Weekly Report 8/28/09

MATH

Thalia is working in Jacob's Algebra, and, frankly, it's pretty easy here at the beginning. She's reviewing things like order of operation, and working with 1 and 0.

Annabeth is in RightStart D. Earlier in the week she was working on multi-digit multiplication, and by Friday was doing division. She has about 40 lessons left in this book, and we've discussed whether she'd like to work 4 days per week to finish in about 10 weeks, or 5 days per week to finish in 8 weeks. She said she'd rather work 6 days per week.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Annabeth has started to work on First Language Lessons vol. 4. We're zipping through the lessons, which are mostly review.

Weird coincidence -- Bridgett mentioned rules for capitalization on her blog one day, and the very next day we had a lesson about it in FLL. And I discovered that various style manuals treat prepositions in titles differently, per FLL. I'm pretty sure that Annabeth won't retain that information (that different style manuals have different rules) but it is now firmly fixed in my mind. Although I've managed to live many, many years without having a clue about this, so I'm not sure what difference it will make now.

Thalia was in an "off" week for Analytical Grammar, and thus didn't do any grammar. She only has one season left, and has been asking what she's supposed to do for high school. What, indeed?

In the meantime, the new writing program she asked for, Jump In. Well, actually she hadn't asked for this specific program, but after looking at samples of various choices she decided that this one didn't look too dumb. Writing Strands was one of the other choices, in case you wondered. Anyway, I haven't been that thrilled with Apologia material before -- I think their science books are sort of dippy, and can't make it through a chapter of them without deciding to ditch them -- but maybe the tone is just right for a writing program.

LATIN

Review test week in Latin Alive for Thalia. Annabeth and I haven't started back up in Latin for Children, due to inertia.

HISTORY

I've picked up several history-related books from the library, and the kids seem to be randomly reading them without any over-arching scheme of "this one first, then that one follows chronologically". I've decided that this is a great way to do things, since then we can move ahead in Story of the World as needed, without worrying whether we're reading the "correct" corresponding literature.

Having said that, we haven't read anything out of Story of the World this week. Thalia read an essay in National Geographic's Almanac of World History on European Imperialism, and then outlined it. Our plan is that she will read essays related to our reading in Story of the World, then outline, giving her more depth in her studies and bonus practice in outlining.

SCIENCE

Thalia is gearing up for her co-op science class by reading the material that should be covered before the first class. They'll be studying Physical Science this year (using Apologia, of all things, but at least I don't have to deal with it). She set up an experiment using a battery, some copper wire, and some water ... I was out mowing the lawn at the time, and no smoke billowed out the windows, so I guess it worked.

Annabeth and I have been puttering around with plants. She wants to continue learning botany. I spent part of the week trying to figure out what we'd done with all of the books when we re-did the kitchen. Annabeth spent time looking through the books as we found them, noting interesting projects.

READ ALOUDS

We continue with The Secret Garden and Little HIstory of the World.

OTHER STUFF

Piano, dance, theatre class. The weather was warm this week, so we spent a lot of time at the pool. It's been a fairly cool summer, and we haven't gone to the pool much at all, so we made up for it by going nearly every afternoon this week. After all, we can do Latin when the weather is crummy, but we can't swim and play in the sun much longer this summer.