Thursday, December 11, 2008

Week 16 in Review

Monday, we went to evening Mass for the Immaculate Conception.

Tuesday, Sean woke up sick and he has been sick ever since. In fact, today, Thursday, is the first day he's even moved his head off the sofa except out of necessity. So of course, he's been home from school. It's strange to call the school every morning to explain why he isn't showing up.

It's been a slow week in the Schola -- the routine is to do a bit of morning reading with Kieron, then a break when I try to get a few things done, then set things up for him to finish up -- a few things on the computer, then a couple of things to read. That's about all. Here's a list of things that we did.

Morning Time
Finished Gold Bug.
Got through Columbus's adventures in Our Country in Story.
Picked up The Creed in Slow Motion again after quite a long hiatus -- resuming with Chapter V which turned out very serendipitously because it's "And in Jesus Christ" and includes a summary of salvation history and what Christ or Messiah means.

That worked in so perfectly to jumpstart the Advent preparation, so I got out the books and Advent calendars and all . Today the children all spent some time matching and sorting through the Jesse Tree ornaments I printed out and laminated last year (downloadable here).

It turns out that Aidan loves the World of Narnia Advent Calendar my mother sent the kids even before he was born, though the picture I got turns out impossibly blurry. He loves lifting the numbered (!) flaps and looking at the pictures underneath. It fits in with this informal calendar study he's been absorbed in the past few weeks.

For math and some other subjects, Kieron has been working on various online drills, including the following:

He is rereading the Christmas and Advent books which we brought out along with the other Advent things.

He and Clare embarked on a geography study on Sunday, due to the Geo Game I mentioned above, but I don't know if they've done much with it since.

He is plodding through with the first part of Joy Hakim's The First Americans -- not too thrilling for him apparently. I wanted him to get some background on pre-Columbian peoples. Then we'll stop.

Paddy listened to

  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (from Best Loved Children's Books series)
  • A story about the young David, from same source (a more complete telling than just the Goliath story, by Fulton Oursler -- a bit florid in the retelling).
  • Another story from the same source on some children and an aquarium -- sort of like the Let's Read and Find Out type science stories.
  • Old Testament stories from a child's Bible Storybook.
He was asking to know what the Jesse Tree decorations were about, so I'm going to dig for a suitable storybook more on his level than the simple one we've been using. Aidan just liked matching them.

Both Paddy and Aidan are "reading in their environment" a lot more -- Aidan continues his spelling projects on the metal garage door with his leapfrog letters.... I've seen him spell "quiet", "go", "we" and "look".

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