This Week In Homeschool

This week we've added another layer to our schedule, so to speak.  We've started most of the dance classes the kids are planning on taking this year, which will be tap and ballet.  And Scouts.  I've been to 2 Scout meetings for the same troop, which is stupid, but that's the way this group rolls.

Thalia is in an adult beginning ballet class.  This looks like it will be a good fit for her.  The class is both more rigorous and more casual than the class for teens.

She's also taking tap for a second year.  Annabeth will probably be joining tap classes also.

Annabeth is taking ballet at a different studio.  Her class meets 2  times a week, and is a better fit for her personality.

On Saturday Annabeth starts acting lessons at a new place.  This will be an adventure.  We're stepping back from such intense involvement in the place we went to last year, and trying out other places.  Thalia isn't taking any acting courses this year, although she's open to auditioning for anything interesting that comes along.

And then there's Girl Scouts.  Gah.  What can I say.  People still drive me batty.  Girl Scout parents tend to have a special knack for that.  This year I planned to be less passive about the situation by being a leader.  But the meetings are at a time that are so incredibly awkward for our family (and can't change due to general whiney "Oh, ick, I don't want to do that" from others) that I can't have much physical presence. Annabeth is disappointed by the way things are going, but doesn't want to quit.

As for other subjects, Thalia keeps asking if she's actually doing everything she's supposed to.  The classes are fewer in number, yet more intense, so it's a new sensation.  She's had tests in her 2 dual enrollment classes (Spanish and English).  Neither has been completely scored yet, but she felt good about both.  The English test was much easier due to her love of diagramming -- Analytical Grammar for the win!  Other than that, her only school subjects are math and science.  She's started  Lial's Precalculus; and she read the first chapter of her chemistry book in preparation for class which will start next week.

Lial's Basic College Math is off to an easy start for Annabeth.  I still haven't purchased a grammar program.  Thalia is convinced Annabeth should use Analytical Grammar, of course.  Other classes -- science, history, ASL, sewing, whatever-else-I'm-forgetting-to-mention -- continued without much ado.
 

Action shot of homeschool occurring without much ado.  The weather is suddenly gorgeous, and homeschoolers have the flexibility to take advantage of that.

Honestly, most of this week was sucked up in having a wood floor installed in our bedroom -- moving stuff in and out of the room, dealing with the actually laying of the floor, and all.  By Friday night I was ready to sit around watching Quantum Leap reruns (now available free on Amazon Prime) and eating those miniature Dove ice cream bars (the chocolate coating on the little ones is thinner and more fun than the coating on the full-size bars) and totally zone out.

But now it's time to grade papers from this past week and prep for next week.

Interested in what other homeschoolers have done this week?  Follow the link:

Homeschool Update

This morning it occurred to me that it would be really cool if someone did a homeschool weekly report/wrap-up in haiku.  Not that I'm planning on doing it, but it would be fun to read.

See, I've done the work of coming up with the concept -- now I'll pass the torch to someone else for the detail work.

(I spent much of September contemplating how an existentialist would write a homeschool weekly report.  For that matter, what would homeschooling look like in an existentialist household?  Anyway, another concept that someone else can work with, right?)

As for us, last week was sucked into a miasma of spent working backstage at a ballet.  The kids were supposed to help load in the sets on Wednesday, except I decided to Just Say No, since it would involve missing their typical Wednesday classes.  They were there Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, though.  Annabeth ran the light board, and Thalia was a stagehand.  This was part of a Technical Theatre class they're taking -- earlier this fall they painted the sets for the ballet.

Which is why Jensen's continues to languish in not-getting-done land.  Aaargh!  And Medieval History isn't far behind, moving glacially slow, as though we're trying to recreate the timeline moment by moment in the present.

The co-op classes the kids are taking have stayed up-to-date:  Kinetic Physics and Notgrass World History/Literature for Thalia, Writeshop and Shepherd's Life Science for Annabeth.

And this week we haven't had A Big Event like the ballet, the Fall Formal, the everlasting bad cold, Thalia's Sweet Sixteen party, Halloween, or whatever else took all of that time a month ago.  So we've made progress towards getting back on track.

The big homeschool success of the week was that DAVE RAMSEY IS DONE!  Woot!  That's a half credit of personal finance completed (a little later in the fall than expected, but still before the end of the semester).  The next to last chapter seemed the most complex -- insurance.  We have several family members in the insurance biz, but, wow, LOTS of info.  The final chapter is on real estate, and seemed like it was mostly an excuse for Dave to entertain us with stories of his adventures in realty.  We also have a realtor in the family, plus have moved around the country buying and selling homes, so most of this wasn't news to Thalia.

Overall, I'd recommend the course.  I've heard people express dismay that it doesn't take too long to watch all those videos -- how can it possibly count for a half credit?  Well, yoohoo, that's what the CDRom is for -- look through the suggested activities, do some of them (some are better suited for a classroom, but you can still find plenty to do), take the tests, take the unit tests and the final.  Also, go on field trips -- an estate sale, a cash-advance business (okay, we did that one online instead of actually setting foot in one, and the entire concept was skanky enough to make an impression), follow the stock market.  Watch it as a family and discuss -- what do you agree with, what do you disagree with.  Assign extra reading (Thalia and I read Scratch Beginnings and discussed how the Dave Ramsey material applied -- what was the same, what was different).  It's an easy course to have your kid do, and it has a lot of great information.

Okay, so, failure with Jensen's, success with Dave Ramsey, neutral with pretty much everything else.  And all the other stuff that isn't really "school", like driving practice, ballet, tap, voice, Scouts, blah blah blah.

More tales of successes and failures, I'm sure (at least, I hope I'm not the only one who's got a failure-thing going), when you visit Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers' Weekly Wrap-Up.

Homeschool Wrap-Up

Last week was The Week of the Bad Cold, in which Thalia got stinkin' sick with a cold.  Which made the   difficult Kinetic Physics problems closer to "impossible".  Rick was out of town (Rick typically helps her with this), I was busy with other stuff (one of the rats had surgery, subsequently started picking out the sutures and bleeding all over the place, so I was running around in the cold, rainy night amassing gauze pads and various other first aid supplies), plus we were supposedly getting ready for her costume party.  Oh, and going to the doctor to talk about vaccinations and malaria drugs for the trip to Dominican Republic next spring.

All of which is to say, not a whole lotta schooling going on.  Although Rick got home late Thursday night,  the Physics DID get done (with 30 minutes to spare!)(the teacher sets a time by which all answers need to be entered online), and turned in.  And Notgrass history got done.  But Jensen's Format Writing and Lial's Algebra 2 suffered.

In the meantime, Annabeth had a crash course in rat first aid, googling how to stop bleeding (since I was out running an errand in the cold, wet, dark night, and Thalia was too sick to help).  On a more mellow note, she also kept up with math and English -- history suffered from neglect once again.  She continued to use Mango French on our library's website.

Then, of course, the weekend, which included the afore mentioned party.  And then Monday, which was Halloween.  We skipped Monday night classes in order to Trick or Treat, since that seemed a higher priority at the time.

