Wrapping Up Week 11 (2016-17)

Posted on September 24, 2016 by Deanna

As we get further into this first year with Classical Conversations, I’m starting to feel like it’s not going to be a great fit for our family. I think it’s a great program, especially if you like having someone else plan your year. My problem is just that I still want to do my own thing, and doing CC on top of all that is proving to be a bit much, primarily because we lose most of Monday each week. We already lose most of Fridays for the kids’ various music classes (choir, handchimes, composer study, and various others), so that leaves us just three days to try to squeeze in everything else I want to do. (And I’m not even covering a science curriculum this year!)

This week was even crazier, as we had a field trip on Thursday. Thankfully, the boys are both really good at working independently, and for the most part they are diligent about getting started and doing their best without too much prompting from me. I had actually forgotten about our field trip when I wrote up their checklists for the week, yet they still managed to accomplish everything by Friday afternoon.

And our field trip was SO worth it. We’ve been to Riley’s Apple Farm before, but this was the first time we’ve attended one of their “homeschool days.” The kids got to learn about life on a homestead in the late 1800’s by participating in the many chores and activities a child living then would have done. They helped build a log cabin, sawed wood, beat rugs, pounded coffee, did laundry, hauled water, made rope, pressed cider, wrote fancy letters with a feather pen, and so much more.

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What We Did This Week

Bible

Now that Elijah’s got his Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course he’s not quite as eager to get through his VP Bible Course, but he’s still plunging ahead beyond my expectations. This week he completed more than twice the lessons I had scheduled, finishing up the 10 Commandments, completing the entire unit on “Aaron and the Golden Calf,” as well as “Moses Gets New Tablets” and starting in “The Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant.” At this rate, he should finish Genesis – Joshua by Thanksgiving.

History

This week we read Chapter 13: The Birth of a Nation in The Light and the Glory for Children, covering the Continental Congress’ appointment of George Washington as the leader of the Army, the failed Canadian campaign, the retaking of Boston, and the vote for Independence.

We also watched four episodes of Liberty’s Kids:

#8 “The Continental Congress”
#9 “Bunker Hill”
#10 “Postmaster General Franklin”
#11 “Washington Takes Command”

Literature

I read The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz aloud to all the kids. It was a sweet story about a girl whose family has left Gettysburg to live in the “Western Country.” I had never read before and chose it for this week because in flipping through it I had seen that George Washington was in it briefly. However, it is actually set after the Revolution, so I wish I’d saved it for later, because we have lots of other books set during the War that I want to try to read. (For instance, Guns for General Washington by Seymour Reit is about Henry Knox transporting the cannons from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston to help retake the city. It would have been perfect for this week, but now I’m trying to figure out whether to try to squeeze it in or just save it for our next time through the history cycle.)

Biography

Since we only had two full days at home, this was a good week to watch a Torchlighters DVD. We watched The William Tyndale Story and the accompanying documentary, which helped all of us appreciate our easy access to a Bible in English.

Writing

all-things-fun-fascinating The boys finished up Lesson 3 in All Things Fun and Fascinating, writing their own version of the old fable “Belling the Cat.” It is so rewarding to see how much easier it is for them to write this year after all their hard work last year in their IEW class. This week they only needed to focus on adding “strong verbs,” but both of them automatically threw in other “dress-ups.”

I’m SO glad I decided to use this book this year, and I’m thinking we’ll be sticking with IEW materials for several years to come. I wish I had known about them back when I was teaching in a classroom.