8.1.10

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.

5 comments:

Our Westmoreland School said...

I'm not sure how well this would help, but we did some experiments on the stove, just heating up a burner and watching the effect on paper (the paper floats, we weren't trying to burn the house down), and then we also tried using warm air (breath) versus having a chilled balloon. It's not much, but we were more concerned with how warm air works versus cold air (rising/sinking, etc).

It sounds like everything went really well for you this week :) Thank you for sharing!

Daisy said...

Have you done a review of Classical Writing? I'm really interested in hearing more about it. Daughter is a decent writer but I'm trying to figure out something that will work for the long haul. I'm doing Write with the Best and my own supplementation right now.

So far so good with AAS. I've realized already that there were a few phonograms that my 7yo hadn't mastered, and he needs a lot of practice with breaking down sounds. He reads at about 4th grade level but can't spell to save his life.

Mandy in TN said...

What a great curriculum package!

Unknown said...

Sounds like a very productive week- we are yet to start back for the year.

Kash said...

Daisy, I haven't done a review - I should, but I'll probably wait until we're farther into it (we just finished week four). I really need to write up a review for Writing Tales since we've used both levels of it. Ack!

EG has a lot of difficulty with spelling but AAS was able to help her quite a bit. I could easily continue teaching her spelling through one curriculum or another through twelfth grade - which I won't - so at some point I have to decide what is "good enough," I suppose.

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