Week 7... Back in the Saddle...

As far as homeschooling, etc., it has turned out to be a pretty good week! Week 6 was really a basic week, and last week we took a mini-vacation (btw: that's a nice big trout The Girl caught--The Boy caught the first one, The Girl caught the biggest, and then we ended up bringing home 15 trout altogether!), but now we're back in the saddle, and going strong!

Language Arts

This week, in addition to spelling work and some word roots, The Boy started Writing Skills (EPS). I am having him use this as a way to build up his writing skills a little - sentence structure, paragraph work, etc. He's done several pages already, focusing on complete sentences versus fragments, and proper capitalization and punctuation, all things that I am seeing as issues in the [remedial] college level essays I grade.

The Girl worked on phonics, of course. She's sailing right through Explode the Code at the moment, doing all the sentence reading herself, and then having me check her answers. She also read aloud from Little Bear's Friend, and did some work in Reading Pathways. I think it is finally getting through her thick little skull (and I mean that affectionately!)... she can read. She was thrilled to be reading a "real book" this week instead of readers, and seemed very proud of herself!

Math

This has been largely a Math Mammoth week, although The Girl and I went through a couple of lessons in her Life of Fred book. She worked on addition, subtraction, with whole hundreds and tens, as well as a review of commutative properties.

The Boy worked on multi-digit multiplication and division, as well as the order of operations. I am getting a copy of Zaccaro's Challenge Math for him as a fun-looking (and challenging) addition to his math studies. He'll do more in Life of Fred next week.

History

We found our history book at last! We read four chapters -- the one we started with was actually chapter 10, to support a reading from K12's Human Odyssey, but then we were enjoying it so much that we backtracked and read the first three chapters, learning about some of the earliest hominids and tools. We chose a few projects to work on from this book, and we'll be adding fairly extensively to our Books of Centuries next week.

Science

Science has been all about exploring nature the last couple of weeks while I reassessed our approach. Then I found How Nature Works, and we all love it! We read about cells and osmosis, and will be doing a project later today that shows osmosis using nothing more than potato halves, sugar, and water. I am also determined that we will read ALL of The Magic of Reality, since we've only read the first two chapters.

Literature

We very much enjoyed The Snow Queen (Amy Ehrlich's version), and the kids instantly saw the connections between the Snow Queen herself and the Witch in The Lion, the Witch & The Wardrobe, which we will start reading next week. I also got a hold of The Questing Knights of the Fairie Queen --a children's version of Spenser's Faerie Queene--and it is a truly gorgeous book... I am looking forward to reading it aloud! We read more of The Graveyard Book, and Pippi Longstocking, along with a few short books, including Will's Quill (about William Shakespeare and a goose), Edgar Allen Poe's Telltale Heart (which I read aloud quite dramatically, and the kids loved), and so forth.

Other

The Girl helped me make mini pumpkin muffins for today's park day. The Boy, with a little help from The Girl, my mom, M, and myself, built a crash test dummy out of old clothes, newspaper and duct tape, according to a kid's tutorial he found on you tube -- yes, I will be posting pictures of it as soon as we get the head done! We finished getting our Halloween costumes ready, and will be picking up jack o' lantern pumpkins this weekend. We have a Halloween party to attend tomorrow evening, and we're looking forward to trick-or-treating, pizza and movie night on the day itself! The rain has stopped for now, and we're crossing our fingers that Halloween will be clear, or at least dry. I've lost 2 of the 5 pounds I had gained back (thank you Bob Harper!), and M is finally getting unemployment money, although why they have only paid us, at least so far, for one of the past four weeks is beyond me... but some money is better than no money!

Overall a good week, and I am looking forward to the next one as well! Hope your week was good too!