Weekly Report 10/30/09

A busy week here.

Read alouds include Little Pilgrim's Progress, in which we have just discovered that Hopeful is portrayed as a boy in this remake (Thalia: "Hopeful's supposed to be a girl." Me: "I know, but since Christian is a little boy maybe the author didn't think he should have a girl as a little friend." Thalia (whose best friend when she was around 4-5 years old was a boy):"Boys can be friends with girls -- that's just dumb." Me: "Well, duh, they've written the book to be almost entirely about BOYS -- girls aren't supposed to be anything in this world, so get over it." ). I'm not sure why we're continuing this book, except someone innocently gave it to us. AnnaBeth keeps proclaiming that she likes the story in the original, so maybe we'll ditch this and go back to the original.

We also started reading LInnets and Valerians, which Melissa Wiley had mentioned in her blog a while back. I'm such a Melissa Wiley groupie that I immediately requested it at the library. And I got so caught up in the book when I started reading it aloud to the kids that I read the entire thing to myself (Sustained Silent Reading!) over the course of the next couple of days. Wow -- great book! And it has a touch of magic that's just perfect for Halloween.

In Story of the World we've managed to unite Italy into a nation, and read a book about Giuseppe Verdi, followed by finding some clips from Aida on YouTube. Someday we may get bonus points from Mrs. Piano Teacher for this.

In math, I discovered thatDr. Callahan has tests for Jacobs Algebra -- they're in the Teacher's Guide pdf that's linked on the page. So Thalia took the test for chapters 1-3, although she's currently working on chapter 5.

And AnnaBeth is drawing near the end of RightStart D, looking at congruent shapes, making boxes, pondering perimeter, area and volume.

Thalia has completed the first full writing assignment of Jump In Writing. She did quite well with it. It was an opinion piece, and I think she enjoyed writing it.

And AnnaBeth learned the difference between a direct object and predicate nominative this week in First Language Lessons 4. One lessons mixed up the DOs and PNs, starting sentences along the lines of Juliet mashed a banana, and Juliet is a chef, then moving to Juliet mashed a chef, and Juliet is a banana -- so unexpected that AnnaBeth burst into laughter, and could barely finish the lesson. From this point on we will always be able to mention banana vs. chef to help AnnaBeth think about the difference between a direct object and a predicate nominative -- I doubt she'll ever forget that lesson. Nor will I since that's the sort of moment you want to bottle up and treasure all through the homeschool journey -- seeing your child laugh so hard while learning something new, it's priceless, you know?

Umm, let's see, what else ... Thalia is still enjoying her science co-op class. She's supposed to give a semester presentation of some sort. The teacher had several suggestions on presentations about plate tectonics. Thalia was reading through the list in the car, and for some reason some suggestions reminded me of Girl Scout-type things, so I asked if she could maybe do an Interpretive Dance (we have a long-time joke about the New Way to Earn Interest Project Badges, which is heavy on the touchy-feely [check out the "Reflect" portion -- it makes my eyeballs roll back into my head every time I read it], and often delight in pointing out when people are descending into Girl-Scout-speak, which often leads to asking "Could we do an Interpretive Dance about our feelings on this subject?"). Can't you see it? She could get a group together, with some of the kids being the tectonic plates, and one of them being a volcano. She'd have to film it, of course, since she couldn't drag all those people into class. But, alas, I think she's planning on doing something NORMAL like writing a report on the formation of the Hawaiian Islands.

The kids continue to enjoy the drama class that they're taking. While discussing Verdi and music and Italy AnnaBeth commented that improvisational theatre groups began in Italy. Really? I had no clue. Apparently she picked this up during drama class. Heck, I thought they were just playing Zip Zap Zoom every week.

Today we'll finish up bits and pieces, leaving the weekend free for that all-important Halloween celebrations.