After which, of course, it was back to Physics, although it was somewhat simpler this week.  And working AHEAD in Notgrass, since next week is going to be busy.  And playing catchup in Lial's Algebra and Jensen's Format Writing.  We ended up splitting the Dave Ramsey session on insurance into 2 parts/2 weeks , as it's a pretty information-packed segment of the book.  

Fall Formal was this week, which is sort of the homeschool answer to homecoming celebrations, but without the football game.  It takes place at Andre's on Telegraph, typically on a Thursday night.  This year Thalia thought she would make a simple Little Black Dress (counting the construction towards a half credit of Practical Arts), and then buy a pair of fun shoes.  After all the falderal of last week and the weekend, though, it was apparent that the black satin languishing in the laundry room wasn't going anywhere very quickly.  So I cut it out Tuesday, and slapped it together Wednesday.  We went to the mall Tuesday night and found shoes:

I think she wanted something gaudier, but gaudy costs more money, and this is what Charlotte Russe had in her size.  Those heels put her up over 6 foot tall.

Of course, she gets ready over at a friend's house, and refuses to bother taking pictures.  So far this is all I've got of the dress, which I swiped off of someone's Facebook (as I did the above shoe picture):

She assures me that there are better pictures on another friend's camera, but that friend is currently in Kansas City for a robotics competition.

And this week Annabeth did RightStart Geometry; got ready to take another test in Shepherd's Life Science, except we can't find the test book, which was probably stuck away somewhere during the whirlwind housecleaning before the party last weekend; missed her WriteShop class so we could take the rat BACK to the vet to find out if that lump developing under the incision was an abscess (hey, we have cats, and that's what an abscess on a cat looks like -- but on a rat that's just had surgery it's a hematoma ... I wish they would've told me beforehand that seratomas and hematomas are an option).  By the way, we don't have to take her back to have her stitches removed since she's already removed all of them with her teeth.  Also, Annabeth has been reading about St. Francis in her sloooow trip through Pandia Press Middle Age history.

Also, Annabeth is the lead in a Christmas musical at church, and is tagging along to Thalia's voice lessons so she can spend a half hour working with the director on inflection and acting.  The play is a takeoff of the old Dragnet series, and she has the Joe Friday part.  She was thrilled to learn that they'll be costuming it in a 1950s look rather than a Bible-story look (she loathes Bible-story costumes, but the 1950s look puts it reasonably close to Captain America, and she's hoping to base her costume on Peggy, his girlfriend -- she asked if she could dye her hair and wear the bright red lipstick).

Plus, a couple of nights ago while fooling around with  Amazon.com's new book-lending feature for Kindle (which we've decided is pretty lame, by the way), she discovered a free copy of Black Beauty.  She's captivated by it.

Plus Scouts was this week, during which they supposedly learned something or other.  Thalia's troop was working on collages as part of finishing up one of the old badges.  Annabeth's group was working on a Journey, which is fairly insipid.

Earlier in the fall I read the blog by some young woman who was homeschooled in Missouri, and is quite opposed to homeschooling now because of the social isolation.  Um, yeah, right.  I could use some isolation right about now -- maybe I'd be able to write up a nice report of all the actual schoolwork we got done rather than all the running around we do, and rabbit trails we wander off on.

More Homeschool Weeks-in-Review at www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com.

Homeschool Update

Some highlights of the past couple of weeks:

MATH:

Thalia took a test early in the week, and has now started Chapter 5 of Lial's Intermediate Algebra, Systems of Linear Equations.  She says she now has more of a clue about some of those ACT math questions from back in September, having now seen what the heck they were going on about.

Annabeth continues to storm through Key to Decimals.  She's not quite halfway through the second book.  So far it's been review, with mistakes made out of sloppiness rather than misunderstanding.

HISTORY:

Thalia actually missed an answer in Notgrass World History -- the first this year.  I think it might have been absentmindedness.  She's displaying signs of nitpicky-ness with the text, looking for minor faults.  It really isn't very challenging as a history text, so I guess that's what keeps her occupied.

Annabeth wonders about all of the timelines in History Odyssey.  Why make the little one that you can't fit all the stuff on, and then also put the same stuff on the big one?  Because then you actually learn it by fitting it in; plus the big one is to keep and add to  from year to year.

ENGLISH:

Jensen's Format Writing requires that one select one's own topics, which has apparently been the biggest challenge for Thalia  so far -- figuring out what she'd like to write a 7 sentence (occasionally 8 sentence) paragraph about.  The topics are getting more and more ... interesting.  For analogy, she compared kidneys to furnace filters, saying it was the first thing that came to mind.

And Annabeth is working on similes in Writeshop.  Which is nice, since it's something she hasn't worked on before.

SCIENCE:

Let's see, Thalia had her first Physics test a couple of weeks ago, which she did really well on.  Then we had the assignments from hell, which took F.O.R.E.V.E.R.  to complete, and included much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Then this week everything was easy-peasy.  Sort of a bipolar course -- you just never know what to expect next.

And I've been trying to go over more assignments in Shepherd's Life Science with Annabeth, since they're not doing that much in their once-per-week class.  They've made it through cell biology, which she thought was confusing.  Overall, if I didn't feel comfortable with the subject I think this would be a tough course to supervise from home (it might be easier to outright teach it, since then you're following along more closely anyway).

SOME OTHER STUFF:

Dave Ramsey has taught us about relationships and money (hohum, THAT was a fairly useless chapter), and how to interview for jobs (ditto -- better info about this is available elsewhere).  And a brief swipe at taxes.  Don't get me wrong, I still like the course.  But we hurried through these chapters. There were test questions I thought were just plain silly, since they were more along the lines of "were you paying attention" rather than "you should remember this stuff".  But we're coming down to the home stretch.  She's also been reading Adam Shepard's Scratch Beginnings this week for sort of a look at real life applications.

Theater work is keeping everyone busy.  Sets to paint.  Songs and blocking to learn.  Annabeth just got the lead in a play at church.  She sewed several pillows for the Snow White set last week, stuffing one with an extraneous bed pillow we had in the closet.  She was pretty proud of them, especially the one with gold fringe which she figured out how to apply herself.

Also, we've been handing around the latest Rick Riordan book (Son of Neptune) since Thalia was one of the first to get it from the library.  Three of us managed to read it this week during her checkout period of it.

And all the other usual falderal -- voice, piano, dance, driving.  Annabeth started doing Mango French again this week (Mango is available through our public library's website).  Plus all the stuff I'll think of after I post this, which is pretty typical.  You'd think by now I'd be writing notes all week, but no.  Just scrawls in the planner -- otherwise, these ARE my notes.

Homeschool Update 10/7/11

SCIENCE:

Shepherd's Life Science apparently doesn't have specified experiments, although they have suggestions.  The co-op teacher decided to use The Egg experiment from Apologia Biology.  You know the one, where you take The Egg

and soak it in vinegar until the shell is off.  

