Friday, November 7, 2008

Week 12 in Review

We're back in the swing of things after a two week break!

Anna: I was expecting her first lesson in MUS Zeta to be lengthy since that is what we experienced with Ryne and Grace a few weeks ago in their new books. But she completed the entire Lesson 1 on Monday with no problems. At first I figured we'd just start with Lesson 2 on Tuesday, but she asked if she could catch up on her reading list instead, and I reluctantly agreed.

This brings up a problem we've run into lately. I typically don't give the kids private reading time during the day as suggested in The Well Trained Mind, because they have always loved doing this at night and I am having a hard enough time fitting in everything I need to during the day. For years it has worked wonderfully. Marc and I do read-alouds with the kids then they are free to read in bed. Anna has read hundreds of books in this manner. Especially in the summer months I will often catch her still reading at 11:00 at night. She has even said that she prefers to read at night rather than during the daytime (although does read during the daytime as well).

The problem is that her schedule is much different this year and it's wearing her down. She swims 4 days a week instead of 2-3, and the practices are longer now. For Saturday meets (once or twice a month) we often have to get up at 5:30 am to get to warm-ups on time. Plus, as I mentioned in my previous review, she has started taking Catechism class at our church and she often practices her memory work once she's in bed. The result is a sleepy kid who has not read many books lately. So it's time for me to change the routine. I'm going to have to devote some of our school time for private reading and insist she do her memory work during the daytime as well. I'm going to play with our schedule this weekend to figure out how to fit all this in. There must be a way!

Anna also started Latin for Children Primer B this week and it looks like the DVDs and CD have not been revised like Primer A. That means they are back to teaching at the kitchen table and Dr. Perrin chants a mile a minute. As I said in my review of LFC A, I missed the homeschool feel to the revised edition, so we're happy. And now that we both know our Latin better, his rate of chanting is easier to keep up with.

Ryne: Math went great, again! This week Beta Boy started multiple digit addition with numbers other than zero in the units and tens place. I can see such a difference in Ryne when he is getting a concept -- he is much more focused. He finished his test very quickly and scored 100%. Looking ahead, I think we will skip Lesson 6 because it covers skip counting by 2. Ryne mastered that long ago, and if I can digress for just a moment, I have a funny story to share. We used to take Ryne to a chiropractor and often during the adjustment she would ask him to count to 100 or some other number to keep him occupied. Ryne, being too smart for his own good, would count by 2's, 5's, or 10's in an effort to speed her up! I also have some good things to report on Ryne with RDI activities, but I'm going to share that for a post next week.

Grace: This girl couldn't have been more proud of herself for finally starting her long vowel sounds! I told her learning her long vowels was going to open up a whole new world of reading for her, so she was excited to get started. I was pleased to see that The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading used shorter lessons in introducing this concept as opposed to the lessons on consonant blends and digraphs.

One area of frustration right now is handwriting. Grace does well when we do specific handwriting exercises, but it does not seem to be transferring to other writing opportunities. I often catch her during math forming in numbers incorrectly (sometimes even bizarrely). Same with her phonics worksheets. She even said to me this week she only has to do her writing a certain way when she is actually working on handwriting. I've hardly had to do anything as far as actually teaching handwriting to the other two, so I guess now I'm going to have to pay my dues!

History: We covered the Diaspora and the Mongol invasion of China. Here are our favorite read-alouds for the chapters (click image for details):



Bible: This week we started the book Discovering Jesus in Genesis, and all three kids seem to be enjoying it. I'm not sure yet. The content is great, but I'm not sure how well they are grasping it. I think I have some ideas for activities (some are also suggested throughout the book) to help them understand though, so we'll see how it goes next week.




We're actually not officially done with our school week yet. Studying about China made us all hungry for Chinese food, so we talked Daddy into bringing some home for dinner tonight. And we are finishing up our science chapter on rock types by making an edible sedimentary rock. Yum!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the favorites, will have to try them when we get to this point in SOW.

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  2. We loved those chapters of SOTW, too. And I was sooo with ya' until you said 'edible sedimentary rock'.

    That I gotta' see. ;)

    Darcy

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