Week in Review #3

I am going to write the week in review on Friday mornings, so that means that Friday will be logged as part of the following week. Last Friday we didn't have school because that was the day we went into town to buy our used van, and it took up the better part of the day.

This "week" will be short, only 3 days, because of the fact that Monday was a holiday and Friday will be logged for next week.


Year 7

Monday

• Labor Day -- no school

Tuesday Day 8 -- light day

• Math Drill Online (thatquiz.org)
• Quia Latina Christiana
• Weekly Chores
• Finished reading He Went with Magellan

Wednesday -- Day 9

Read and discussed:

• Coyote in the Land of the Dead
• Finished chapter 1 of Creed in Slow Motion
• Discussed Gospel a bit

Latin -- nominative plurals
Greek -- first 8 vocabulary words
Logic -- self-supporting statements -- reading and exercise
Math -- review of division and divisibility -- made chart

Read Independently:

• about Mayans (from CK 5)

Notes to Myself:

• Start reading Francis Xavier
• Find a read-aloud.
• Poetry
• Art study -- saints?
• Use Magnificat to find themes and readings for the day.

Thursday -- Day 10

Read and discussed:

• Julius Caesar (from Core Knowledge 5)

Math -- long division
Greek -- prepositions "in" and "on"

Read/Did Independently:

• Thatquiz (Algebra)
• Copywork "I am the Alpha and Omega..." (RV) -- discussed this
• Chapters 1-2 He Went with Vasco de Gama
• Chapter 1 -- Francis Xavier and the Seven Seas
• Drawing

Notes to Myself:

• Starting CIMT for Math
• Vary reading with "output" type work in independent study time

General Summary for YEar 7

• Kieron continues to spend 1-2 hours a day making cartoons -- a long-abiding interest of his now. He is definitely getting more sophisticated in humor and turn of phrase, and his spelling and construction is better too. So I am sort of counting that as writing.
• We still aren't really working at full cylinder but next week will probably start -- no holidays, nothing much going on.

Kieron's copywork. Can you tell which is mine, ie the model? LOL. We have dysgraphia on both sides of the family. This is a nice baseline.

Year 1

• Aidan did a couple of super -short reading and math lessons.
• Paddy and I invented a reading game. One thing was that I put action words on little pieces of paper and then we followed them by reading them, and had a sword battle.
• He also wrote his blog and had me write down the scores of a Pokemon battle.
• Both of them worked a little in their handwriting books.
• Both played Starfall a couple of times.
• I read Paddy lots of books. We usually have 2-3 story sessions a day, and usually I try to work his phonics lesson into the reading, though in stealth mode.
  

Notes

• Aidan is DEFINITELY getting better at sounding out words, IF he will only sit still. He seems to think we are playing Fugitive Guy when it is time for a reading lesson. If he were Paddy's age I'd drop it like a rock and maybe I still should, but he's nine, even if functioning as a five year old, and I feel I should be doing things with him. But "should" is one of those loaded words that seem to lead to frustration.
• Paddy is actually reading at a pre-primer level.

Aidan "working" on Daddy's old computer.

Day 78

Sean:

• Greek
• Vocabulary
• Algebra 1st quarter test, first half (89 % so far)
• Screwtape Letters
• The Life that Changed the World
• Stories from Virgil

Kieron hasn't done anything yet but I will have him do math and handwriting later.

That's about it!

Day 77

Second to last day before we stop for the holidays!

Today Kieron had a pretty easy time with math; Sean did the second part of the summary of chapter 7, and seemed to have a bit easier time of it. Tomorrow he's supposed to do the test for Kolbe's first quarter, and then we are done.

He read Screwtape Letters; Church's Aeneid; and The Life That Changed the World. He did Greek and Vocabulary.

I am not sure if Kieron did any formal schoolwork besides the math.

We had to rush to get to Aidan's speech therapy. It was set for 1:30 at the local school, but there was an ice storm outside and it is supposed to turn into real snow later on. So I called the school and she asked if we could come early since she had free time.

It was a good meeting. The SLP has been worried because this is only the second therapy session all this school year. She went away for over a month and they didn't have a replacement, and then we went away for a couple of weeks. There were also some specialist appointments in town which couldn't be rescheduled, and the SLP only comes up here for one day a week. But anyway, she had printed out a spreadsheet to check off work on goals (a kindred spirit! she likes forms!) and she was also impressed by his level of work this time as compared with last time. He was restless last time in September and she was rushing his answers so she didn't get a good sense of what he was like. This time was more representative.

