Weekly Report: Week ONE! (days 001-005)

I did it! I survived my first week with two students! ;)


Fabulous Boy had a great first week of kindergarten! He finished eight lessons in Right Start A, since I realized he was quite capable of moving faster than the pace written. That makes sense, as originally I had thought we'd do all of Right Start A during his pre-kindergarten year. His math memory work for now is limited, but we're starting to work on parallel versus perpendicular.

In history, FB listened to both sections of chapter one. He answered the review questions and gave an oral narration for the first section, and then I wrote his narration for the second section. He also did the mapwork and the coloring page from the activity guide. Some of his books this week were based on his history work, as well - The First Dog, One Small Blue Bead, and You Wouldn't Want to Be a Mammoth Hunter. He's working on memorizing the seven continents as well as the periods of early history.

Other books we read together this week included My Visit to the Dinosaurs, Amazing World of Dinosaurs, Oil Spill!, Eat Healthy Feel Great, and Suzette and the Puppy. He also read three Bob books to me.

FB has a lot of language arts work! He covered five lessons in OPGTR, and we started on both FFL and WWE this week, too. He did the first four lessons from FLL and the first week plus the first day of the second week in WWE. He also started his new handwriting book, My Printing Book. He reviewed "Frog Jump Capitals," as well as some copywork. He's memorized the first ten poems of Level 1 of IEW's poetry memorization program, and I'm also making sure he knows a few other essentials in their correct order - the seasons, the days of the week, the numbers of our home telephone number. ;)

FB did a few science experiments on Sunday from his Stepping Into Science kit, so I didn't worry about fitting one in during this first week. He's memorizing the colors of the rainbow in order, so I may pull out the "Colors" Little Lab for this coming week!

My "returning student" had a good first week, also!

EG started on Life of Fred: Advanced Algebra, completing the first five lessons, which means she's finished all of the material in Chapter One, and just has a few more Cities to work. She also worked through a page of drill each day (levels eighteen and thirty-six, alternating), and is working on memorizing various formulae for finding perimeter.

I had purposely reserved some of the Town-level materials for review after the summer, so EG completed Lesson 20 from Paragraph Town and ten sentences in Practice Town. She also began Grammar Voyage! Her memory work here consists of reviewing stems & words from Caesar's English I, plus various lists of parts of speech. She also continues to memorize poetry using IEW's poetry memorization program, and is currently mastering poem fourteen of level two. Finally, this week she added learning the Egyptian gods and goddesses and their domains. She is reading Mythology as an assigned book, and during her free reading time finished Alanna: The First Adventure and began My Side of the Mountain. Confession: I let her count an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series instead of free reading one evening.

In history, EG covered the first three or four double-page spreads in History: The Definitive Visual Guide. She wrote summaries about "Marriage & Family Life in Mesopotamia" as well as "The Pyramids of Egypt," and used some of her secondary resources in those summaries. She has taken to one point outlining like a duck to water, so far, and finished two outlines in history, as well. She also watched lecture one from The Teaching Company's high school world history course.

The first chapter of Science Matters was assigned, and she wrote a brief summary of the reasons to have scientific literacy. She'll watch the corresponding lectures of the Teaching Company's Joy of Science course as time allows. She also began work on her PLATO Life Science course, finishing two... sections? I guess they are sections - and starting on a third.

In Latin Prep, EG read about the dative and did four workbook exercises in addition to the textbook exercises. This is where she has to begin putting together the different parts she's been mastering, but she's doing well with it, so far.

She read two sections about "Looking At Art" and took notes on them for art appreciation, and began reading and listening to the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra for music appreciation. She hasn't yet started her drawing skills. She did get a new mouthpiece for her trumpet this week, as the old mouthpiece (which came with the trumpet) was apparently much too large. Immediately she was able to go higher, note-wise, so we expect some rapid improvement over the next few weeks. We also got her next band book and her next level of books in piano, though she won't need either one for a few more weeks.

EG's logic class doesn't begin until September 3, so no logic this week. After these first two weeks, I will probably assign a Mind Bender or two, just to get that logic side of her brain clicking even more.

PC is in the midst of that fun language explosion. Her favorite book right now is Jamberry, and FB has taken it upon himself to teach her to sing the alphabet. I expect EG to attempt to teach her nursery rhymes and the multiplication tables any day now!

The plan was to take some pictures, but prep for next week look longer than I expected, so that will have to wait until tomorrow or Sunday!