Slowly-- Slowly Climb Mt. Fuji!: Week in Review- Duncan (wk6, minus one day, of 36)

Duncan is my 8yo. We took off a day for Labor Day and let me just say that 4-day weeks make me feel like we just didn’t quite get going. Anyway, here is his sixth week minus one day of third grade:

Time4Learning
On Time4Learning Duncan completed at least one activity each day in Language Arts, Language Arts Extensions, Math, Science, and Social Studies. Here is a breakdown of how much time (hours: minutes: seconds) he ended up spending on T4L this week:

LA 3 and LA extensions 3, combined- 1:23:48 (Setting, Plot, Parts of Speech, Sentence Types)
Math 4- 1:21:56 (Multiplication)
Science 2- 0:31:14 (Patterns in Nature)
Social Studies 2 & 3- 0:38:46 (The World in Spatial Terms, Wants & Needs, Work in Society)

So, 3:55:45 is the total time that Duncan spent doing the computer portion of T4L this week. Duncan completed the level 2 science, so next week it is back to level 3. In social studies he did some level 2 and some level 3 this week and will probably do the same next week.

Classical Conversations
Our Classical Conversations group begins this next week and in preparation Duncan recited the presidents and we listened to the week one memory work for English, science, Latin, and geography from a CD that was made here locally.

Duncan continued studying Essentials of the English Language in preparation for Classical Conversations- Essentials. He copied the 112 Different Types of Sentences Chart. We reviewed parts of speech, types of sentences, and we came up with sentences of our own modeled after the examples on the Essentials of the English Language chart. We also discussed transitive, intransitive, linking, and helping verbs.

Math
In Foerster’s Algebra this week Duncan wrapped up chapter 3. He has not memorized all the information, but he can look up the axioms and whatnot and find the correct name. He does the work well and the vocabulary is coming along. Right now I am calling that good enough. I know it may bite me later, but I just never needed to know the name for each step I was doing. This week he worked an average of 13 minutes per day at Khan Academy primarily laughing his way through Sal Khan’s videos on functions. He also spent between 20 and 30 minutes doing Kumon math three days. He began Mathematics: A Human Endeavor by Harold Jacobs. He is doing this with a math tutor. This week they did chapter 2 section 1. It was an easy fun start.

Language Arts
In language arts he worked on word list 63 from Spelling Plus and finished pages 24-25 in Spectrum Phonics and Word Study Grade 5. This week we narrated and rewrote the paragraph about dance flies from his Key Word Outline. He added an –ly opener. He read pp.140-190 (ten stories) in The Beginner’s Bible and he finished Sign of the Beaver. He also began the first chapter of Edcon Publishing’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

History
In history Duncan read chapter 6- Life in the 13 Colonies in Land of Liberty and he started reading the first chapter of George Washington for Kids. In preparation for Classical Conversations- Foundations that will be starting the week after Labor Day, he recited his presidents and listened to the history song for this upcoming Tuesday.

Science
In addition to T4L, this week Duncan read Snakes by Jeff Corwin.

Music, Drama and Art
He practiced violin daily and I feel like we should receive some sort of award! I know this sounds silly, but it never occurred to me to just leave the violin out. Guess what, if it is out, he plays it. Yeah, I feel kind of silly. His lesson this week also went well.

Duncan’s art and drama classes started back up this week. He was so happy to be back.