Day 46

Another clear day, not quite as cold as yesterday.

Morning Reading:

• a few chapters of Despereaux
• a section from Christ the King on the Spanish Armada
• more of The Lady of Shalott
• I also read several stories to Paddy from an anthology, while Kieron made cookies.

Then there was an extended break of a sort while I found some Mad Libs for Kieron and he played them (Language Arts). Then Paddy wanted to do some. I hung around for a while and then I took a bath.

Review/Study with Kieron:

• MEP chapter 9 -- Areas and Perimeters, 9.1 and 9.2
• Latin -- answering questions on yesterday's reading, in Latin. Discussed ablative
• History -- review questions on the Babylonian Captivity
• Science -- more review -- we've finished Unit 2.
• Grammar -- "Why the English Language is So Hard to Learn"
• Handwriting -- I forgot to mention that yesterday so I'll put it on here today.
  

Thus concludes Week 11.

This weekend my project will have to be writing out some questions I think he will be able to narrate upon.

Aidan worked with his word box and with number matching.

Object of Interest for the Day (Aidan):



This is the garage door light. Aidan has become fascinated with it. He goes out into the (icy cold) garage to admire it. Brendan took the picture for him.

Day 45

A beautiful COLD day, with ice on the puddles around our house.

We are well into our review week, but this is the first day we really reviewed. I remember my first year homeschooling (with a 3rd grader!) when the correspondence program I was using told me to review the material for tests the next week.

I didn't have a clue what that meant so I ended up just dividing the pages of the workbooks already covered into five sections and then covering a section each day.

Since then I haven't really gotten much better at planning review...sigh. I have figured out that it makes life easier to just focus on one subject per day. Today, since we've been skimping Logic recently, we went through several of the past chapters of the logic book and discussed.

In addition:

• 5 more pages of Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• started reading The Lady of Shalott (led to a discussion about rhyme schemes and emphatic phrases in poetry -- I don't know the real word for the emphatic phrases, but we are noticing them quite a bit "Don John of Austria is riding to the war..." ).
• a bit more of Christ the King -- I had Kieron read the rest of the section independently because the grown kids and DH and I were discussing the election ; -).
• Then, I'm counting the election discussion because Kieron is listening in on it and learning a lot about different povs, etc.
  

(Kieron told me that yesterday when Paddy went outside he was reciting bits of Lepanto. This thrilled Clare who is a huge Chesterton fan.)

Then:

• Next section of History -- from here -- World History 1, unit 11 Renaissance Reformation (PDF)
• A section of science reviewing the states of matter (he knows all this pretty well by now). -- from here -- Integrated Science Unit 2 (PDF)
• Math -- dividing by decimals, and mental division of larger numbers. Here is where my goal-setting this summer with him has paid off. I decided that conceptual problem solving was a priority, because he is such a natural at it and was hating "mechanical math" so much. I can't say he jumps for joy every day with math but once or twice he has said this is FUN! Today for example there was a way to quickly divide by halving. For example 224 divided by 4. If you can half it twice you're set. He actually did some extras with 8's and 16's.
  
• Latin - - a translation exercise.
• Grammar -- more filling in verbs in Peter Rabbit. This seems to be quite interesting.
  

I did something different with Paddy -- I asked him to choose 2 of the books from his "school box" and then those were his academics. Sort of a workbooky Montessori, I suppose.

He chose

• MCP Math A
• Handwriting without Tears.

So we did an addition review page and then a page on "S" -- writing them and then reading some words converted to plural by "S".

I think in future I will try this "pick your own workbooks" and then add in some choices for other things I want him to get to occasionally -- fun things I just never get around to initiating like piano play or drawing, etc.

Aidan

• worked with his word box and made a bunch of words.
• He also rode in the wheelchair to the post office with us.

