Wrapping Up Week 2 (2015-16)

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Deanna

In spite of my great hopes of adding on a little each week, this past week we really didn’t do much more than we had our first week of school. Actually, I think we did even less, because I didn’t attempt any sort of preschool at all. However, our school room/family room is starting to come together, and for that I am thankful. I’ve managed to unpack at least a few boxes of books almost every day, and it’s a vast improvement over last week.

Science

We zipped through our three lessons in Our Weather & Water (from God’s Design for Heaven and Earth), making air currents with hot air from the stove, discussing the difference in weather versus climate, and having fun learning about condensation by breathing on a mirror.

Independent Learning

The boys have found their groove when it comes to their independent work on the computer. They work through their lessons on Reading Eggs, CTCMath.com (Elijah), and Teaching Textbooks Math 3 (Ian) without any problems, and while they’re still trying to catch up to their previous ease on xtramath.org, they definitely saw some improvement this week.

Elijah got started on the Horizons 1st Grade Penmanship set, and thankfully he’s been really receptive to my input. (He had been teaching himself to write letters, some incorrectly, and I was a little worried that he would resist any attempts to retrain those patterns.) The lessons are pretty short, and he’s really enjoying it so far.

I’m surprised to find that the highlight of school for Ian each day is his history lesson. He’s really enjoying the Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course on the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. This week the reading assignment for Level 1 was supposed to be St. George and the Dragon retold by Margaret Hodges, but since we’ve read that book to Ian countless times over the past couple years I gave him another option: D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths. It fit in well with our week on “Barbarian Invasion and Vikings,” plus he was immediately intrigued when the Introduction mentioned Thor, whom he’s come across in super hero books at the library.

A few final thoughts

My goal this coming week is to get my flannel board pieces re-organized. (They got jumbled up in the move). Ian has been eager to start using them to teach Arianna Bible stories, so I want to make that happen soon while he’s still interested!

Oh, and I’m STILL searching for our printer. It must be in some mislabeled box stashed in the garage or a shed, because I have done several thorough searches and it’s just nowhere to be found. Thank goodness for friends who’ve helped me get a few essential printed, but I’m ready to just have ours set up and ready to use whenever I need it!