Weekly Report 4/30/10

Another 2 weeks have flown by since the last so-called Weekly Report. So, what have we accomplished homeschool-wise?

Thalia was sick last week, and mostly sat on the couch reading War of the Worlds. We had some decent discussions about the book.

Now she's back in the swing of doing what's left to do, bearing in mind that she recently finished all of Analytical Grammar, and the science co-op she was in has finished for this school year.

She's working on a report for Jump In writing program, which involved a trip to the library to find books about cats. We have oodles of books about cats, but she decided she needed different ones, new ones, somehow better ones. And she's been going through the books, announcing interesting facts like the most popular cat names, and top reasons cats are better than dogs. I'm not sure where she's going with this.

While she was sick she put off Jacob's Algebra, having discovered that doing math with half of a brain is often detrimental to her scores. She just finished up Chapter 12, Square Roots, which she did well at in spite of claiming she hates them. Now she's entered the world of quadratic equations.

RANDOM TIP: We were talking about factoring since AnnaBeth has been doing factoring in her math. And Thalia commented that Life of Fred gave a trick for factoring thatJacob's didn't mention. Not that I remember what the trick was.

Also, she's got the lead in a murder mystery, and was supposed to have her part memorized. Alas, she's behind on that.

Mango Spanish continues. She's been talking about taking a Spanish Immersion class this summer.

AnnaBeth is chugging along in Writing With Ease 3; she just finished week 10, which had selections from Farmer Boy, a book we remember well. We're finishing up First Language Lessons in bits and pieces, mostly doing it on days we don't feel terribly rushed by having to run out of the house for Improv class, Scouts, musical theatre, etc. etc. etc. (the other day she asked why it always seems like we're so busy, to which the answer is, "Because you've signed up for so many things.").

In RightStart E she's finished up factoring and prime numbers, and has moved into something called multivides. Having gone through this book once before I'm now more discerning about what's important; the multivides are NOT going to be a huge emphasis this time around. We already threw out the check numbers, since the 3s and 9s are pretty much the only ones of value that I can see.

We've finished up Time Cat as a read aloud, and have moved on to Nory Ryan's Song. In history we've been talking about Young Turks. Honestly, I never knew what the phrase "Young Turks" meant, other than as a Rod Stewart song. Sort of sums up the quality of my public school education.

Those were the highlights for our past couple of weeks. The kids want to finish up various studies, so we'll keep on with our schooling for several more weeks into the summer.