He has had a genuine developmental advance though. He was able to categorize things by what you do with them (things you eat, things you wear, things you play with) -- he even "discovered" the categories himself when she showed him four things like: orange juice, banana, toast, icecream.

Now the four younger boys are outside and Clare is playing the violin.

Day 76

Quick academic day today.

Sean didn't have math since he finished the chapter last week. So he did Latin, Greek, and vocabulary. He read Screwtape Letters and Church's Stories from Virgil. He narrated from both of them. Then he did his weeklies and I had him copy out another Scripture section from King of Kings.

Kieron did math (he's been distractable recently and struggling with this chapter on decimals which is pretty easy stuff -- he thinks it's because he's been staying up too late watching films and I suspect he is right). I think that is about all he did; right now we're getting ready to go to the library.

It's supposed to snow 18 inches tomorrow so we are going to get new snow shovels too.

We have had several family discussions on the various movies we have been watching so I think that counts for narration and lit analysis too.

Learning Log

Strewing works. I got those weather books from the library and pretty soon Kieron came up with one of them and wanted to try one of the experiments. So this evening he did it (it involved making steam come out of an empty soda bottle to show how clouds formed). He had trouble at first, and Clare ended up helping him.

Paddy asked a bunch more questions tonight as we read through Bible Stories to Read Aloud.

The older kids watched The Village (Sean hadn't seen it). Earlier, Mary Poppins was on regular TV and Aidan just LOVED it; thought it was hilarious. Aidan played with playdough this afternoon; we also made a puzzle together; and he found his brace and was SO proud he kept bringing it up all evening.

Brendan has been discussing plans for the future with me and has in general been more open and communicative (and restless too). I wish I was better at this mothering thing but I don't think parents have to be perfect to raise OK kids.

Sean weightlifted with his dad. It is interesting that he actually seeks Kevin out every other day to get him to spot him. In other words, he has internal motivation for this, for whatever reason.

Just a few things I wanted to note. I am trying to pay a bit of attention to the natural things going on around here. Oh, and I keep forgetting to mention that Clare and Sean have been on a Scarlet Pimpernel trail -- we have three of the books around the house and they have been reading those, along with Clare playing the Scarlet Pimpernel musical tunes from YouTube again and again. She continues to read the Aubrey/Maturin books too and comment on them as she goes.

Winter has such a nice pace. I don't know anything nicer than being snowed in, with a fire going, lots of books around, limited travel (only simple local errands where you meet the familiar local people), and projects in various stages of completion all over the place. By spring we're ready to be a bit more active, but winter, when Aidan's not sick, is definitely a delight (so far he has stayed healthy, Deo Gratias).

Day 71

Sean

• Algebra chapter 7
• Greek
• Vocabulary
• Discovery of New World
• Stories from Virgil
• Screwtape Letters

Kieron

• Math -- decimal place value
• Writing curves -- focus on fluency
• Read Christmas Supplement in Faith and Life
• Greek
• drew a dragon from the Ralph Masiello book... with Paddy watching admiringly.

I find that Kieron has read all of the Jesse Tree, plus most of Nicholas the Wonderworker, and the Glorious Impossible and the book on How Artists View Nature. So I went and dug out some more Advent-related books and put them in a basket to pull from during the next week or so. I will try to list them some other time.

Aidan and Paddy

• Handwriting without Tears Letterforms
• Numbers games (counting, adding, subtracting puzzle cards)
• Drawing lines (from Kumon tracing workbooks)
• I read Aidan some Bible stories
• Paddy -- several books

Aidan's OT came and they did cranio sacral therapy and worked some more with the letterforms. Aidan has severe problems making diagonals and particularly, joining them. He can't make the lines go the right way even with a model in front of him, even if he gets to actually place the lines on the model. So we are working mostly on A's and N'.

The older boys went outside and sledded for a long time.

Then I took Brendan and Kieron to the library and the store. Brendan and Kieron bought a couple of things at the market, and at the library I got some books about weather and continental shifts, written for children, for Kieron's science focus this month.

Now they are upstairs playing a ball game.

I made some cards using these Advent Reflections for the Jesse Tree. I am trying to figure out a way to put them up but haven't managed yet. I have already made all the ornaments but Kieron wants to wait until we get the Christmas tree, to hang up the symbols. So for now I thought we could just have a sort of Montessori nomenclature-type activity where we match and use them as topics for discussion.

Clare got some Christmas music from the library to put together a CD for the swing dance over at the parish hall after Christmas. So we are listening to this now in the background.