Weekly Report: Week Thirteen (days 061-065)

This has been an incredibly busy week. In addition to all of our usual activities, we went to a rally for one of Georgia's gubernatorial candidates on Wednesday morning, and I have been busy making lists, getting ready, and talking Smrt Mama off her ledge, all with regards to our Big Event on Sunday.

FB learned about to, too, and two this week, as well as the hard and soft sounds of 'c.' He's zooming through Book 2 of Explode the Code, and I'm continuing to use EG's AAS phonogram cards with him. The combination of all these things seems to be helping. Of course, nothing can provide the impetus to want to synthesize it into "reading," which is in fact the ingredient that I suspect is lacking. Oh, he wants to read, in a half-hearted sort of way. Not in a "Yes! I want to read!" way, though.

In First Language Lessons, we've at last left behind nouns and moved to pronouns. FB finished week fourteen in Writing With Ease, and in Spelling Workout A, he moved into the first lesson with an actual list of words to spell. Handwriting this week was practice with lowercase 'i' and 'e.'

FB's literature this week ranged widely. Australia, Giggle, Giggle, Quack, Perfect the Pig, Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo, Stranger in the Woods, If You Give A Pig A Party, Lost in the Woods, Guess How Much I Love You, Love You Forever, Caps for Sale, All Things Bright and Beautiful, Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See, The Runaway Bunny, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches.

FB continues to tear through Miquon Orange. My original plan was to start Right Start B next week, but due to Extreme Busyness this weekend on my part, and therefore lack of time to even pull the B materials out, I think I'll let FB have one more week with just Miquon before we start combining the two.

In history this week, we talked about the Phoenicians. There's not a whole lot of extra stuff to do with regards to the Phoenicians; the one book recommended in the AG isn't carried by our library system, and it's nearly $30 on amazon. I can't even get Borders or Barnes & Noble to order it so I could get a teacher discount – ouch. So no supplemental reading.

FB had a good time at Master's Academy. They're teaching them to play recorder, except he calls it flute! :) We listened to the Classics for Kids episodes on Vivaldi, and FB moved to the "every other one" schedule for level one of IEW's poetry memorization program. At this point, I don't plan to start level two with him before March or April – just let him have plenty of time for the level one poems to soak in, and also give him plenty of time for our other memory work. This week was the last week of autumn homeschool soccer, which FB thoroughly enjoyed, and the first week of the new session of his oceanography class. Last week was the first week of gymnastics for this session (we skipped the first autumn session), which he is still enjoying. He's eager to turn six, though, and move into the sex-segregated classes where they learn about the various apparati.


EG had a good week. She finished five lessons in Advanced Algebra, plus read through some of Real World Algebra. She's getting very close to beating her drill times, but not quite yet. Language arts this week was four sentences in Practice Voyage, a lesson in Caesar's English II, and chapter four in Essay Voyage. She didn't have a formal literature assignment this week, but read through two or three books in her spare time.

This is the last week of her 'break' from PLATO; she read The Double Helix, watched two lectures from The Teaching Company's Joy of Science, and read chapter ten in Science Matters. Next week, she'll dive into PLATO Earth & Space Science. History this week was more on the Greeks; she read a biography of Alexander the Great (one of the Sterling Point books, by John Gunther) and wrote her summary about slavery in ancient Greece.

EG took a week to do a lot of review for Latin, and wrote a couple of exercises that we had previously done orally. She studied four pages in Art and wrote down dates on her timeline from chapter fourteen in The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music History. Her listening selection this week was Turath. Band is this afternoon, where she's going to attempt to get her hands on a list of the second semester pass-offs; she passed all the songs for first semester last week! Trumpet and piano are both going very well for her.

This was obviously her last week of homeschool soccer for the autumn, too. She also had a lot of fun doing it, and is looking forward to the spring. The next session of her history of science class began. Master's Academy continues to go well, including her public speaking course in the mornings before Master's Academy starts. Finally, she seems to love logic and her online class; they're making speedy progress through the book and she's eager to do her assignments early in the week so she can participate in the online discussions the rest of the week, before Friday's webinar.


I discovered that part of PC's reluctance to be fully potty-trained is that she really likes the Target training pants I've been buying. They have a cat on them, you see, and she thought I just wouldn't let her keep wearing them if she were actually fully potty-trained. Bizarre child.

And now I hear my children coming back up the stairs to, horror of horrors, finish the schooldays. Don't they know I wanted a longer session of peace and quiet? ;)