Friday- Week in Review

Yeah, I haven’t posted a week-in-review since before Christmas. This is partially due to the blahs that I go into this time during the school year and partially due to needing to begin the college search and application process with my second ds, Grayson. So, what have we been doing and where are we now?

I spent Christmas looking at schools/ tutorials for my youngest. I was a little panicked about Grayson and was feeling like I needed to free up some time to work with him. We ended up visiting and enrolling my youngest in Classical Conversations- Foundations. I was looking for next year, but my little man loved it. They didn't have space for my extra student, but she will now be following some of the Foundation material as well.

Anyway, back to our week. We picked up Foundations in Cycle 2 week 12. Our group meets on Tuesday. On Tuesday afternoons I have my extra student Mei and review the material from that morning for her benefit. Duncan has a fabulous tutor and I like to see how she covered the material and reinforce that at home.

I have decided to introduce new Foundations material on Thursdays. I do this on Thursday, because Mei is here and I want her here on the day I introduce the new material. Yesterday, I introduced week 16.

Our director gave me the list of the Kingfisher 1999 pages that coordinate with our history statement and I cover these. I have been using the Usborne Internet-Linked Science Encyclopedia to go over the science memory statement, but I think that I will use something else next year. (This is just the science encyclopedia that I had on my shelf.) Right now we are on the art history portion of the arts rotation, so we look at the artist that will be covered on Tuesday. I also go over the rest of the memory work.

Either before Mei arrives on Thursday or after she leaves I discuss with Duncan his presentation for the upcoming week. I have not been doing very structured composition lessons with Duncan, so now I am doing a lot of modeling of IEW methods to prepare for the presentations. However, as next week he is just needs to read a favorite passage from the Bible, we haven’t had to do keyword outline or anything like that.

For those who don’t know- My dh was raised Muslim. I was raised Christian. I am completely aware that CC is a Protestant organization. Anyway, Duncan is going to read excerpts from the NIV Bible’s story of Noah in Genesis. Noah happens to be one of dh’s favorite prophets and he was the one who chose this passage.

We review memory work, blob maps, and other CC stuff the rest of the week. Currently this is taking some time, because the little man wants to memorize everything he missed first semester. He is not doing the Veritas Press timeline (I don’t want to spend the money on all those cards right now.) and I see no point in going back to do the Latin as they repeat the same material second semester. Duncan would love to do this too, but there are only so many hours in the day and if he wants to do this he will need to do it independently.

He is almost caught up in everything else except geography. I can’t tolerate memorization out of context. History and geography are taking some time, because I am not giving him new memory work until he understands the material. And argh doing it this way is not ideal. I have no idea how much he will retain.

OTOH- Duncan really wants to be able to compete in the weekly reviews. There is also a quarterly jeopardy type game where our entire CC group is divided into 4 teams that compete. We watched this when we visited and Duncan thought it was fabulous.

In addition to CC Foundations we are continuing with our own math and language arts. This week Duncan completed Key to Algebra Book 2, worked in the geometry section of the Complete Book of Algebra and Geometry, and did some Kumon. Mei worked in Saxon 65. Duncan, Mei, and I are continuing to read MCT’s Sentence Island together. We will be finished soon, but I may read through it again. They were missing things that I thought they should know, so I decided to back up in both Practice Island with Duncan and Winston Grammar with Mei. Duncan is still working through Plaid Phonics C and this week Mei started ElizabethB’s phonics lessons. Duncan also practiced violin.

This is long and without exciting pictures, but I think it gets me caught up.

Wordless Wednesday

Shout out to Miss Mei who has pointed out that I have not really started back to blogging after Christmas break!

Here is Mei's cow from Chik-fil-a last week. This week's was so cute- a face full of hearts- but I didn't get a photo of it. :-(

OTOH- this week I did get a photo of Duncan with his face painted! Mei gets hers painted every week, but Duncan has always refused.

LOL! Here is Duncan with his moustache and goatee. I wish the photo was better, but he wouldn't stop jumping around.

Read-Aloud Thursday

This week my 8yo read me The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses. This is a Caldecott Award winner and the illustrations are just fabulous. The story has a daydream quality that really ties into a child playing pretend- like when a child decides that he loves elephants and spends the afternoon pretending to be an elephant. In the book the girl loves her tribe's horses. One day when she is with the horses a storm comes up and when the horses run off in fear of the thunder she gets lost with them. In the end it is implied, though never stated, that she may have become a horse. We really enjoyed it!

Read-Aloud Thursday

We read Jumanji by Chris Van Allsberg.

I must confess that (gasp) although I saw the movie I never read the book! The book is really very cute- a good read. Duncan and I really enjoyed the drawings.

Wordless Wednesday- Snow Fort

Mei and Duncan (well mostly Mei) used our movie theater popcorn bucket to build a snow fort last night. We needed photos, because this may be the one time in their childhoods when we have enough snow to do such a thing.

Can you see the gum in Duncan's happy mouth?

Their fort had snow bucket pyramids on 3 sides.

Mei was pretty pleased with her work.

Finished with the last bucket still in place!

Wordless Wednesday- Christmas Decorations

Ramblings about Accelerated Math with My Little Man

I have been in a tizzy about math the past several days. I really try not to plan math too much other than to say that this is what we plan to do next. You never know when a child will fly through lessons and when he will need to squat on a topic. One of the benefits of home education is that I don't have to take into consideration an entire classroom full of students. Anyway, Duncan has used Saxon 54, Saxon 65, and half of Saxon 76 and I had planned to use Saxon 87 next.

With Duncan the problem, in addition to his sloppy 8yo boy handwriting making workbook type materials look really attractive, is that due to Kumon, Key to Algebra Book 1, Math Mammoth Order of Operations, and Hands on Equations he has jumped ahead of his current material in Saxon 76. However, I can't just skip him ahead through testing or whatever, because he hasn't worked with some of the geometry presented in Saxon and it is integrated into the rest of the program.

Another problem is that it is pretty clear that at Kumon Duncan will be hitting Algebra 1 topics by next fall at the latest. Even if I slow him down by requesting less work and stall by requesting more repetitions, he will be hitting Algebra topics long before he could complete the second half of Saxon 76 and all of Saxon 87. Kumon is implicit learning, so I want to explain concepts at home before he hits them at Kumon. It is unlikely that he will want to sit still and listen to the whys of a topic if he can already fly through multiple pages of the topic and come out with the correct answer.

Grayson, my middle son, used Saxon from Saxon 3-87 alongside Singapore Primary Maths. I wish that I had never moved him out of Saxon. I don't really want to be in this same place with the little guy, but the grass is looking greener and all that.

After banging my head against this dilemma for a few days, I have decided that next semester Duncan will be using Key to Algebra Books 2 and 3 while simultaneously doing Math Mammoth Blue Series Geometry 1 and 2 (all the sections with unfamiliar material and any other sections that interest him). Key to Algebra Books 2 and 3 cover the pre-algebra material included in his current Kumon level and Math Mammoth Blue Series Geometry will cover the geometry that is in Saxon. He will also continue with Hands on Equations.

After this is finished, I have several good ideas for math, but I am trying to resist actually planning it.