Weekly Report: Week Five (days 019-023)

Since we're five weeks into the school year, I asked EG what her favorite thing about school this year was. She told me she "liked all of it." Not exactly the kind of specific answer I was looking for, so I asked a second question – what was her least favorite thing about school this year? She still couldn't pinpoint an answer. I assume that means that the schoolyear is going well.

EG finished up Grammar Voyage this week, and we read two chapters in A World of Poetry. She read Mara, Daughter of the Nile and the second Alanna book, plus she's still in the middle of The Yearling and continues to pick up The Complete Poems of Christina G. Rossetti and read a few poems at night or other times. This list of books is current as of our Thursday evening ride home from Math Olympiad, so who knows what she's reading by now. :)

EG's overall performance on the final three exercises for chapter three of Latin Prep was good. She did all of the translating from Latin to English 100% correct! She started on chapter four and also began learning the vocabulary from chapter five; I like for her to have mastered the vocabulary before she starts declining, conjugating, or otherwise manipulating it.

Four lessons of Life of Fred & one chapter in Real World Algebra this week, plus she did drill each day. Her one request was that rather than doing RWA once a week, I save it and schedule it for her between chapters of Fred. Easy enough.

In science, she's ploughing through the third unit of PLATO life science. If you've seen this, you'll understand my use of the word "ploughing." It's the unit with the most different segments, and each one covers an entire kingdom – plantae, fungi, you get the idea. She finished the worksheets from the second unit, and read another chapter in Science Matters.

History is going well. So far, I seem to have managed in the plans to strike a balance between covering the material and practicing skills versus overwhelming her with moremoremore books, content, and so forth. She's officially finished with ancient Egypt (that "officially" is important, since she's taken the books to her room; Egypt is a love all the time for her), and read this week about the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Mesopotamia.

Master's Academy resumed this week! EG's piano lesson is now at MAFA in the mornings, along with a public speaking course. She has a thirty minute "study hall" between piano and public speaking, and then a forty-five minute lunch period before the afternoon MAFA program begins. She also finished the first section of Art, and started using The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music History (despite her dislike of the name) for music appreciation. This week's listening selection was Ankh: The Sound Of Ancient Egypt.

Together, the kids & I listened to the Classics for Kids segments on Telemann.

FB also had a good week. He was delighted to go back to Master's Academy, and didn't understand why he had to wait until the afternoon when Sissy got to go early! He has such a great time there and loves his teachers.

We covered three lessons in OPGTR and reviewed, for what feels like millionth time, ank-ink-onk-unk. Agh! He also completed a lesson in ETC and was happy that it moved on to the short /i/ sound. We also officially moved into the lowercase letter portion of his handwriting book.

He did five lessons in FLL and week five's work in WWE 1. Books read included Something Special for Me, Hana in the Time of the Tulips, Click, Clack, Moo, Puff the Magic Dragon, all library books he currently has checked out, The Golden Sandal, four stories in Tales from Ancient Egypt, and Casting the Gods Adrift. He also read several books to me this week.

In history, we read about Sargon and his empire. After doing the narration, coloring page, and mapwork, we also read two pages from UBWH, and You Wouldn't Want to Be A Sumerian Slave. For science, we re-read All the Colors of the Rainbow and completed another experiment from his Colors Little Lab.

In math, we finished four lessons, and he's working on adding tens. He loves to play Go to the Dump and Old Main. His overall grasp of math seems excellent, so I hope that continues to be the case.