Weekly Report -- Oct. 24

Science

This week AnnaBeth studied the ear. What we did: she read about it and made a little cut out model from a Scholastic book. That's all. Sigh. Most books have some interesting things to do regarding the ear, but we haven't gotten around to it. Maybe later today....

Thalia continues to answer every question and do every experiment in Prentice Hall Science Explorers. She wants the answer key so she can check her answers -- I need to figure out where to get that. She is disturbed by the inaccuracies of the maps in the book.

Also, she made Mt. Cardboard to illustrate the concept of contour lines:



Latin

AnnaBeth is learning about bathing customs in Minimus. I was surprised to discover what a font of knowledge Thalia is regarding Roman toilets. It was one of several occasions this week where I found myself sitting back and saying, "Where did you learn that?" Sort of reinforces the notion that I'm not so much teaching them stuff as I am facilitating their learning.

Thalia is in Chapter 20 of Latin for Children B -- 3rd declension. I hope she's learned it better than I did in Henle a couple of weeks ago. I don't think LfC requires you to learn all of those pesky rules about masculine = ERROR, feminine = SOX, and neuter = LANCET, etc. etc. My Henle grammar automatically falls open to that page now (actually, it's all the freaking exceptions -- crivens, it's as bad as English language spelling rules).

As for me, I once again determined that I would study Henle 30 minutes per day for at least 5 days this week. After 3 days I got distracted, so I didn't follow through. Also, I had planned to study last night during dance class -- honest. Except dance class was cancelled, so it's not really my fault.(Okay, I'd also wanted to watch House reruns on Hulu while the kids were at dance, but at least I considered studying Latin.)

Other Languages

French -- AnnaBeth is glad to be finished with the family unit of Ecoutez-Parlez, which she apparently hated. Now she's learning animals. She keeps changing the words of the sentences to reflect her personal preferences about various animals, refusing to say she doesn't like cats, etc.

Spanish -- Thalia has learned to ask Donde esta ...? and De quien es? -- handy phrases around the house, as she's constantly loosing track of stuff.

English -- AnnaBeth continues to practice narration, copywork, and dictation using models from Five Children and It, and suggestions from Writing With Ease. I love this program.

She also works in First Language Lessons. This week we've looked at adverbs that tell to what extent. We also discussed use of nominative pronouns in the predicate -- not a big deal since I'm one of those people who has a nerdy tendency to say "it is I" rather than "it is me". Really, sometimes I find myself hesitating when I talk or write forum posts/blog posts because I realize that it sounds so uppity to use the predicate nominative, and then I'm all flaked out about which to use -- what I know is right? what people want to hear? Feel free to explore the deep psychological meaning of that. In the meantime, AnnaBeth is also memorizing the first stanza of Poe's The Bells, which happens to be a poem I really like. If you don't know it, go find a copy and read it aloud.

Thalia is still working on Alice in Wonderland in Lightning Lit 7. I suggested that she might want to do another review week in Analytical Grammar. She apparently didn't feel the need. It's hard to push her on that, since she's so much better than I at grammar.

Math

AnnaBeth has started RightStart D. This means we've entered the portion of the program that I've done before. And suddenly I hate the entire program and want to throw it out and do something else. It seemed so exciting when I went through RightStart D with Thalia; it's just dull to go through it again with AnnaBeth, particularly having done B and C.

We were discussing her math trajectory -- that she only has Level E, then Geometry, then she's finished with RightStart and can begin pre-Algebra. She asked it she could then start college once she's done Algebra. Thalia explained that, no, she'd still need Geometry, Trig, more Algebra ... then burst out with, "and I'm doing them ALL with Life of Fred!" So, a ringing endorsement for Life of Fred from Thalia.

And what is she doing this week in Algebra? Graphing equations. She loves graphing. Life is good.

Read Alouds

Understood Betsy is DONE. I love that book. AnnaBeth loves that book. Maybe we'll read it again. Oh, I know -- maybe we'll use it for models for Writing With Ease!

And we're about to finish Little House on Rocky Ridge. We should finish it up today.

Overall, though, I doubt much schoolwork will be done today. Thalia is leaving on a camping trip, and needs to pack. We also need to figure out if any of the long underwear in the house fits her, as it's cold and wet and generally not the sort of weather that makes you think, "hey, let's go camping!" (then again, I'm wimpy about such things -- I'm sure there are people who prefer camping in crappy weather). Anyway, I feel like our week has pretty much wound down. I think it's been one of our more productive weeks for autumn 2008.