Wrapping Up Week 10 (2015-16)

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Deanna

I love the feeling of a week well done. We were still finishing up school at 4:00 Friday afternoon (unexpected circumstances wiped out most of Thursday), but we got through everything I had hoped to complete, and the boys were still working with a good attitude right up to the very end. That right there just made my week. Everything they accomplished was just icing on the cake.

Preschool

After last week’s emphasis on blocks, we moved on to play dough this week. All the kids found a spot at the table at some point during the week, but Elijah and Arianna put in the most hours for sure.

Arianna really wanted to spend time on Reading Eggs this week, and to my surprise she specifically requested to do lessons she’d already done. Since I’ve been concerned that she was flying through lessons without really absorbing what was being taught, I decided to reset her lessons all the way back to the beginning. She really liked going through them again with the extra boost of confidence that comes from knowing what to expect. I felt a little bad at erasing the progress she had made, but I think it was the right decision.

Science

Our lessons this week in Our Weather & Water (from God’s Design for Heaven and Earth) had to do with exploring the ocean. This is a topic that has fascinated Ian in the past, so much of it was review. Elijah joined us in reading the lessons, and then all the kids enjoyed watching Bill Nye the Science Guy: Ocean Exploration. We also talked again about Dr. Robert Ballard, probably best known for finding the wreck of Titanic, who is one of the world’s leading ocean explorers. He happens to be an old friend of my dad’s, so we’ve enjoyed following his work over the years and checking in with his Nautilus Live website to see what’s currently being explored and studied.

Read Alouds

We’ve continued doing a lot of reading over the last couple weeks. Ian’s Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course had him scheduled to read The Minstrel in the Tower by Gloria Skurzynski over the past two weeks, but he enjoyed it so much we flew through it in a couple days. Then we moved on to some of my own historical literature selections.

We started with The Little Duke by Charlotte Mary Yonge. I was unfamiliar with this classic, but it is one of the books scheduled for Ambleside Online Year 2 and it fit with the time period so I thought we’d give it a try. Ian surprised me with how much he enjoyed the book, and we finished it early as well, moving on to King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green. We only got through the first part of the first chapter this week, but that was a perfect intro and led us to watch The Sword in the Stone for family movie night, which all the kids enjoyed.

For fun reading, we continued in James Howe’s Bunnicula and Friends series with The Celery Stalks at Midnight and Nighty-Nightmare.

Independent Learning

Both boys continue daily drills on xtramath.org, and this week Elijah finished up the first grade lessons on CTCMath.com. I debated several options for what to do with him at this point.

Stick with CTCMath and move on to 2nd grade?
Go back to lessons and practice book pages from MEP?
Take a “break” by switching to Life of Fred?
or let him do what Ian’s doing for 2nd grade and dive into Teaching Textbooks Math 3?

I narrowed it down to the first and last options just because the other two would require more from me than I can consistently give in this season and then asked him what he would prefer. He decided to join Ian on Teaching Textbooks. Since that’s my long-term curriculum plan at this point anyway I decided there wasn’t much point in trying to put it off just because technically he’s only in Kindergarten. I doubt he’ll have any trouble based on what Ian’s done so far, but if at some point it gets too hard we still have other options.