but the fair on Friday … and I went to the Women’s Retreat.  We had three good days sandwiched between, though.  Tuesday, we went to the Columbus Museum of Art for their Homeschool Open House – free and fun!  

This week, we finally made it to the Library and went Nature Journaling on Monday.  We did lessons the rest of the week.  Choir started on Tuesday, so we listened to Story of the World on our way.  Our piano teacher had to cancel on Wednesday, but we were in no shape for lessons that day.  Thursday wasn’t much easier, but we did go to Art with Friends and got a project done.  Today was pretty good.  We had some soccer this week, although R-girl’s game was cancelled because of rain.  You don’t mind that this is essentially my diary, do you?  I don’t even have pictures again this week.  Such a slacker.

Phonics:

R-girl: has worked and worked and only has 34 lessons left in The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading.  I’m a little concerned by some of her hangups, but this last section is such solid review.  We’ll just keep working.

Assigned Reading:

M-girl: read one measly chapter in On the Banks of Plum Creek.  She only has 4 left.  I want her to try to finish it next week.

N-boy: is reading Farmer Boy faithfully.  I think he finally admitted he liked it.

R-girl: finished Little House in the Big Woods on Tuesday! She started The Cricket in Times Square on Wednesday and has read three chapters.

Math:

M-girl: has hit something challenging.  She’s doing problems like 73-58.  They aren’t teaching with the standard algorithm, but to decompose numbers so the problem looks like this: 73-50-3-5= .  She is able to do them, in her head even, when she concentrates …

N-boy: started working on addition and basic multiplication and division.  So cool how early MEP introduces that!

R-girl: took a test this week.  She missed 3, which was quite a lot.  Two were silly mistakes and one she skipped! She, with no intervention other than I marked them wrong, corrected all her mistakes.  Today we worked on patterning and geometric figures.  She hit that out of the park.

Logic:

M-girl: did several logic pages and I’d tell you about them, but I don’t remember what they were.

N-boy: he did a lot of pages this week.  He worked on patterns in 100s chart and matching figures.

R-girl:  finished Lollipop Logic which was a breeze.  Today, I started her in the Critical Thinking Activities K-2 book the other kids use and she’s going to be just fine.

Grammar:

M-girl: learned about Predicate Nominatives and Predicate Adjectives.  I love FLL3.

N-boy: is in the review section of FLL2 and I love it too.  Today he reviewed Interjections! I should remember to put Grammar Rock back in sometime … You should hear him recite the prepositions …

R-girl: finished the FLL1 lessons on pronouns and started verbs.  She read Ruth Heller’s book on Pronouns today.

Writing:

M-girl: started the Nurse Matilda lessons. She has beautiful penmanship when she tries.

N-boy: is working on the How to Eat Fried Worms lessons.  He was totally grossed out by the idea. [phew]

R-girl: did copywork on pronouns.

Spelling:

M-girl: actually missed two words this week! “between” and “riddle”

N-boy: also missed a couple of words “second,” “except,” “neighbor,” and “eight” But seriously, he’s 6.  He probably *should* misspell neighbor and eight.

Latin:

M-girl: [erm]

N-boy: [erm]

Penmanship:

M-girl: I’m mostly allowing her to write without practicing the letters and looking at the chart to figure out letters she didn’t learn.  Perhaps I should make her finish the worksheets.

N-boy: needs to get back to practicing letters.

R-girl: [erm]

History: we listened to Jim Weiss for history this week and learned about Aborigines in Australia and Maori in New Zealand.  Back to Europe next week!

Science: we read from Signs and Seasons, finishing chapter 1.  We watched a few YouTube videos about Halley’s Comet and other comets. Oh, and Nature Journals.

Geography: N-boy finished the Evan-Moore Beginning Geography workbook and started a cheapy Target workbook about the United States.  M-girl finished that workbook last week.  Next year, I’d like to do Geography Blobs a la The Core.

Fine Arts: we did Nature Journaling and Art with Friends.  We learned about some Duke’s Book of Hours and made calendars for October.  We’re trying a new Homeschool Chorus this year, I’m not sure I’m going to be happy with it, too mushy of songs. Piano Lessons were cancelled due to illness.

Read Alouds: we read some more Pinnocchio.  We finished “Active and Passive” in Parables from Nature.  We finished Eric Carle’s Dragon, Dragon. 

Bible: we continue to enjoy the devotional on The Heavens. We read sections (2? 3?) from The Mighty Acts of God.