Wrapping Up Week 6 (2016-17)

Posted on August 21, 2016 by Deanna

Since we start our school year early, the first few weeks are just us settling into the “home” part of our homeschooling. Now that summer is starting to wind down, we’re going to start adding in some of the extras that will add some flavor to our year. This past week we got our first taste of Classical Conversations, going to our orientation, meeting the kids’ tutors, meeting the kid’s I’ll be tutoring, and putting together my plan for our first week of Foundations, which starts tomorrow. I’m a little nervous about how CC is going to affect our year. I think the kids are going to love it, and I’m excited about all we’ll be learning. I think it’s just the thought of losing a day (well, a morning) at home that feels a little overwhelming. I’m trying to just breathe deeply and take one day at a time.

Pterosaur exhibit NHM This week was another odd one, but again I’m thankful for the flexibility homeschooling provides for our family. We attended a memorial service for a family friend, spent a few hours at the Natural History Museum to see the new exhibit on Pterosaurs, celebrated Nathaniel turning 1, and had an overnight at Grandma’s, so I planned a pretty basic week without any extras.

The boys went through their math, Bible, spelling, and grammar almost completely on their own. Elijah finished up Read, Write, & Type and is ready to join Ian on Wordy Qwerty. We read one more biography for the month, Louis Zamperini: Survivor and Champion from the “Heroes for Young Readers” series. And we listened to the audiobook of Exploring Creation with Astronomy, 2nd Edition as we drove all over town.

Ian has been finishing his work earlier than Elijah, so I decided to give him a little something extra to do. I’ve been wanting him to learn about coding for a while, so I started him off at Khan Academy. He’s going through the course “Intro to JS: Drawing and Animation” to begin learning how to use JavaScript.

Elijah coding Of course, once Elijah saw what he was doing, he wanted to do it as well, and he loved it so much he begs to do coding every day. He logged 188 minutes this week, and would have done more if I’d let him. I’m amazed at how much he’s learned and the drawings he’s created with code. For now, I’m learning alongside him so I can help, but I know it won’t be long before he’s zooming ahead of me and will have to figure things out on his own.