Homeschool Update 9/24/11

- New curriculum rundown:

Ananbeth has started Key to Decimals.  She's starting with book 1 because, hey, why not -- it's easy peasy, and if there happens to be some super-simple concept that she doesn't know (and didn't even realize she didn't know) she'll catch it.  I'm not grading it at this point.  She thinks it's great fun.

She's also started Pandia Press Middle Ages Level 2.  So far she thinks it's more fun and interesting than not.  She enjoyed researching various saints, she zipped through all of A Door in the Wall in a couple of gloomy, rainy days, she hasn't been so thrilled with researching the various monastic orders (although I think that might be because she insists on looking for long, dull articles about them -- if I were in charge I'd look in a children's Catholic resource to find something short and to the point, but she doesn't want to do things that way).  I made a very stripped down timeline for her to use -- drew a vertical line on cardstock, labelled it with a century, punched holes to fit in a 3-ring binder (which will need to be held sideways to view the timeline), and POOF, done.  I was pondering doing something swankier, but she commented, "it's just a history program" with an eyeroll.  You know how you hear about people making superduper timelines that their children can treasure for the rest of their lives?  Not happening here.  So if that's what you're looking for, move along.

In the meantime, Thalia has made a solid start in Jensen's Format Writing, discovering that it isn't really that difficult to crank out some paragraphs once you sit down to do it.  The challenge, of course, is actually beginning the work.

Old curriculum rundown:

- Chapter 6 of Dave Ramsey DONE.  We're halfway through the course.
- I actually helped on a physics problem, although I'm a bit fuzzy on why my solution worked.  Overall, the course involves many phone calls back and forth amongst the students.
- No clue on what's happening with Notgrass History, Writeshop, or Shepherd's Life Science.  These are all co-op classes, so mostly this week  I just asked if the homework's done.
- Also, theater, and technical theater I don't have much to do with other than find out what happened each week so I can jot them down to form a course description (well, what happened other than XYZ and ABC got in trouble with the teacher, since it's fairly apparent that I'll be hearing that pretty much every single week about those same two adolescent boys).
- Much cooking and discussion of cooking now that the weather's cooler.  Should we have a half-credit cooking class?
- Thalia is driving more and more places.  Which isn't a class, but it's a learning experience.
- She'd really like a Spanish class, but we've ruled out Rosetta Stone and Visual Link.  Not ready for dual enrollment yet.  What other choices exist?

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