Week in Review- Duncan (wk7 - 1 day of 36wks)

Duncan is my 8yo. I know I am so late, but last week was so crazy. Here is his seventh 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- 2:11:01 (Main Idea, Theme, Subject & Predicate, Friendly Letters)
Math 4- 0:29:11 (Multiplication)
Science 3- 0:35:17 (Physical Changes, Properties of Matter)
Social Studies 2 & 3- 1:02:22 (Map Skills, Geographic Terms)

So, 4:17:51 is the total time that Duncan spent doing the computer portion of T4L this week. In social studies he finished level 2 and continued with level 3. I am glad I let Duncan go back and do the level 2 science and social studies. They are just videos. Many of the other things he does are ahead a level, so it was nice for him to have something light on his plate.

Classical Conversations
Our Classical Conversations group started and it was a lot of work for me, because I am tutoring Foundations and Essentials.

For Foundations Duncan listened to the week one and week two memory work for English, science, Latin, geography, and timeline from a CD that was made here locally. From the Classical Conversations online tutorial he listened to the songs for history sentences from weeks one and two.

Duncan continued studying Essentials of the English Language Grammar. 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. He wrote sentences and changed their purpose by changing their end marks and/ or by rearranging the words. We also discussed transitive, intransitive, linking, and helping verbs.

In Essentials IEW composition this week, Duncan completed lesson 1 in U.S. History-Based Writing Lessons, Volume 1. The lesson works on using quality adjectives in a fill-in-the-blank poem.

Math
In Foerster’s Algebra this week Duncan began chapter 4. He completed sections 1-3 and started section 4. This week he only worked on Khan Academy three days. For those days he averaged 19 minutes each day. He also spent between 20 and 30 minutes doing Kumon math three days. He continued Mathematics: A Human Endeavor by Harold Jacobs with his math tutor. This week they discussed geometric sequences. One of the days he was on Khan Academy, he chose to watch Khan’s video on geometric sequences.

Language Arts
In language arts he completed word list 63 and started list 64 from Spelling Plus and finished pages 26-28 in Spectrum Phonics and Word Study Grade 5. He completed week one of Daily Language Arts Review, Grade 4. He read pp.190-215 (five stories) in The Beginner’s Bible and he read Meet Benjamin Franklin by Maggi Scarf. We began Jacob’s Ladder Reading Comprehension Level 1 and completed the first two stories. Duncan also finished the first chapter of Edcon Publishing’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

History
In history Duncan read chapter 7- The Road to Revolution in Land of Liberty and he finished the first chapter of George Washington for Kids. I think that I am going to look on my shelf and find another book on Washington. George Washington for Kids has fabulous activities that Duncan has no desire to complete, so they are getting in the way of reading the biographical material.

Science
In addition to T4L, this week Duncan pulled out the microscope and looked at random slides. He mostly looked at amoebas and paramecia, but he also checked out the mouth parts of a mosquito. He also read Investigating the Scientific Method with Max Axiom. In Classical Conversations we did an experiment with finger prints.

Music, Drama and Art
He practiced violin every day again this week! I am starting to feel like the mom of a violin student. His lesson this week also went well.

Duncan’s art and drama classes were fabulous as usual. We have a friend who is attending a traditional classroom school this year and one of the things she misses about homeschooling is this art teacher.

At Classical Conversations we began our six weeks of drawing by looking at circles, dots, lines, angles, and curves in Drawing with Children. We also did p.11 from How to Teach Art to Children and drew a frog from Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book of Animals.