Then soak it in various other things like corn syrup and water, measuring after each soak.

In the meantime, Thalia is studying for her first test in Kinetic Physics.  I have the impression the teacher is a wee bit disappointed with the support available for writing her own tests -- I think she was under the impression they would have more test questions available.  They're doing the Principle of Physics, which prepares the class for the Physics AP/B exam, by the way.  Anyway, the teacher has re-opened all of the homework questions, as well as the quiz boards (Kinetic is done online, and the teacher sets the "due date" on the homework by setting the program to close all attempts to enter answers to problems as of the deadline) for the kids to use to study for the test.  She's sent a pdf of the test, and will send the parents a pdf of the answers.

MATH:


Annabeth finished up the first book of Key to Decimals, and then switched back to RightStart Geometry, wherein she's in the throes of Pythagorean Theorem.  Of course, this brings to mind adventures in The Wizard of Oz last summer, when the Scarecrow could NOT remember his line about the Pythagorean Theorem after the Wizard gave him a brain (and Thalia kept saying, "get a refund on that brain!"), distracting everyone from the point of the RightStart lesson.

Thalia is moving ahead in Lial's Intermediate Algebra, which still seems straightforward to use and grade.

ENGLISH:


Junior Analytical Grammar is DONE.  Whoot.  Honestly, it wasn't the warm, fuzzy experience that Analytical Grammar was.  I found myself disagreeing with the answer book at times (given that grammar isn't my thing, this is Big News).  But, hey, it's over now, and we're moving on to ... well, we're not moving on to anything in particular at the moment.

Thalia continues to write paragraphs for Jensen's Format Writing.  And occasionally plunges into Analytical Grammar High School Reinforcement -- she's using the Great World Authors book this year.  As I've mentioned before, she does this for fun, sort of like others work sudoku.

HISTORY


Annabeth hasn't done a whole heck of a lot with the Middle Ages, after blazing through the first week or so.  We tend to be rather stop-and-go with history around here.

In the meantime, Thalia is finding Notgrass World History incredibly easy, answering questions about Daniel that she learned in about 3rd grade Sunday School.  The biggest challenge is the Country Study -- she writes an essay every week about India.  Some of the subjects bore her -- for example, writing about the economy of India was apparently less than scintillating.

OTHER STUFF


Chapters 7 and 8 of Dave Ramsey are done.  Thalia knows how to balance a checkbook, and how Dave advises making a budget (I think that's all part of a Girl Scout badge ... oh wait, those practical badges like that are now defunct, and we still haven't received the new badge books ... how does an organization that has failed so miserably at rolling out their new product presume to teach girls about leadership -- gaaaaahhhhhh! ).  Also, how to bargain/negotiate.  Most of which she'd already heard plenty about just in conversations around the house.  But Dave had some amusing anecdotes to illustrate his points.

Theater classes are zooming along, with monologues chosen and memorized, songs practiced, sets designed, etc.

And the usual whirlwind of tap, ballet, voice, and piano.  Plus driving around in that pre-driver's license way.

Once again, even more homeschool updates at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

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?

More Weekly Reports at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers, a veritable font of homeschool ramblings.

Weekly Report 9/16/11

I'm writing this during a bathroom remodel, a visit from relatives, picking up Thalia from camp, taking Thalia to her new ballet class, going to a DR meeting about the trip during Spring Break, etc., so it's even more disjoint than usual....

New curriculum purchased this week: Key to Decimals and Key to Percents. Time to bid adieu to Life of Fred, which will soon be appearing on the "For Sale" boards at the WTM.

Also new is the Pandia Press History Odyssey Level 2 for the Medieval time period. I haven't actually purchased that yet, but plan to get the e-book, which is currently on sale. This does't replace anything.

Those are both for Annabeth, who is also working on Writeshop in co-op. She emails her drafts to the teacher during the week, the teacher looks them over by class time and hands them back for re-writes. So far that system is working well, other than the grousing about the actual writing process. This week Annabeth wrote about a pet, which took an amazing amount of time since she couldn't decide WHICH pet (rats? cats? and we have pairs of each, so which one?). She eventually decided on our black cat, who is certainly full of personality (I used to call her a Sith Lord, but I think the Sith aren't quite so dumb as she tends to be, even in that scene where the Emperor got so caught up in the fun of killing Luke that he didn't notice Vader was about to toss him over the railing (give me a break, like this uber-powerful guy would be that clueless about sensing Vader's intentions in the Force)).

And for science she had her first test in Shepherd's Life Science. For the record, Apologia science tests are a lot easier to grade than Shepherd's Life Science. The answer book for Shepherd's tends to ramble on and on. I was glad I knew this stuff anyway, so I could just read the question and decide if I liked the way she answered it. This is also a co-op class, but the teacher isn't responsible for the tests -- frankly, the tests are optional in our co-op.

Since the Key to ... books just came in late in the week she worked on RightStart Geometry for most of the week. She says she's sick of triangles at this point. But, hey, it will make Jacob's Geometry so much easier for her years from now that she had to slog through these endless lessons.

Speaking of which, in Junior Analytical Grammar she needed to list the helping verbs on a test. Wow, how many dozens of times did we recite those in First Language Lessons? So it was incredibly easy for Annabeth to storm through that section of JAG.

Thalia's life continues to revolve around Kinetic Physics. In other mathy news, she's completed her first test in Lia'ls Intermediate Algebra, which has been pretty straightforward.

We' completed Chapter 5 of Dave Ramsey, learning about opportunity costs (a phrase we use a lot around here) and "90 days same as cash" deals (which we always use effectively but apparently most people don't -- who knew?).

She's got a slow start in Jensen's Format Writing; and continues to tolerate Notgrass World History, holding on to the belief that it will get better once they're out of ancient history.

Oh, and phys ed. -- I haven't mentioned this lately. Part of phys ed is weight lifting, right? You should've seen her carry the new bathroom vanity up the stairs a couple of days ago. Wow, It was really impressive.

Both have had at least one class of their new dance classes (ballet and tap), as well as musical theater, improv/acting, advanced musical theater, and technical theater. Thalia continues to thrive with her new voice teacher, which isn't to say the old one is bad but she gels so well with the new person. We're pondering whether we should continue piano lessons on top of all of this, considering they're both in at least one choir also -- it feels like we're spending plenty of time on music and performance arts already.

You can find out how other homeschool families have spent their week at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers, undoubtably featuring more coherent wrap-ups than this.

Weekly Report 8/27/11

We were sick this week. It doesn't make for a very productive week. The kids had (have) colds, and I had some weird stomach thing going.

So, right off the bat we cancelled the voice lesson and the piano lessons.

Thalia struggled through Kinetic Physics this week in spite of her clogged brain and inability to focus. Her class is using the online homework package in which the teacher sets a due date beyond which the students are unable to enter their homework. The teacher has given pretty generous due dates -- the kids have several days to get the assignments done -- but, still, it's pretty apparent that falling behind will lead to a world of hurt. She had Rick help her with one of the problems, which gave him a chance to see what the program was like.

