Weekly Report: Week Ten

Since the teacher was having a birthday yesterday, EG worked hard to complete her week's work by Wednesday night. The goal was to avoid doing school yesterday or most of today, especially since she has testing today for band. The only things remaining are finishing up the week's literature selection, Around the World In Eighty Days, which is almost complete, science lab tonight, and reciting memory work once today. We're both enjoying our little "autumn break."

Speeding through Latin continues. This week, EG began and completed Chapter 9. I will have her work with the online vocabulary games today and over the weekend before she adds new words next week.

Our overall language arts program is going well, too. Ten minutes of penmanship each morning, two steps in All About Spelling Level Five this week, and three activities in Editor in Chief A1. In Writing Tales 2 this week, EG worked with the story of Regulus. Her rewrite was much more extensive but she still needs to make sure that, when writing from a key word outline, she doesn't just rewrite the original sentences.

Hands-On Equations was picked up again for the first time since the summer. EG loves the work in Hands-On Equations and calls it the "fun math." Considering she likes math overall, that's extremely high praise. She did Lessons 8 through 12, which is most of Level 2, introducing "star" which is essentially "-x." She also did some review in Key to Decimals Book 2, took the practice test for Key to Decimals Book 3, and did twelve pages in Key to Measurement Book 3, which is covering area and volume. She beat one level of drill and got much closer in her other level.

IEW Geography-Based Writing Lessons are officially ditched. I don't feel bad about it at this point - it's an ebook, so I only paid $10, and it did give her more practice at rewriting from a key word outline. Neither of us were enjoying the curriculum, and I thought the Holling C. Holling books, while well-written, were a poor choice for teaching, for example, taking factual notes. This is a skill that EG could use to develop, but I think we'll used SOTW 4 and some of our other resources for that. EG read The Wright Brothers and enjoyed it, as she does most of the Landmark books. She also read Minn of the Mississippi, and Chapter 12 in SOTW 4, about Ireland and South Africa.

This week will commence the exploration of sound in science. EG read Adventures in Sound, and they will do five or so of the activities from the Sound Vibrations kit, part of the Science in a Nutshell series, tonight.

EG did memory work each day, and will review it again today. She did three pages in Logic Liftoff, and took the test for Lesson 4 in Vocabulary from Classical Roots 4. We'll use her results in the first four tests to make flashcards for specific words.

EG also resumed taking stroke clinic twice a week at the Y, in addition to swimming during FB's tumbling class, so she's swimming three times a week. Co-op is still going well. EG had her rededication for Girl Scouts Monday as well. Piano lessons were skipped this week owing to it being my birthday. No Master's Academy this week, either, which is what truly made it possible to take yesterday and today as very light "off" days.

FB had a good week as well, as we started on the next handwriting book. He's very motivated to work on handwriting, even if he's not with regard to anything else! He had a break from swim lessons as well, which restarted last Saturday. He continues to love tumbling and is talking about doing gymnastics when he's too old for his tumbling class. I actually think it would be a good fit for him. He of course still wants to play basketball, too. He'll finally be old enough for a team this winter.

PC now has four teeth. In the space of about seven days, she acquired a stuffy nose, had a night of upset tummy and vomiting, and three teeth popped through her gums. Her latch completely deteriorated! It's improving now, thanks to careful work on my part. She's eating more and more, though it's still not overly exciting to her like it was to her big brother!

And I got a new secondary brain for my birthday in the form of an iPhone. I've also spent time poring over books about staging your house to sell (unsurprisingly, most buyers don't want to buy a schoolroom, so staging the sunroom will involve making it Something Else) as well as real estate listings for comps to the house we want. We'll probably take a look at three to eight properties to compare, which also gives us time to do some necessary work on the house before we could list it. It's not a great market right now, but we're thinking positive. It's a great house in a great location, and has several things a buyer wouldn't expect to get in our neighborhood. Here's hoping!