Weekly Report -- Nov. 21

This is our 13th weekly report, which means we're a quarter of the way through the year. Huh. Think of that. If we were the sort to measure our school by quarters, this would be significant. If I were the sort of homeschool mom who laid out a calendar for the year I might've even scheduled a break next week simply because it was the end of the quarter.

In reality, though, we are ready for a break simply because Thanksgiving is next week, and we have lots of non-school stuff to get done -- the kids have a major dance competition, a choir concert, and a piano recital in the next couple of weeks.

So, what did we do for our final week before taking a break?

Thalia has started working on factoring quadratic equations in Life of Fred Algebra 1. She thinks it's fun, but does get a little bogged down in the logic of what the significance of the numerical answer is -- sort of loses herself in the game of it all and forgets why she's playing the game. I've helped her with a few, and was interested to realize that I could pick this up and do it without any sort of review.

I suggested she work to a logical stopping place in the book, considering that she has until next Tuesday to reach that point.

She's wound up her Spanish for Children and Latin for Children studies. She's been working on making Spanish flashcards, having decided that Spanish for Children doesn't give enough vocabulary review within the book itself. And we discussed problems with the answer key -- she finds it annoying when they trade around English words for the Spanish. For example, are "lovely" and "beautiful" truly interchangeable as translations? Is this some subtlety that the authors are trying to get across? Or are they just blowing it? We used analogies to Latin, in which no book we've used (Prima Latina, Latina Christiana, Latin for Children, Henle) explained to us that forest is always plural (silvis),and the singular of silva is actually more along the lines of bush (I found this out from a random forum post at TWTM I happened to read).

We talked about getting some more done in science and Lightning Lit in the next few days, just to sort of get those things out of the way.

AnnaBeth did a review sheet (lesson 18) in RightStart D on Wednesday, and we decided that was a good place to stop for the week. This part of the book is focussed on fractions -- fractions of money, of time, of liquid measures, of musical notes. Practical and easy math.

In First Language Lessons she composed, copied, and mailed a letter. This mirrored the type of work in Writing With Ease so well (composition! copywork!) that we skipped the WWE lessons this week as being redundant.

She's coming down to the end of Ecoutez and Parlez, learning about words used to describe school. And in Minimus she's been working on the Latin version of direct objects.

Science for AnnaBeth took place at our Scout meeting, although it was actually a Try-It she had already earned at home.

We haven't done as much reading aloud this week. We'll continue Little Farm in the Ozarks, D'Aulaires' Norse Myths, Heidi, and The Phoenix and the Carpet as long as it takes to get them done. Even if we're on a so-called break the read alouds continue.