She kept up with Notgrass World History, sharing some of the odder tidbits. I'd share them here, but she was announcing these things on the day that I was really not operating at full capacity mentally, so I think I surely heard some of it wrong.

And Dave Ramsey told us how and when to save for college, after which we 1. practiced figuring out how much to put in a 401k vs. a Roth IRA at different income levels and varying company matching programs, and 2. practiced the ever popular rule of 72.

She got a start in logic, in which she'll be earning a half credit. I can already see applications for this in her discussions with her friends, not to mention her critiques of her various textbooks.

We laid out a course for Algebra 2 and for composition, but have put those off for a bit until we're more functional.

In the meantime, Annabeth has decided she doesn't like Life of Fred, but feels she should complete the book (percents and decimals). I can go either way with it -- there are other math programs that would be fine to use, after all.

She completed her first WriteShop assignment and emailed it her teacher after a brieg panic because our internet was out for a couple of hours on Friday (thus demonstrating why you shouldn't wait until the last minute).

Shepherd Life Science simply involved reading the next lesson and answering the study questions. Labs will be done in class -- I think the teacher is drawing in labs from Apologia Biology since she has quite a bit of experience teaching it.

She's been whipping through Junior Analytical Grammar. I need to figure out what to do when she's finished with it, since that day is quickly approaching.

And she's pointed out that we need to come up with some sort of history for her. My vote is another pass through SOTW2, but she's leaning towards the Renaissance. Hmmm....

Still not up to full speed on all of our subjects, but edging closer. I feel like we're still using impulse engines, moving out of space dock, but soon we'll be able to go to warp. Woot.

See more Weekly Reports (and link your own) at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Weekly Report 8/19/11

Co-op classes start Monday, and the kids have been getting emails from their teachers with assignments to have completed by then. Time to start gearing up!

Thalia:

Has started Kinetic Physics. Has never had to deal with significant digits before, so we found a couple of printouts via google. Also viewed a Khan lecture on the subject, but I think she liked the handouts better (or maybe that was me -- I'm not very patient with videos, preferring to skim through a page for the exact info I need instead). So far she's giving a thumbs up to the writing style of the text.

Has also started Notgrass World History. She says the writing is acceptable, although not too exciting. She likes the format -- each day read a section, answer some questions, take a quiz at the end of the week, write an essay, then repeat it all the next week. She's only doing the history component (it also has a Bible component and a lit component, each of which could be worth a credit).

Speaking of lit, THE ODYSSEY IS DONE! Woot! We stormed through several books of it this week, had Elizabeth Vandiver tell us what they meant via The Teaching Company DVDs on the subject. Now we need to watch O Brother Where Art Thou and wrap this Ancient Lit class up. I don't remember Brother well, but I think it will contain significantly fewer bath scenes than the book.

We also spent some quality time with Dave Ramsey learning about Personal Finance. We're blazing through this course, hoping to have the entire half credit done sometime in October.

She's supposedly studying for the ACT in September, too, although I think only about an hour was devoted to that this week.

Since she wants to take a tech theater class this year which we'll count for a half credit, I decided the desire to go see Joseph and the Amzing Technicolor Dreamcoat at a local church this week could count as homework -- we could look over sets and lighting and all. It was a free performance, with an offering taken partway through. We got what we paid for -- they had changed the musical to be churchier or fit their theology or because they couldn't competently do it as written or something. I threw a couple of bucks into the offering in hopes they'd use it to pay someone who knew how to do lighting. The amazing thing was the place was PACKED (and this was their 4th performance of 7) and they were getting a standing ovation ("If we stand up we're leaving NOW, okay?" "Fine!" so we beat all of the traffic out of the parking lot). Okay, seriously, there were some bright spots -- some people who were talented, some scenes that were well done. But it was a few hours of my life I'll never get back. "A few hours" because when we got home I HAD to watch the 1999 film version, partially to prove that yes, they really DID change the words to that song, and partially because they had ditched Any Dream Will Do (objectionable theology? bad vocal range? desire to substitute really insipid song about family that made for an incredibly botched ending? who knows). Annabeth said Any Dream Will Do was one of her favorite songs from the film, and it just wasn't right to have the musical without it, so we HAD to watch the film to hear the song.

Which reminds me,

Annabeth:

Has been reading Shepherd's Life Science. And sewing horse blankets. And has been reminded daily that she needs to get back to doing math sometime soon.

and finally,

Me:

I've been throwing Mentos into bottles of diet soda and coming up with reasons this is a valid thing to do in a 3rd to 5th science class. I mean, valid reasons other than "it's pretty much fun." You know, some educational aspect. Because the class I'm teaching starts Monday, too. And I had to give an extemporaneous class description last week (it was extemporaneous because I'd neglected to read the meeting agenda and thus discover we were expected to do it), so I summed up my vision for the class with "Um, well, I think we're going to blow things up." Let me tell you, if you announce that in a parents' meeting, people tend to remember it. So I guess we need to blow some things up right off the bat and get THAT out of the way. Then we can get on to whatever other interesting Physical Science experiments I can come up with. Like setting things on fire (I need to check the location of smoke alarms on Monday).

Homeschool Happenings

Annabeth:

Has finished Life of Fred: Fractions and moved on to Life of Fred: Decimals. This alternates with RightStart Geometry.

And is also working on Jr. Analytical Grammar.

Both math and grammar are proceeding at a leisurely pace at this time. During the school year she had science, geography, etc., in a co-op, but that has ended for the summer. Now she reads a lot, gardens, does crafts, and generally spends much time outdoors. I think that's about right for an 11 year old.

Thalia:

Attended a learning center for Biology and Composition this past year. The classes are over, and we (finally) received her grades: As in both. She added an Analytical Grammar High School Reinforcement to her composition class to beef it up a bit (also, she really likes grammar, and thinks Analytical Grammar is fun -- go figure).

Co-op classes are also over, but this spring we decided to add on to the art class she was taking to make it into a half-credit course -- she started working on the art history lessons from Harmony Fine Arts at Home. These aren't quite done yet, since we got a late start on them. We already had all the books needed for the art history portion of the program, so this provided Thalia with a schedule that she can check off as she moves through the program. She loves checking things off a syllabus, so its been a really good fit for her. She plans to have the course finished by the end of next week.

And the 9th grad Harmony Fine Arts meshes nicely with her ancient history course. She's reading through Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Ancient World. Honestly, she isn't a big fan of history, particularly Roman history (which, let's face it, is what a huge amount of ancient history tends to focus on). She reads chapters and writes summaries. She hasn't finished the book yet, mostly because she's slogging through the Romans now.

On the other hand, another component of her history study is literature, and I'm thrilled to announce WE HAVE FINISHED THE ILIAD! Okay, actually we have one more lecture to watch to wrap it up. But, wow, I wasn't sure we'd survive the Iliad. I vaguely remember studying it in high school -- we did some lame play about the characters, and I hadn't a clue what it was about or what was going on (although in later years we did name a cat Ajax). I'm hoping Thalia retains more from our listening to Derek Jacobi, reading along, then watching Elizabeth Vandiver's lectures. Thalia is determined to forge ahead into the Odyssey. I'm not sure I'm ready for anything more complex than a children's version.

