Friday, September 23, 2011

Week in Review 9/23/11

This is my first WIR in a long time. It is our 3 rd week back after a long and fun summer. We usually do some fun schooly stuff over the summer, but this year we mostly played. We did take some cool vacations and field trips to the beach, aquariums, historic sites like Kitty Hawk and the Wright Bros. Museum. We did have a great summer and now we are settling back in to our homeschool routine using some oldies but goodies, and some new stuff too.

Elvis is now apprenticing with his dad learning HVAC and plumbing. He is already epa certified and passed his exams last summer. He is now taking a night class at a local Technical School on heat pumps and split system air conditioning. He loves working with his dad. He is also studying world history this year using Spielvogel's Western Civilization and living books. This week he is studying Egypt. He is reading Pharoah by Eloise Jarvis McGraw.

In addition, he is using ABeka's English Literature as a spine and reading many of the books which are excerpted in that book. This week he worked on Poetry.

We will be doing a half credit Art History course that he needs to fulfill his graduation requirements. We will be using Sister Wendy's Story of Painting, some of the Sister Wendy videos, reading artist biographies and studying works of art as we studybthrough our history text. I plan to start this course in October when his night class ends.

Dr. Kazam is using Sonlight Core W, CLE Reading, Math and Language Arts, Latina Christiana 1 & 2, God and the History of Art and Apologia General Science.

This week she read most of Mara, Daughter of the Nile, we are reading aloud The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, and she is getting used to her new schedule. She finished up some sections in her CLE light units. We are a bit behind in Math, and we will need to work our butts off to bring her up to speed and ready to start Algebra next fall.
Dr. also started taking an acting class at a prestigious group near our home. She loves it. She is making new friends and having so much fun with the practice exercises and assignments she brings home. She will also be in a play in the spring. I am not sure which one as they just did auditions on Saturday and this school does 6 different plays....we are hoping with our fingers crossed that she gets into Winnie the Pooh.

Cubby and Hammy are working together this year (2nd and 4th grades). Using Heart of Dakota's Preparing Hearts for his Glory. I am learning how to use a teacher manual and how to follow what someone else is telling me to do with the kids. I think I am enjoying this so far!

This week we finished reading about Noah and the flood. we used a beautifully illustrated book about The Flood requiired by HOD. It came with a cd with the storybread...so, I read them the pages for the lesson, but they love listening to the cd and looking at the pictures over and over! We finished reading The Hobbit this week too! This was such a fun read. We were sorry when it ended.
We are reading Life in the Great Ice Age. We studied some cave paintings and cave art. We also studied ancient weapons and how arrow heads were made. We also prepared paper to make our own cave paintings. We will do these on Saturday.
We are reading One Small Square:Arctic Tundra. The boys are really enjoying this book. We paid special attention this week to arctic animals especially fox, hares and geese.

This year our poetry focus is on Robert Lewis Stevenson. We have covered 3 poems so far: The Swing, Bed in Summer and Rain. They memorized Rain.

The boys are also working on memorizing Psalm 1. They have the 1st 2 verses down.
They both are working on the CLE light units for Math, Language Arts and Reading. they completed 3 lessons in each book this week. Next week we will shoot for four. If we can complete 4 per week, I will feel that we have accomplished our goals. I love CLE. It is thorough, challenging, reviews plenty, and my kids like it well enough not to complain too much.

Both boys are playing soccer this season, so I guess I went from swim mom to soccer mom.

Today we took the day to clean...clean...clean. We packed up our summer gear and pulled out our sweat shirts and long pants. The kids read on their own, but I needed a home ec. Day.

I am going to try to get some schooling done with Dr. Kazam and Cubby tomorrow. They both need to do some extra math in order to catch up on grade level.

~~Faithe

No comments: