So, we finally got school started "for real" this week. We've been doing reading, writing and math over the summer to stay on top of things and I had intended to start last week full-steam ahead, but some lovely little critters named LICE decided to pay us a visit. My entire week last week was spent picking nits out of heads!
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| Happy 7th Birthday to Bryson! |
We are using much of the same curriculum as last year. I did have to go back and redo much of Kylie's work, but I think we've found things that fit her well. I have combined Jayden and Kylie this year for science and that's going well. Everyone is studying Earth Science this year. It's nice to have everyone on the same topic.
So..... here's the rundown.....
Reading:
Jayden: Discussed The Giver and started Animal Farm.
Kylie: Finished Gilgamesh and started Tirzah
Rylan and Bryson read age level appropriate books of their choice.
Math:
Jayden is working through Math Mammoth 6A. He is struggling a bit with making careless errors. We're trying to fix that.
Kylie is on lesson 21 of MUS Delta. We had to slow way down this week as she's resisting learning math. It's a challenge for me to encourage her because I'm not that fond of math either! We do our best though!
Rylan completed the introduction of times tables to 12 this week in MM3a.
Bryson is working on shapes and fractions in MM2b.
Writing:
Jayden continues on in WWS1. We have WWS2 to beta test, but we won't get to it for a bit. My children are NOT natural writers so we seem to move more slowly through things than other people. Jayden does better when I work with him so he's not real independent here yet.
Kylie is not ready for WWE4 so I started Writing Strands 3 with her. This is going much better. She hated dictation and the reading was a bit too much for her in WWE. She wrote a paragraph this week about a cheetah. It turned out well I think. She balked at writing in cursive or typing it though. Made me realize she needs more work in both areas!
Rylan is not ready for WWE3 so I also put him in Writing Strands 2. Rylan detests writing so we have to take it very slow. We sometimes only get a 1/2 lesson done, but he's doing it. He does not like all the concentration and effort it takes him to write.
Bryson started WWE2. It went well this week even though he felt he needed to complain about dictation. I'm guessing part of that is from hearing the others do the same!
Latin
Jayden continues on First Form Latin. He's a bit rusty from taking a break this summer!
I've decided to put Latin aside until Kylie's math improves. We're spending the extra time on math.
Rylan started Prima Latina this week and loves it! This kid has an affinity for languages! He's even teaching himself Spanish!
Japanese
In light of our future, I've decided to start the kids in Japanese. I'm hoping that just a bit of exposure will help us. I debated for about 6 mos. about how to go about this. I've researched until I'm blue in the face. I finally (after all that) decided on Rosetta Stone (which I was dead against at the onset). It just seemed the easiest to me at this point. I don't know Japanese, we don't know any native Japanese speakers and I just need something that will expose them to a bit of it before we head over. So, the kids (and Greg and I) work about 1/2 hour a day on RS.
History
Jayden and the younger boys are studying the Middle Ages this year. Jayden started working through History Odyssey Level 2. He enjoyed this last year so he's able to jump right in. We started a computer based timeline this year as he struggled getting everything on the line last year. I'm reading through SOTW2 for the second time with the younger two. (They were quite young when we did it 3 years back). Kylie is studying Ancients this year and I decided to use Mystery of History with her. She loves lapbooking so I got the lapbook that goes with it. This is an excellent way for her to process info.
Science
Like I said earlier we are all studying Earth Science this year. We are using Elemental Science's Grammar and Logic levels. Last year Jayden was mainly independent with this, but this year I'm combining the two older kids so that we can read and discuss together. I just think it's more meaningful if you have someone to discuss with. I really dropped the ball with Jayden in history and science last year so I'm trying to improve that this year. This week the older two learned about formation of stars and the universe and the younger two learned about asteroids, meteors and comets. We did a fun chocolate experiment to see if we could calculate the speed of light, but ours didn't work out. I found this YouTube video though of someone who did it and it worked so we pretended that was us! | ||||||
| Having lice turns into a science lab! |
I haven't quite figured out what we're going to do for this. I did just pick up Kay Arthur's How to Study Your Bible for Kids I'm going to work through that with some kids at church. Thinking we may do it at home too. I really want the kids to start to learn how to study their Bible. We are reading through Randy Alcorn's Heaven for Kids and I'm also reading a missionary story each day out of Missionary Stories with the Millers. The kids LOVE to hear stories of missionaries.
Logic
Jayden and I started Critical Thinking Book 1 this week. It's pretty basic right now, but I think once we get into it he's going to enjoy it.
Kylie is enjoying Mindbenders and I also have her in Logic Liftoff. She doesn't enjoy that as much, but I think it's great.
Rylan started a little work in Logic Countdown and Mindbenders this week.
Art
After about a year hiatus we are going to try hard to do some art this year. We started with black glue outline water colors. We did the glue outline in the morning and painted with watercolor later in the day after the glue dried. Here's where I found this project.
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