She has completed the last test of Jacobs Geometry with great aplomb. She mentioned that the background in RightStart Geometry helped make the work with solids quite simple. Also, for those contemplating teaching geometry at home, the end of the book doesn't have those messy-to-grade proofs -- it's pretty straightforward. We've been using the Ask Dr. Callahan syllabus, which doesn't cover chapter 16 non-Euclidian geometry (the final chapter of the book) but she wants to do it anyway. So that's still hanging around on the things-to-do list. By the way, the syllabus also skipped over chapter 13, which she decided to do anyway ... she commented that the things she learned in chap. 13 applied to chap 14, but perhaps the DVDs explain the bits you'd miss by skipping it (frankly, we lost the DVDs, so what Dr. Callahan had to say on the subject remains a mystery).

Theater classes have wrapped up for the year. It occurred to us that we could use these as a half credit of Fine Arts, although she didn't quite have enough hours in for that (we're not counting musical theater, which we'll list as an extra curricular activity). The theater teacher offered to assign a paper that she would grade, but I think we're going to count the Shakespeare camp (with the same teacher) that the kids will be taking in a couple of weeks -- an intensive experience in which they put together a performance in 2 weeks.

(I had considered doing an entire Shakespeare unit for a half credit -- going to see Taming of the Shrew in Forest Park, reading the play, seeing Kiss Me Kate at the Muny, then doing the Shakespeare camp ... but the teacher commented that she went to Shrew over Memorial Day weekend and absolutely hated it, and her theatre friends were contemplating gouging their eyeballs out with the plastic forks they'd brought for their picnic supper rather than have to sit there watching it, so my enthusiasm waned. Plus it's supposed to be 97F today and tomorrw, which is when we'd go, so sitting in intense heat watching a crappy play isn't really appealing. Maybe next year.)

Phys Ed has become a constant. She should be at the half-credit mark on that soon, having started in January. She's working on lifetime fitness skills including aerobics, weight lifting, Pilates, yoga, and the various resources Lisa Howell offers. We've got piles of resources for this type of thing -- both books and equipment (free weights -- hundreds of pounds worth -- including bench and rack, Bosu ball, Swiss exercise balls, exercise bike, treadmill, resistance bands, gym mats, etc. etc. -- total fitness nerdiness going on here in our basement).

So, that pretty much sums up where we stand at the moment schoolwise -- finishing up some odds and ends by June 30, which the official end of the Missouri school year. And looking towards the summer for new experiences and coursework. After all, the REALLY fun part of homeschooling is the planning.

Homeschool Report

The major news here is that APOLOGIA HIGH SCHOOL BIOLOGY IS FINISHED! And Thalia was running around rejoicing that she never has to use another Apologia science book again in her life. She thought it was often silly, and the author's writing style got on her nerves (his sins included using "poisonous" when he meant "venomous", and using superlatives when he should've used comparatives). On the bright side, all labs were done in a classroom setting, which meant that there were several dissection specimens to compare, not to mention that it didn't smell up our own house.

Also finished is High School Composition 1, which was based on IEW, a writing curriculum we have never used nor have much desire to use. Her final research paper was on space opera. I read through it, and will be interested to see how the teacher grades it.

Thalia is still working on Microsoft Office, Art, History and Lit. of the Ancient World, and Geometry. We're going to do a half credit of Logic when some of this other stuff gets finished up. She's done enough Phys. Ed. to count as a half credit -- which I think might be the most we'd put on a transcript -- learning about weight lifting, floor barre, yoga, and various other techniques used by physiotherapists.

In the meantime, Annabeth took her new bento box to co-op classes with her:



French toast (sprinkled with powdered sugar) cut into bite size pieces, a line of fresh broccoli, then layers of ham, cheese, and scrambled eggs. The butterfly is ham and cheese. Eaten with chopsticks. She was amazed at how much food was stuffed in the little box.

At some point in the past few weeks we finished Story of the World 4, the modern era. Depressing with all of the wars, but on the bright side I knew how to pronounce most of the names in the later chapters because I remember hearing them.

Annabeth has been working this week on her creative writing class project, so we've skipped work in Writing with Ease. She continues to work in RightStart Geometry and Life of Fred fractions. She's decided to start up Mango French again (Mango is an online program available through our library's website). And she's spent much of this week working on various Girl Scout badges covering science, small business, crafts, art, writing and social studies.

Plus piano, voice, dance and theater classes. But no actual performances, thankfully. Well, except choir, but that's not a major event.

So, onward into the weekend.

Homeschool Report

SCIENCE

Thalia continues with Apologia Biology. Yawn.

Annabeth continues to do various projects from the Girl Scout Junior Badge book. Last week she worked on Science in Everyday Life activity #9 Here Today, Still Here Tomorrow in which she took a look at the history of the telephone, and thought about what a telephone might be like in about 25 years.

She also worked some more on the Water Wonders badge, doing acitivity #2 The Water You Drink, which focusses on where our drinking water comes from. Rick was able to give a rundown of water treatment (oh, the advantages of having a Chemical Engineer around!). And then we somehow got sidetracked with this video of desalination. Which had prompted an earlier discussion with Mr. ChemE about the strength of the bond between salt and water.

MATH

RIghtStart Geometry week for Annabeth. She hasn't been photocopying the worksheets before using them since we figure this is our last time to use them. Unfortunately, that means when she has to start over because she misunderstood the directions she either needs to erase or come up with another way to have a "new" copy.

Thalia has forged ahead in Jacob's Geometry, and is about a week ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, this means she does a boatload of assignments and then thrusts a pile at me all at once with the comment: "I need these graded so I can see if I'm ready to take the test." And, really, grading this stuff is tedious.

ENGLISH

Thalia is supposed to be picking out a topic for a 10 page research paper. She's also been working on Analytical Grammar -- Shakespeare's Plays.

A friend invited her to Metro Theater's production of The Giver on Saturday night, so she read and we discussed the book before she went. It seemed like every library copy of the book in the entire metro area was checked out, so we ended up buying it on Kindle, and she read it on her iPod (honestly, it didn't even cross my mind to go to a bookstore to see if there were any copies there). Anyway, she said the performance was well done. They went to the cast party afterwards because the friend's mom knows the guy who was celebrating his 5000th performance.

And Annabeth worked on Junior Analytical Grammar.

ART

The Drawing and Painting badge has an activity called In Shape that sounds like it's straight out of an Ed Emberley book. So I picked one up at the library, Annabeth glanced through it, and decided to draw the Enterprise.

She also spent quite a bit of time playing with Sumopaint, both with photographs and without. I'm pretty sure this counts towards a couple of other badges like Photography and Graphic Design -- I need to look up the requirements for those badges.

