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.