Friday, March 6, 2009

Weekly Report -- March 6

It's currently 81F, and we've ditched the idea of going ice skating this afternoon because we're too busy opening all of the windows, pumping up bike tires, and trying to find our flip-flops.

Also, the idea of a long, detailed report on school this week? It's been swept away in a rush of spring fever.

So, here's the short version:

Math

AnnaBeth continues to work on multiplication tables and on multi-digit subtraction. RightStart D continues to go on and on about check numbers. I continue to find them pointless.

Thalia continues to watch the Teaching Company Algebra DVDs and do the accompanying workbook problems. Earlier this week I sat down to watch the DVD with her and fell asleep on the couch; this should give you some idea of how gripping these DVDs are. KathyJo emailed a question about Algebra, causing me to brood about what we're doing (it doesn't take much to get me started brooding about curriculum), and I'm ready to chuck the whole thing out the window and try Jacob's.

Writing

Thalia finished up her Classical Writing Homer assignment earlier in the week, and we were going to plunge into the next one, moving along at 2 lessons per 3 weeks. Except somehow we got sidetracked -- something about delivering Girl Scout cookies or doing an Irish Dance show or talking to people about re-doing the kitchen, most likely.

AnnaBeth continued to do Writing With Ease-style assignments using Story of the Greeks and Famous Men of Greece. I continue to feel smug about bundling history and writing together. Thalia listens to the read alouds from these books, by the way, and is included in our discussions.

Grammar

Thalia is learning about subordinate clauses in Analytical Grammar Season 2.

Latin

Thalia worked on 3rd declension nouns, and infinitives of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd conjugations.

AnnaBeth continued to practice 1st declension.

Science

AnnaBeth read about hair. Thalia read about how to make graphs, which is exactly what she was learning last week in math, except in math it was using a graphing calculator.

Other Stuff

AnnaBeth is reading the first Harry Potter book. She's also been assigned a part in the musical her choir is doing this spring.

Thalia read all of the Artemis Fowl books, and learned that Eoin is pronounced Owen.

We went to Scouts. And piano.

We read aloud from Children of the New Forest (I hope to figure out Roundheads vs. not-Roundheads by the end of the book) and Half Magic. We're reading Half Magic because the author, Edward Eager, liked reading E. Nesbit and we just finished reading the Nesbit's Psammead trilogy, which we started reading because there was an excerpt from the first volume in Writing With Ease -- that's about 3 months of read alouds prompted by a few paragraphs in Writing With Ease. And that's why we don't use the WWE workbooks, folks -- we'd have to read every book of every series that's used as an example in the workbook, not to mention the spinoffs. Frightening to think about.

And now I need to go look for popsicles in the freezer.

3 comments:

Kristine said...

Enjoy the warm weather, we had it yesterday & it was great! :-)

Karen said...

Funny about the Half Magic - we started reading E.Nesbit books because they were mentioned in the Eager books which are some my dd8's favorite books. And started reading the Marguerite Henry because they are mentioned in the WWE workbooks (when we still used them).

Enjoy your warm weather. We had 70's not 80's, but it is a wonderful change from winter.

Staci Eastin said...

You realize, that I broke down and bought Life of Fred thanks to you, and I have a 1962 Dolciani on its way thanks to all the chatter on TWTM boards. Oh, and since I just remembered that my oldest child is dyslexic (don't ask), I've been glancing at Math U See for the first time EVER (and that's saying something, because I've looked at almost everything).

If you start using Jacobs, I'm going to go broke.