And Thalia attended her art class. Then was sitting in church with her friends, drawing on the bulletin during the service, when a retired high school art teacher happened to sit down next to her. Afterwards the woman GUSHED about Thalia's ability, and wanted to know where she went to school. It was weird. I was very impressed with the woman's metallic gold fingernail polish, though, and think I might've been missing the boat on that sort of thing.

OTHER STUFF

Thalia baked cookies and asked if that could count as home ec. Really, no. She's also spent hours each week working out, which WILL count towards a PE credit. She lifts weights, rides a stationary bike, does Pilates, works on flexibility and dance technique.

Annabeth worked on another badge that counts towards geography -- Global Awareness. Activity #5 In the News had her looking at international news, #4 International Friendship gave us a reason to look up what sister cities St. Louis has around the world (there are 15) and how the sister cities program works, and #3 Show Your Colors prompted us to sutdy the flag of France. We also worked more on Money Sense by discussing activity #9 Money Doesn't Always Matter.

And dance class. And musical theater class. And drama class for Thalia. And voice lessons. We skipped piano lessons this week due to snow (somewhere around 6-8 inches -- all the schools were closed, many of them for 2 days due to the cold weather that followed the snow).

Homeschool Update -- what we're doing

MATH

Thalia is to Chapter 8 of Jacob's Geometry. We've reached the point of needing to sit down and discuss the answers to many of the assignments rather than simply checking off right or wrong answers. That's the nature of the subject, as far as I'm concerned -- various answers to the questions have varying degrees of rightness, and we need to discuss which answers are good, better and best. Which takes forever, but is a better learning experience, but is annoying, but is great that we have the opportunity to do this in a one-on-one environment, but... but... but....

Annabeth decided to use Life of Fred Fractions this week. She says that while working on RightStart Geometry she forgets all about what the Fraction book teaches, and while working on LoF she forgets what the Geometry book teaches. I think it might have more to do with the long, dramatic break in using LoF. We shall see how this works this spring -- Thalia said one of the problems she had with RightStart Geometry was that she had forgotten how to do fractions, decimals, and percents by the time she got to the end of it, and constant review would've helped.

ENGLISH

Thalia had no Composition class this week due to snow. Theoretically we should've listened to The Iliad, but we didn't. She worked on Analytical Grammar High School Reinforcement, choosing to work on the Shakespeare volume.

Annabeth had her usual Creative Writing class. Since she claims that it is practically useless, I had her work on the Junior Girl Scout badge Write All About It. She did task #2, composing 3 story starters, then set a time for 15 minutes and did a free write on one of the starters. She also worked on Junior Analytical Grammar. We started this after Christmas, so she's only up to articles and adjectives.

SCIENCE

Thalia's Biology class was cancelled, but they're forging ahead with the work. Over Christmas she grew radish seeds for an experiment. Apparently all they needed to do was see how many were yellow -- one batch was grown with natural light, the other was grown in darkness. It struck all of us as a sort of lame experiment -- so many cool things they could've discussed but didn't. What happened when the ones started in darkness were exposed to light? How quickly did that happen? Why do the seedlings tend to bend towards the light? Why does Mom keep using terms like "etiolated" and "auxin" when looking at these? (although I skipped the discussion of red and far red, because frankly I never liked that unit when I studied it way back when)

Annabeth also considers her science class a bit lame due to lack of homework (Annabeth, age 11, considers a lot of stuff lame). So we're supplementing with Junior Girl Scout badge work. We decided that Thalia's radish seed experiment counted towards the Science in Everyday Life badge as task #4, Forces of Nature (soak some bean seeds overnight and place them in a film canister, leave for a week and look at them).

We also worked on Making it Matter, making polymers out of Borax and glue plus various other additives. Borax, glue, plus table sugar is really runny, and remains soft and slightly slimy for hours:



while Borax, glue and baking soda sets up almost instantly:


We took a look at ball bearings using this idea, which is pretty much exactly what task #4 Moving Parts is trying to describe doing (a picture is worth a thousand words -- it would've been a heck of a lot easier to figure out what they were trying to accomplish if they'd included a drawing like that in the badge book). Except I simply stuck a chopstick to the top of the plastic lid using a piece of duct tape. We messed around a bit with various sizes of marbles to see what would happen. Annabeth found this fascinating.

ART

Thalia is taking an art class at a co op.

Annabeth is working on various art badges in the Junior Girl Scout badge book. We've been using warm up exercises from Donna Young (the pdfs at the bottom). These remind me of Waldorf form drawings in a way. Then we work on whatever else strikes our fancy. So far we've worked on the Drawing and Painting badge item #7 How You Look at It by making a perspective drawing as explained in Mark Kistler'sDraw Squad. We've also worked on #4 of the same badge, What's Your Line, by making a rendition of this project from the amazing blog Art Projects for Kids.



Activity #4 requires 2 lines drawings, and I think it would be cool to make the second one something using black paper and white ink or pencil, but we'll see.

HISTORY

Thalia continues to read SWB's History of the Ancient World and continues to compare various civilizations to species on Star Trek. And we continue to read Story of the World 4 as a family, having completed the section on Martin Luther King, Jr. just in time for Monday.

Then, of course, we did dance, piano, musical theatre, drama class, voice lessons, had a snow day full of sledding, went ice skating, etc. And probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. Not bad for snowy, cold week.

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.

Weekly Report 4/16/10

The big news:

APOLOGIA PHYSICAL SCIENCE IS DONE! Woohoo!

Okay, actually I had little to do with it, since Thalia took it in a co-op setting. I graded some of her stuff, and looked over her lab reports. She had an excellent teacher, which is good because she wasn't that impressed with the book or some of the topics covered. Their final project was one she enjoyed -- they were instructed to design a planet that orbited a known star. Thalia's was the planet Sobek, which had no oceans -- instead it has many, many rivers. And from a distance the rivers look like heiroglyphs.

Other than that, Thalia has been working quite a bit on Jump In and Jacob's Algebra. She had to write up an autobiography for a group that she's in. And she continues with Mango Spanish. We need to figure out exactly what will take priority now that Analytical Grammar and Physical Science are finished.

AnnaBeth's priority is math -- we dearly want to be finished with RightStart E as soon as possible. Alas, there are about 50 lessons left. We've finished with areas of parallelograms and triangles for the time being, and are now back into division (leading up to factoring and prime numbers, which is pretty fun stuff). She's nearly done with First Language Lessons 4, so when we're compressed for time we feel okay about skipping it. We do Writing With Ease 4 days per week -- it's getting easier and easier. And she's taking a break from Mango French because there was a glitch in the program and it seemed an appropriate time to stop and work on some other things (like earning every Girl Scout badge possible before her troop's Court of Awards which is coming up soon).

In history this week we learned about Ned Kelly, the Iron Outlaw of Australia. Our read aloud is still Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander. Both kids are in a murder mystery, and thus spend part of each day running lines.

Piano and dance are ongoing, but Scouts will soon be over ... I love this time of year when things are ending and we're discovering more free time to try new things.

