Weekly Report: Week Nineteen, plus SNOW!

Yes, we have actual snow on the ground! Some of it is bending to the will of the sun and melting, but that's actually a bad thing in this case: the temperature is no where near freezing, much less above it. So here we sit, rather happily snug at home. Even the Daddy character is working from home thanks to the weather!

Our first week of the second semester has gone really well. Big things? We resumed doing spelling, and EG finished steps 16, 17, and 18. We also got the first book we're going to use from Michael Clay Thompson's Language Arts program, and started it today. Being obsessive-compulsive, and being that my entire reason for switching was what I saw as an inability to transfer knowledge and apply it elsewhere, we decided to start with the Island level. I anticipate that EG will zoom through it, and I think she'll have finish through the Voyage level by the end of fifth grade, but start at the beginning we shall. We read through the introduction today (got the book yesterday), as well as the sections on nouns and pronouns. We also cracked open Classical Writing's Poetry for Beginners A.

I have to say, either Writing Tales 2 just really prepared EG (& I as the teacher) well for Homer, or I just have a bias against poetry, or something, because lighter workload than Homer? Not so much, in my opinion. Oh, I like it, and yes, I realize we're going to end up with multiple writing and poetry programs thanks to MCT, but lighter than Homer? I'm not so sure about that.

EG worked for less time each day on Latin, but I think it's a good pace. She finished the first eight lessons in Orbitting with Logic, and of course did one lesson per day in algebra. History this week covered Mussolini's rise to power, amongst other topics. She and Captain Science started a unit on heat, which will be short-lived - just this week and next. It's difficult to find appropriate experiments for thermodynamics, what can I say.

FB and I are set to do some phonics work later today and over the weekend, and he's been cutting up a storm (in his cutting workbook) most of the week. PC remains determined to interrupt schoolwork whenever possible.

Finally, I cleared my desk yesterday, and even started hammering out a few details for next school year, such as our overall calendar. Hopefully, I'll get a bit more on that accomplished later today.