Weekly Report: Week Eight

Stagnant weeks are what I call those weeks where you think, "I know things were accomplished this week, but I cannot put my finger on a single one!" Writing the weekly report helps me find at least a few things that did get accomplished, which is especially helpful when you feel like there are so many more things that could have been completed, or at the very least, done better.

Let's start with Purple Child. She's almost started running, which is exhilarating for her, and frightening for me. She's eating more food, though still not with a great deal of enthusiasm, and she had her first reaction to a food. Mangos make for unhappy bottoms, it seems.

FB... I feel so much like I've been slacking a bit with him, but it's so hard to tell when he's enjoying what we're doing and when he's merely humoring me. We did read lots of books this week, including several new ones (Sounds All Around, Paul Bunyan, and Jack and the Beanstalk), as well as his current Your Big Backyard magazine. He also read the number 500 off a construction sign. He said "Five hundred babies!" instead of "Five hundred feet!" Why babies? Because of this:




EG "passed" her first song at band today. I'm not exactly sure what the testing and passing all mean, but it seems to be a good thing, and it's helping us with our fledging attempts to get her started on setting her own goals. In other music-related news, she's flying through her Primer level piano books. Her teacher says she definitely has some natural talent. I don't know much about musical talent (not being talented musically myself), but I do see what I would term unusual behaviors with regard to music - it appears to come very easily to her and she's understanding some parts of it almost intuitively.

EG finished her rewrite of "Diamonds and Toads" in Writing Tales 2 and completed three activities in Editor in Chief A1. She had a week's break from spelling, and did some pages from Vocabulary from Classical Roots 4 in lieu of it. She'll start spelling again next week as she begins All About Spelling Level 5. She also continues to practice cursive penmanship for ten minutes each day, and she read Heidi this week.

EG also had a great math week. She beat two different levels of drill, and finished all of the new material in Life of Fred: Decimals & Percents. She's still working through Key to Measurement Book 2 and doing well. Next is the Final Bridge! I'll be having her complete at least two of the attempts given for the Final Bridge, just to assure myself that she knows the material.

Latin is going quickly - EG finished chapter 7 this week. She's continuing to review her memory work and needs just a few days more with the Gettysburg Address, though I did think she might have it finished this week. She read George Washington Carver: Peanut Wizard and began Elizabeth Blackwell for biographies, and read chapters nine and ten in Story of the World Volume 4. Physics was more work with magnetism, including some supplementary reading. EG also did three pages in Logic Liftoff.

Finally, we're continuing to use IEW's Geography-Based Writing Lessons in lieu of other history writing. We've almost completed the first set of nine lessons, which are all based on Paddle to the Sea. We'll finish those by Wednesday, and start on the next set of nine, which are based on Tree on the Trail. It's been a good supplement and given her some different "language" for various ways to improve her writing, but I wouldn't want to use it as a sole writing curriculum for a year.

Master's Academy is still going well for both kids, and EG is enjoying her co-op classes. I have to talk to the co-op coordinator about discontinuing math club; it's a little silly to bother when I just have the same two kids that I have for science on Thursdays, after all. I'd like to teach a class in the spring, though - possibly using Ellen McHenry's The Brain - and next autumn, I really want to offer a class on evolution. That's the update on me!