Weekly Report 3/26/10

MATH:

Thalia is working in fractions (chapter 11) in Jacob's Algebra.

AnnaBeth is still working on decimals in RightStart Level E. Yesterday were problems using retail gasoline prices ... the examples in the book were around .99 and 9/10s. "Isn't that pretty cheap for gas, Mommy?" Um, yeah.

SCIENCE:

Thalia's co-op class is studying light, which she says is extremely boring.

AnnaBeth has been working on various Junior Girl Scout badges. Aside from finishing up the Science Discovery badge, she's also working on the Oil Up badge, and has started the Earth Connections badge's plant identification activities (learning 10 trees and learning about 5 native plants along with their traditional uses).

WRITING

Thalia wrote a persuasive paper guided by her Jump In writing program. When I cautioned her about overuse of exclamation points (one is plenty for a short paper) she made a caustic comment about the writing in Apologia Physical Science, which she linked to a further caustic comment about a popular fiction author. Ahem. Life with a middle schooler is so fun.

AnnaBeth studied poetry in Writing With Ease 3, which uses Lewis Carroll and Jack Prelutsky as examples.

GRAMMAR

Thalia is working with pronoun antecedents in Analytical Grammar. By the way, as of last week she has finished the punctuation sections of Analytical Grammar, scoring quite high. So why was there a big fat comma splice in the first paragraph of that persuasive paper? Are we planning on applying any of this swanky grammar-stuff?

AnnaBeth is on lesson 65 of First Language Lessons 4. The week started with a poetry review in which she recited from memory "Afternoon on a Hill" by Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysse Shelley, "How Doth..." by Lewis Carroll, "Learning to Read" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats. The rest of the week has been spent on types of sentences and direct quotations.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Thalia continues Mango Spanish.

AnnaBeth has completed the "basic" level of Mango French and is now trying the "complete" level. Although she's learned how to say de rein, but A Femme d'un Certain Age says to use je vous en prie. But perhaps that's for older women, and not 10 year olds. Or perhaps for the upper class, and not we peasants. Ah, the subtleties! If we move to France I shall be paralyzed with indecision over which to use.

HISTORY

We should've studied the opening of Suez Canal, but we didn't. But, it will still be there next week. That's the great thing about history -- it sticks around. We should get to it next week, so stay tuned.

Things Going on Here: School-related Stuff

Okay, we've been too busy lately to post a Weekly Report, so here's a summary of some of the stuff we've been up to school-wise for the past couple of weeks:

LANGUAGE ARTS

Thalia is zooming through the final season of Analytical Grammar, which bears an amazing resemblance to various pages of First Language Lessons -- many pages of plural vs. possessive vs. plural possessive, many pages of capitalization rules. The other evening she was reading one of the Maximum Ride novels (prepatory to the U.S. release of Fang this morning) and was going on and on about the phrase "on the Earth" since the use of "the" made "Earth" a locus and therefor not suitable for capitalization. When I was her age I wouldn't have had a clue -- locus? really? -- although I could've reasoned it out by realizing that you wouldn't say "the Mars" or "the Jupiter". Of course, we often make fun of James Patterson's writing ability, although I sort of put the blame for that particular blooper on his editors.

And AnnaBeth is zipping through First Language Lessons 4, diagramming compound sentences, memorizing "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (appropriate for St. Patrick's Day, yes?). I think today in Writing with Ease 3 we'll start working on "Jabberwocky". So far she likes WWE3, but we're only 4 weeks into it.

Thalia and I are reading War of the Worlds and discussing. For example, we had checked Transformers out of the library, and it struck me that the beginning was sort of like a modern-day rehash of WotW. Swanky literary commentary, eh? Are you impressed with how clued in to cultural literacy we are here?

Thalia has also started working more diligently on the Jump In writing assignments, thanks to which she realized that Anne of Greene Gables is later referred to as "Anne Blythe" -- not much of a spoiler, but still fun to make the association.

MATH

Thalia is working on fractions, and AnnaBeth is working on decimals. Yawn.

SCIENCE

Thalia continues Apologia Physical Science in a co-op setting. Last week they stood out in the rain pounding rocks together to see how quickly the sound travelled.

AnnaBeth and I are working on various Junior Girl Scout science badges. I keep meaning to post about these separately, but that would require actually writing blog posts, so who knows when that will happen.

READ ALOUDS

As hinted above, we continue to read Anne of Green Gables at lunch time. AnnaBeth and I read Twenty One Balloons -- Thalia had recently read it, so declined sitting in on the read aloud. And AnnaBeth and I also recently read Mr. Revere and I, excerpts of which were used in WWE3, which piqued my interest in the book.

HISTORY

Zooming through Story of the World 4. We've read about Krakatoa (which is why we were reading Twenty One Balloons), about the war between Chile, Bolivia and Peru (both kids claim no memory of reading Secret of the Andes back when we were doing Sonlight, so we might drag that back out), about the Second Reich, Japan's Meije restoration (and no, reading 43 Naruto books doesn't count as a literary tie-in). And whatever else SOTW4 covers in this time frame -- it's all starting to blur. The other day AnnaBeth was mixing up Bulgaria and Bolivia, which is probably a sign that we're moving through this too quickly.

OTHER STUFF

Mango French and Mango Spanish continue to be popular. Drama classes have honed the kids' ability to tell wild stories with sincerity, which probably isn't a good thing. Piano recital pieces have been assigned.

Weekly Report 2/26/10

The kids (and by "the kids" I mean our 2 plus 4 more) just left to go see the Percy Jackson movie again, and I had thought this would be a great time to do the weekly report, but mostly I'm just sort of sitting here thinking about the ice cream I hid in the freezer.

So, ummm ... what happened this week? Oh, wait, I wrote a bunch of it down, since we live in a state where we have to keep records of how much time we're spending on core subjects and non-core subjects (not that anyone ever actually LOOKS at those records, which makes it sort of sad to do all of these color-coded little notes all over the place when no one else gets to admire them).

Monday -- busy day. Thalia wrote a bunch of lab reports for her co-op class, which is studying Apologia Physical Science. She worked on Analytical Grammar, Jump In writing, Jacob's Algebra, practiced piano. AnnaBeth did a review sheet in RightStart E, did more work with prepositions in First Language Lessons 4, and started week 2 of Writing With Ease Level 3, plus piano. She also decided to get back in the swing of Latin by studying flash cards. We all read Anne of Green Gables, and read the first half of chapter 6 in Story of the World 4, which was about Paraguay, discussed and did mapwork.

Tuesday -- another busy day. AnnaBeth worked on Mango French, WWE (dictation), FLL4 (summary writing), RightStart E (improper fractions vs. mixed numbers ... oh, speaking of "improper" fractions, did you know there's such a thing as "happy numbers"? I just found out about these this week whilst looking up a wikipedia article on prime numbers, which I was doing because that's the sort of thing we do around here during our free time. Obviously we need to watch more television so we don't have all this extra time on our hands.) Thalia did a couple of lessons of Mango Spanish, Analytical Grammar, Algebra, Physical Science. Both practiced piano, listened to a read aloud of Anne of Green Gables, listend to part of of chapter 6 SOTW -- Canada, did associated questions and mapwork ... except AnnaBeth answered pretty much every question with "parliament" and Thalia was unable to move beyond the idea that Upper Canada in late 19th century was south of Lower Canada since they were obviously the wrong places on the map. But, hey, what do you expect from a section entitled the DOMINION of Canada, which talked about the FEDERATION? Right of the bat we were distracted by the Star Trek references, and silliness prevailed.

Wednesday -- AnnaBeth worked on RIghtStart E, WWE3, and FLL4; Thalia worked on Mango Spanish; and then I abruptly stopped writing anything down. AAARGH! Now I have to remember what happened when! Let's see, Thalia also did algebra, and Analytical Grammar, and Jump In Writing. Plus she did a couple of lessons in Barron's Spanish. I remember that because she skipped out of dance because she felt sick, and we decided it wasn't a big deal if she skipped because it's not as though there's a feis coming up any time soon. Plus that was the night the daycare called and asked if we could pick up the 3 year old we sometimes help with ... sheesh, what a mess THAT was. And Rick was installing the concrete backer board in the bathrooom until 11pm. Both kids managed to practice piano somewhere in there.

Thursday -- Hmmm. Thalia did science homework, algebra, writing, grammar, Mango Spanish (vivid memory of this because AnnaBeth was upset she was doing it while AnnaBeth was doing math) ... is that it? And AnnaBeth did RightStart, WWE, FLL, Mango French. Piano was practiced. Anne of Green Gables was read, along with SOTW chapter 7, which was about ... sheesh, I don't even remember ... oh, yeah, France, and all the various forms of government they tried and discarded.

And today, Friday, was chaos as we cleaned house, grouted tile (installed last night), painted baseboards, ran errands, picked up Girl Scout cookies, etc. etc.

Somewhere in there we fit in dance classes, core strength/flexibility class, piano lesson, drama class, co-op, and musical theatre class.

Okay, so I'm hoping I included everything, since I now must go recreate from Wednesday at about noon on with all of my various colors of pens. And then eat ice cream.

Weekly Report 2/19/10

A busy week, as evidenced by the fact that I haven't blogged all week.

AnnaBeth:

Is working on prepositional phrases that modify other prepositional phrases. She likes diagramming them, with all the dangly bits hanging off of them. It helps that FLL4 (First Language Lessons level 4) gives a line drawing.

Finished the first week of the workbook for Writing With Ease level 3. I always rejected the idea of the workbooks for various reasons, but for some reason they struck me as fun when I walked by them in the bookstore the other day. So, here we are, doing the workbook. And so far (one week in) AnnaBeth is enjoying it.

Discovered her true calling as a person who prices carpet installation on a per yard basis, thanks to RightStart level E, which is currently all about square inches, square feet, square yards, square centimeters, etc. etc.

Has been intrigued by the Underground Railroad, and keeps picking up books on the subject at the library, even though we are finished with the Civil War in our history studies.

Listened to the first chapter of our new read aloud, Anne of Green Gables, yet another childhood classic that I've never read.

Attended 2 dance classes, a piano lesson, 2 drama classes, part of a Junior Girl Scout meeting, a choir rehearsal, a class in core strength and stretching; went ice skating; and, tagged along on a Cadette Girl Scout visit to Build-a-Bear corporate headquarters.

Continued to use Mango for French practice.

Thalia:

Has been working on multiplying and dividing polynomials.

Is zipping through the punctuation practices in Analytical Grammar season 3.

Continues to attend co-op classes for Apologia Physical Science -- they're working on astronomy right now.

Sometimes works on Jump In Writing.

Started on Barron's E-Z Spanish. By the way, if you decide to get this book be forewarned that the first few vocabulary lessons don't have labelled pictures -- what's up with that? I went through and wrote in labels as appropriate. She's also done a couple of more lessons on Mango.

Read Mable Riley to get a taste of Canadian history, and to supplement our read aloud of Anne of Green Gables.. She also disclosed to me that Mable Riley takes place in Justin Bieber's hometown, which possibly counts as a geography lesson.

Attended 3 dance classes, a class in core strength and stretching, a piano lesson, a Cadette Girl Scout meeting, a Scout field trip to Build-a-Bear corporate headquarters.

Weekly Report 2/12/10

Wow, I feel like we've had a normal week for the first time since ... I don't know, October? November?

In spite of the snow earlier in the week -- enough to go sledding, which is way more important than school work -- and in spite of Thalia being sick for much of the week -- which is part of the reason we didn't go see the Percy Jackson movie when it opened at 12:01am today even though the kids thought that seemed like a really, really clever thing to do -- the week just seemed so wonderfully NORMAL.

Maybe it's because, unlike the past 3 weeks, no one was here re-doing a bathroom. This means that we are currently sans bathroom on the main floor, since that one got ripped up and then the guy sort of wandered off, deciding he didn't want to do this sort of work anymore. But that's another story.

Anyway, what did we do with our bounty of normalcy?

First Language Lessons Level 4 -- back into the groove, memorizing Learning to Read by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (which goes nicely with our Civil War studies) and working with prepositional phrases.

Thalia continued working with Analytical Grammar. She's now working on punctuation in quotations. I keep reminding her that whatever she learns in this book, someone will be mightily offended by it, believing that end punctuation outside of the quotation close is a sure sign of the Apocalypse.

RIghtStart E is zipping by for AnnaBeth. She's currently working on multi-digit multiplication. Several of the story problems this week involved figuring out tile, which was timely since we were figuring out tile for the bathroom.

Thalia is in the world of polynomials in her Jacob's Algebra text. Let me pause to say that one of the smarter things we did with Jacob's is purchasing the purchasing the solutions manual on this page. It shows not only the correct answer, but how to GET the correct answer.

Both kids have been using the Mango language programs available online through our library's website. AnnaBeth is working on French, and Thalia is starting on the Spanish (which is all review right now).

Thalia's co-op Science class was cancelled due to the snow. They're going to continue on schedule, though, and use the extra "make-up" week as a bonus at the end of the course. They're working on astronomy right now, so most of it's review for Thalia. One of the experiments has to do with black holes, and is essentially the same thing she did when she lead the Space Exploration Interest Patch for her Cadette Girl Scout troop.

Thalia got back in the swing of Jump In Writing This involved finding the computer file with the last paper she wrote (about 2 months ago) re-reading it, and realizing that she didn't really like it after all. Thus we see what happens when we set aside a piece of writing for a little while so we can read it with fresh eyes.

Latin has fallen off the radar.

In History we're still parked on the Civil War. We really need to move past this point, as we have another 100-plus years to cover by next fall. Maybe when we finish up our current read aloud (Across Five Aprils) we'll declare that we're done with it.

i think those are pretty much the highlights for this week's school work. Today we'll be ice skating, or going to see Percy Jackson during one of the morning showings. Or maybe both. Either way, a good ending to a good week.