About the PASS download volumes I linked to above. ... this is dry stuff in several ways, folks. It is basically online textbooks geared for high school students with special needs. Not really enough in itself, but I was floundering a bit without some sort of minimum or base from which to springboard. So I am testing these out on Kieron as a sort of review device, for now. They are dull and as CM said "stultifying" on their own, but they seem to be working OK in the context of all the other things we are reading. And they are standards-based, so I can find all kinds of online things to support them. If I had known about them last year I might have had Sean go through some of them last year to get him used to the high school mode of learning ;-) -- but maybe it's just as well we spent that year reading good books, since that is what his new mode of education lacks most right now.

Day 44

Today turned into a conference day. I'll still "count" it since Sean's school has one teacher's half-day each month, and I thought that was a good idea.

Morning Time

• read some of Legend of Sleepy Hollow (hard going with the little ones around)
• finished GKC's Lepanto
• read a bit more of Christ the King.

Independent

• I had Kieron make a breakfast menu (since he said he wanted to have one).
• Went outside
  
• Devised active games with siblings.
• Baking cookies
  

Aidan worked on the puzzle some more.

At the end of the term I usually try to make lists of ideas and plan things so that it's easier for me later on. So this is what I'm trying to do.

Day 43

Morning Time

• 2 chapters of The Blood Red Crescent -- we finished it!
• 2 more sections of Lepanto by GK Chesterton -- very quick stealth lessons on visual imagery and on background notations about some of the scenes in the poem.

Kieron's Monday Computer School

• Thatquiz.org -- dividing decimals
• An online geography game on identifying regions of the US -- this is in preparation for the next unit on pre-Columbian America.
• Weekly housekeeping jobs
• Went outside for a while.
  

Paddy and Aidan

• both played Starfall reading games for quite a while, notably the Dolch sight words matching game, which is good for visual memory AND word recognition.
• Cut up a hundreds chart with scissors (this is actually a good scissors game -- I cut it into strips by tens and then they cut the tens into ones.
• Both worked on an alphabet floor puzzle. Paddy did it once and Aidan has worked on it several times over the last couple of days.

Other Activities

• Paddy and I did some adding games. I wrote 2 sets of numbers from 1-5 on index cards, and then we each got two cards and had to add and see who got the biggest number.
• Then my two boys' (Kieron and Paddy) gaming instincts kicked in and they made a BUNCH of games. In one, we got two cards and had to arrange them so we got the biggest number possible (place value, comparisons). Then we tried it with 3 digits (Paddy didn't know much about numbers over 100 but he got exposed to the concept today). Then we played a few more games of that sort.
• Aidan and Kieron and Clare and I went to the library.
• Quite soon the OT is coming so there will be more activities then.

Last week I read a bunch of Catholic Treasure Box magazines to Paddy. Also, he is still into the Magic School Bus so we have read those a couple more times too.

This is review week (mostly for Kieron since the younger ones are mostly learning in bits and pieces anyway) and next week is for exams so sometime this week I want to start writing those out.

Day 43

We woke up to rain. The forest around us looks like it is melting in autumn colors -- cool grey-greens and delicate fiery tones of gold and orange-brown, set off by the grey sky.

It's Halloween, so today has been a bit different than usual. For one thing, Paddy is still in sugar-shock from yesterday's homeschool party. The kids wanted to be in the rain, so they were in and out all day. This, I count as part of the curriculum which really ought to include more out-of-doors time than it actually does.

• I read 2 chapters of The Blood Red Crescent to Kieron and Paddy.
• Then I read a bit of Chesterton's poem to Kieron.
• Then we looked for outdoors jackets -- haven't really needed to use them before this so they were buried deep. And they went outside a few times (Nature)
  
• Then I had him do math online -- review on order of operations.
• Then I assigned him a written exercise in Latin. He is groaning about it since we do most of it verbally under ordinary circumstances.

That's about it. On his own time he read a bio of St John Bosco (religion, reading).

This week I read Paddy a few science books which I forgot to mention before:

• Zipping, Zapping, Zooming Bats
• MSB and the Beehives
• MSB and Weather

Aidan half-listens to these too.

This week 11 will be review week. My project for this weekend is to figure out what and how to review.