Weekly Report: Week Three (days 009-013)

Eclectic Girl
Language Arts: She read Tales of Ancient Egypt and re-read two chapters of Paragraph Town. Together, we read the first chapter of A World of Poetry and finished up Part One in Grammar Voyage, then moved along and wrapped up Part Two as well. She's also listening to her father read The Golden Goblet to both her & FB in the evenings. We did a bit of phonogram review (I really need to order All About Spelling 6, but neither she nor I are eager to return to that subject.), and she's got the Egyptian gods & goddesses well-memorized, as well poem fourteen, level two from IEW's poetry memorization program. She also reviews the words and stems from Caesar's English I on an alternating basis.

Mathematics: EG finished four lessons in LoF Advanced Algebra, did chapter one from Real World Algebra (Zaccaro), and beat both levels of drill this week! I think we're going to try doing four days of LoF and one day of Zaccaro for awhile. She's also doing Flashmaster daily, to get her speed up to, well, speed, and most evenings, she works in AoPS's Introduction to Number Theory, more or less for fun. Math club/Math Olympiad started this week, too, and she reported that she learned a new type of diagram (?). Sounds good to me.

Science: EG has nearly finished the first unit of PLATO Life Science, which consists of five different segments. She's completed a worksheet for two of those segments and done well. She also read the first chapter of CPO Life Science and did the section reviews. I don't know that I'll have her read in the CPO text weekly, but it made a nice diversion this week. She's reviewing the five senses for memory work. She also read Eyewitness Skeleton, and read chapter three in Science Matters. Her History of Science class (through a local homeschool enrichment program) started this past week, and I think it will be a good fit for her.

History: Continuing her study of Ancient Egypt, EG wrote her summary this week on mummification and burial. She read Macaulay's Pyramid, as well as reading in their entirety Eyewitness Mummy and The Ancient Egyptian World. She's been doing outlining easily, which I had suspected. She has memorized periods of early history, and is working on memorizing the periods of Egyptian history. She's also reviewing the four oceans, since I never formally required her to memorize them in the past.

Latin: EG is continuing to work through chapter 3 in Latin Prep, and reviews the vocabulary for chapters 1-4 daily. This week, she finished exercises 3.4 through 3.8 in the textbook, and exercises 3.7 through 3.10 in the workbook. In other ancient languages news, she's learning the Greek Alphabet Song for memory work.

Fine Arts: Orientation for Master's Academy was on Monday. EG was pleased to see her friends again and learn that she was in the Sapphire class this year. On Tuesday, she had both her piano lesson and trumpet lesson. For art appreciation this week, she read about Media Techniques, and for music appreciation, she learned about strings and woodwinds.

Overall, an excellent week! No new activities begin next week, but the following week, Master's Academy will begin, which will be a long day for EG this year - her piano lesson there, thirty minutes of "study hall," public speaking class, then lunch followed by the regular Master's Academy program. Whew!


Fabulous Boy
Language Arts: FB still shows some resistance about this reading thing. He can clearly do the work, but just doesn't seem to care that much about it. Despite that, we had a good week. He finished five lessons in FLL, and week three in WWE. He worked on his handwriting each day, and finished four lessons in OPGTR plus four pages in Explode the Code book one. Since I have ETC, and since he likes workbooks and writing, I've decided to go ahead and add it to the mix. We read lots of books this week - Arrow to the Sun, Katie Meets the Impressionists, Tigers and Sails and ABC Tales, The Peace Book, A Chair for My Mother, The Egyptian News, It's About Time, Mummy Math, several stories from Egyptian Myths, plus chapters from Tales from Ancient Egypt. As mentioned above, he and EG are both listening to their dad read The Golden Goblet in the evenings. He's nearly mastered poems eleven and twelve, level one, from IEW's poetry program. He's also working on his telephone number and the Egyptian gods and goddesses. Finally, he read me a book today – My Pal Al, which we had checked out of the library.

Mathematics: Seven lessons in Right Start A this week, and he's nearly finished memorizing the definitions of parallel and perpendicular, at least as far as they apply to lines.

History: This week, we read chapter 3 in SOTW 1, which is about the first writing. FB did the mapwork and coloring page, and gave me an oral narration. In the car, we've been listening to Jim Weiss's Egyptian Treasures. He also chose three pages from Life in Ancient Egypt to color. He's nearly mastered the periods of early history and has the seven continents down cold.

Science: Tuesday is our science experiment day, and this Tuesday was fantastically busy, so no science experiments got finished this week. We kept talking about color, though, as FB works to finish mastering the colors of the rainbow for memory work. We read All the Colors of the Rainbow and played with a prism for awhile. He also started his class at the same place as EG's history of science class - Oceanography.

Fine Arts: FB's orientation for Master's Academy was also on Monday, of course, but his did not go so smoothly, at least at first. He was initially placed in the same class as last year – Amber – while all of his friends had moved to Gold. Needless to say, he was crushed when he went to sit down and they were all in a different row. As I waited for the orientation to start, I plotted about how I was going to approach the problem. Luckily, one of the teachers came over and asked if I'd like to have FB moved up with his friends in Gold. Yes! Please! Problem solved, thankfully. :) We also listened to Classics for Kids podcasts about Scott Joplin.

FB is both excited that he does schoolwork now, and I think a bit sad that he can't goof off ALL day long any more. He's adjusting well, though, and I still hold out hope that his literacy will take off like I know it can. (No, I don't understand how someone can not really care about reading... it's totally outside my paradigm!)

Purple Child
PC cannot decide if it's worth the effort to talk or not. We often hear a word once or twice, and then not again for at least a few weeks. Some of her favorites, though, are directions. "Blow!" when EG is practicing trumpet; "Go!" when I am driving and there is a red light. You get the picture.

Me!
I'm still adjusting to teaching two students. It's different on so many levels. EG still needs me somewhat, but not as intensely, and hasn't for years at this point. FB needs more hand-holding and direct teaching than EG ever did, in a lot of ways. On the other hand, his fine motor skills are more developed than hers were at a comparable age, so with the addition of ETC, I should be able to assign him a page and go to teach EG without him automatically getting into mischief. Yes, their desks are only five feet apart. He'd still get into mischief.

I'm surprising the kids with a trip to Chuck E. Cheese this afternoon after EG's vision therapy. Shh!