Weekly Report: Week Eight (days 036 to 040)

I knew this week would be busy; all of our possible regular activities, plus the monthly homeschool ice skating day on Tuesday. We worked a little ahead on Sunday afternoon as well as Monday evening after Master's Academy, with the end result that we're almost finished with the week on Thursday. Oops?

This week, FB worked on more digraphs in Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, completed a lesson in Explode the Code, and read four Bob books to me. He also read a review lesson out of McGuffey's Primer. Elsewhere in the language arts arena, he did week nine of Writing With Ease Level One, which was based on Charlotte's Web. I think that may be his next read-aloud, because he was very interested in the story. He also did four lessons in First Language Lessons, including beginning to memorize the "Days of the Week" poem, and he continues to progress through his handwriting book. I'm really happy with our language arts line-up, and I figured out a different way to explain digraphs to him that seems to be making a big difference. He's asking about adding spelling, so it may be about time to pull out Spelling Workout A.

Amongst the books that we read to FB this week were: Once A Mouse..., The Story About Ping, One Grain of Rice, North America, Degas and the Little Dancer, and Koko's Kitten.

Most of FB's math work this week was about the clock and naming the o'clocks. He did really well with it. We still have to do one lesson tomorrow, about halves. I don't anticipate any problems there; he's had at least one sibling his entire life, so he's had a lot of practice in making anything split into halves!

This week was history-heavy, as we covered both ancient India and ancient China. EG read D is for Doufu to him, and he also listened to the chapter about China in Ancient Agriculture.

FB had another great week at Master's Academy, and we listened to the Classics for Kids podcasts about Tchaikovsky 's Romeo & Juliet Fantasy Overture. One of the podcasts was about various stage and screen adaptations of the play, and I was gratified that they began with the Baz Luhrman version. The kids looked at me strangely – oh well.

Spousal Unit finished reading The Golden Goblet to all of the children.

EG had a good week as well. She finished her assignment from chapter one of Essay Voyage with a paragraph about the platypus that she then joyfully rearranged into an unorganized version of itself; successfully completed sentences nine through thirteen in Practice Voyage; and had a lot of fun with lesson two of Caesar's English II, including when we talked about the awesome oxymoron that is "vivacious hatred." What's not to love about a phrase like that? She read Tales from India for her assigned reading, and finished Summerland during her free reading time.

In math, EG covered graphing and slope, and beat both levels of drill, one of which was new this week. The other level had been new last week. I'm really seeing a difference in her computational speed this year and I have to attribute at least part of it to her daily use of the Flashmaster. I love that little machine!

EG finished up the unit of PLATO Life Science that covered genetics and heredity, including the worksheets, and moved on to the unit "Organisms and Their Environment." She also read Eyewitness Whale and started reading through Ocean.

In history, EG covered ancient India and, more generally, ancient south asia. She wrote her summary on the Vedas; I learned things I didn't know! She read part of The Ancient South Asian World and all of Eyewitness India.

EG seems to be enjoying her logic class. It's a good mix of activities to learn the material, at least so far. The weekly webinar is tomorrow. She also continues to progress through chapter four of Latin Prep 1. I've noticed she seems to enjoy working with various verb tenses and conjugations much more than she like declining nouns. I'm not sure that I blame her.

Music appreciation this week included finishing up The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, listening to the accompanying CD again, and also listening to Music from Ancient Rome. For art appreciation, she read about Egyptian art in Art and then read Art in Ancient Egypt. No art skills lesson this week, but EG did have both piano and trumpet lessons. It's her last week in her current piano books, and tomorrow is her first testing day for band; her trumpet instructor thinks she'll be able to pass off a decent number of songs right away. Yay! The fewer weeks we have to go early for testing, the happier I will be!

Purple Child is, for some reason, still awake at 10 pm. I've also been told by EG & FB that I need to change her blog moniker to The Carnivore.