Week in Review -- Week #14

I occasionally used to do these Weekly Reports, inspired by Trivium Academy. I like the idea, but I was not that successful in keeping it up consistently. Why? Here are some possible reasons:

• I WAS successful -- ie, I did it when it met a need, but it didn't need to be done weekly.
• We don't generally do the kind of thing that's easy to record in that format.
• I was already keeping a daily log, so a weekly log was mostly redundant.
• They take a looong time.....
  
• Some reason that I haven't figured out yet.
• Some combination of the above.

That covers all the bases, doesn't it? (Which is something we're learning in Introductory Logic, by the way : ))

Maybe because I haven't been keeping the daily logs over at Schola et Studium, I've been motivated to try again with the weekly reports. So here goes

--- first, here were my original plans for this week:

Kieron, Year 7

General Overview -- we seem to be in a bit of a slump. It's hard to focus on standard academics during the holiday season, and I don't like to force it much. Also, this was a short week -- 3 days -- and his siblings are home so the fact that we got anything done was a bonus.

Math --

We've been using this British curriculum. Year 7 is the equivalent of American 6th Grade, so I do the "express" version in the curriculum -- it's broken down into standard, academic and express. I like it because it is a thoughtful approach and suits the way he does things. We're on Unit 10 -- started using it sometime in September after a general review. I supplement it with computer drills and that kind of thing, and we do a lot of math discussions. If I have an over-arching goal for this year for him, it's to encourage him to realize that there are usually several ways to approach a math problem, and to encourage him to figure out his own ways to deal with a mental challenge.

This week we didn't actually use the curriculum -- I just looked up comparable exercises online. Most of the fraction work was review anyway.

Literature:

Finished Legend of Sleepy Hollow and have started reading The Gold Bug. I'm getting these from the American Cardinal Reader 7. Mostly we just read, but you can get a bit of literary discussion in there too. I'm collecting notes and links over at Google Docs. ... not much there yet. So far, Gold Bug has held his attention better than Sleepy Hollow.

History

Reading the first unit in Our Country together.
He is starting to read some of the material on Native Americans and the Meso-Americans.
He colored a map and did a geography quiz.





Latin

Several exercises from Latin is Fun. ... and trying to review grammar.

Science, Logic

We mostly skimped on these this week. He started reading the Newton chapters in The Boy Scientist. Haven't done a lot of formal religion recently either. He has been reading all the saints' bios in the house so lots of informal learning.

General Review:

I've been putting review games up at Quizlet.

Aidan, Year 1

General Overview: He seems to be in full swing! These are a few of the things he's been doing -- click the links for more details and pictures, if you want:

• I've been making him lots of card games.... he gets them out often.
• He has been counting, and wordbuilding.
• Another language arts game he loves is making up his own readers, or journaling.
• Another one we just discovered yesterday is making his own word puzzles.
• We worked with Starfall downloads yesterday.
• For fine motor, he's been focusing on work with scissors.

Paddy, Year 1

Math

• -- we focused on money and 10's. So we worked with dimes on several levels .... in real life, in his workbook and on the computer. He is now telling me it is too easy.
• He also worked with simple fractions.

Language Arts --

• I read him several childrens' stories from an anthology, including Rumpelstiltskin, The Three Pigs, a shorter version of Lassie Comes Home, and The Poppy Seed Cakes.
• Reading -- mostly just oral practice, correcting mistakes. Usually I just grab a reader or an easy children's book and he goes on for a couple of pages then asks me to take over.
• Also, some work on phonics mostly using the downloads from Starfall.

Fine Motor

• For Penmanship -- a few days ago he drew large X's and today he drew large "C's".
• He did a bit with scissors, following Aidan's example.

Nature:

• Adventures and Treasure Hunting with Clare.
• For some reason, he's also been fascinated with our dog and feeds him, plays with him and talks about his motives all the time : ).

OK, I can see once again why I have trouble with the week in review format. The week definitely felt sparse but it took me forever to write this out, and it doesn't look too bad, and I didn't even get everything that went on in there, so I guess we did do more than I thought.
There are a few more visuals here.

Incidental Note:

Sean, my high schooler, has been home all this week. It's funny that he has been doing some of the same things the homeschool siblings are doing -- he had to try out Kieron's geometry quiz, and play phonics with Aidan and math fractions with Paddy, and he read the Native American Legends, and yesterday was describing the stories in great detail, and listening to Clare describe a book she is reading.

He's also been their PE coach for the week -- organizing all kinds of impromptu ball games and wrestling matches. Having him around makes us realize how different life is when he's NOT around.

Here's his last football game, against Yosemite.



He had to turn in a five-page research paper for Language Arts last week -- interesting to see him work his way through it. ... the research, the listing of sources, the other accoutrements.