Wrapping Up Week 28 (2014-15)

Posted on March 7, 2015 by Deanna

This was supposed to be the week we got fully caught up and back into the swing of things. Then I got sick (again). We did manage not to get further behind, and sometimes that just has to be enough, doesn’t it?

Bible/Circle Time

We finished Part One of Little Pilgrim’s Progress this week, which was cause for celebration. For one thing, I was only requiring Ian to write up pages for our daily reading through the end of Part One. He ended up with a nice little book about Little Christian’s story. The other nice thing about finishing was that we can move at a quicker pace through Part Two since Ian’s doesn’t have to keep up. He often wanted me to read beyond our daily two chapters, but the writing was laborious for him and I didn’t want to make him do more than one page a day. However, I think we’re going to finish Christiana’s story in Part Two much more quickly now that we’re not limited. Ian’s even been asking to listen in the car to the dramatic reading of Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan’s original story) from Answers in Genesis so we can keep going with Christiana’s story when we’re not at home, but I think it only has Part One.

Math

Ian is continuing to do well with our online math programs. We’re almost at the end of our subscription to CTC Math, which I am really going to miss. We may have to come back to it later.

Literature

Now that we finally read “East of the Sun, and West of the Moon” in The Blue Fairy Book, we are officially caught up with our literature selections from Ambleside Online, Year 1 (woo hoo!). We also read Pictures at an Exhibition by Anna Harwell Celenza to learn the story of Modest Mussorgsky’s music by the same title, which the kids have been studying in their composer class on Fridays.

History Cycle

This week we pretty much wrapped up all that I had planned to cover in the first year of our history cycle. We’re still finishing the last few episodes of Friends and Heroes, but we listened to the last few chapters of Story of the World, Vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer and discussed the demise of the Roman Empire. Ian was especially fascinated about the secret burial of Attila the Hun (as was I, since the story was new to me as well).

I also made a rather big decision (and purchase) regarding our history lessons for next year. I know it’s rather early to be talking about next year’s curriculum, but I wanted to share about the great sale going on right now in case anyone else wants to take advantage of it ($100 off!).

Last year other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew had the pleasure of trying out the online self-paced history courses from Veritas Press. Ian wasn’t old enough for the course at the time so we weren’t on the review, but as I’ve heard people raving about them it made me curious. After checking out everything I could find online, I decided this would be a great fit for us for next year. Normally I try to save our curriculum money for things I’ll be able to use with other children in the future, but since I already have a ton of books and resources for Year 2 of our history cycle, I’m not too worried. With a new baby coming and Nico about to give up his morning nap, I’m planning on a very different sort of school day next year. Ian learns really well from videos and computer activities, so I think he’s going to get a lot out of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation class. If you’re at all interested in finding a fun online history curriculum, check out these courses before the sale ends on March 14! (There are 5 altogether, covering the whole spread of history.)

Science

We covered lessons 10-12 in The World of Plants, as well as talking about George Washington Carver. I was kind of disappointed we didn’t get to do anything with our sprouts this week, but it looks like we’ll get back to them soon. If I hadn’t been sick we might have gotten a little more into our study of roots, but all we did was read the lessons in the book and discuss them. Hopefully next week we can have a little more hands on activity!