I won't bore you with pictures of their math work this time, but I do want to remember at least a little of what we worked on in the past couple of weeks.
The kids started their enrichment classes the week of the 13th. So we now have a much busier schedule and things are a lot crazier than the week before. On various days and at various times the boys have a sports class, an art class, Greek and Latin Roots class, and chess club. We started the week off south of our house on a fun field trip that the kids loved. I even took Annika out of school for it, thank goodness she liked it or I would never have heard the end of it.
Anyway, that about covers the fun stuff that we do, let's get down to business.
Literature/Reading:
Harry is reading Little Princess and doing some work on it. I think I've said before that Harry hates all books I recommend until he actually begins reading it. I'm trying not to let the work he's doing on the book ruin the experience of reading it so I'm having him do about half the work required.
I also let him choose his other reading. I wasn't at all sure what he'd pick, but I was willing to consider whatever it was. Actually, I wasn't. But he didn't know that. And in the end he picked The Fellowship of the Rings. Go Harry. I pretended to think it over and told him, "okay, I guess."
Sam finished Children of Noisy Village and I had to scramble to find something else for him. One downside to using the library for a lot of our literature is that it sometimes doesn't come when I expect it to. Anyway, I got an adaptation of Beowulf for him. He really loved it. I like having him read books that tie into his history lessons. I think it's so cool that he likes stories and can recount them almost verbatim. He also read Jumanji and spent some time drawing pictures of animals in his house. I asked Sam to narrate Jumanji and he spent about seven minutes on the first three pages of it. I tried to write as he narrated, but it was really hard to keep up.
Math:
Harry finished his Singapore Math book. It was 2B, so I knew he'd fly through it once we got started. The best part is that he really likes doing his work again. Math-U-See was one of the first curriculum decisions I made and it really didn't occur to me that it might be a problem. I'm so glad that eventually I was willing to reevaluate it and find something better. Harry finished the book on Wednesday, but since I didn't want to start 3A on Thursday, I printed some division worksheets off and gave them to him to work on. We'll start the new book on Monday.
Math-U-See is still working for Sam, though. I do kind of wonder if I'm going to have to switch him too and if I should do it now or wait until there is a problem. I'm leaning toward later. Last week he worked on estimation and this week skip counting by two's. He breezes through pretty much everything he does and it seems to stick, so that's good.
Grammar & Spelling:
I'll talk about Sam first. He's doing fine. He's using First Language Lessons. I went through and selected certain lessons in year one and then we'll move onto the second year. Sam has memorized a couple of poems and we've gone over our address a few times. Spelling Workout isn't exciting and it's probably a bit too easy for him, but we'll finish it and move on.
Now, for Harry. I finally got Harry's grammar books. They are part of the Michael Clay Thompson language arts program. Harry is on Grammar Island and we've read the first few pages. So far, so good. Harry likes goofiness in his lessons and likes lessons that we talk though, so it seems like a good fit. But, we're only on page 17, so I hesitate to give it a "this-is-the-best-program-ever" review. Give it time. Harry's spelling program is called Working Words in Spelling. For some reason he hated Spelling Workout and really likes this. So, we're doing this instead.
History:
Let's see. Harry has read about Japan opening to trade, the Crimean War, Italy becoming a country and The Taiping Revolution. Seriously, SOTW 4 is all over the place. But Harry likes it. He's making connections all over the place and I like that. I almost forget sometimes what he's already read about and he'll ask me questions and it'll throw me a bit. Clearly there are worst things to worry about.
Sam read Beowulf, he's learning about Justinian and Theodora, St. Augustine and the Celts. SOTW 2 at least stays somewhat the same. I still really like both programs. The biggest problem Sam has is that his teacher keeps forgetting to do the fun projects in his book. But I'm working on it. He also read Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady. I made the big mistake of asking him to write about the book. Remember when I told you that he gives these amazing narrations? He only does that if I write it. Writing is not his favorite thing. But that's okay, he's only seven.
Science
Both boys did some science last week, but somehow we skipped this week. That's okay, Singapore Science is challenging and I'm okay with taking it slow. I would however like to make more of an effort to make those all important connections between what they are reading in their books and real life.
Anyway, that's the basics. My goal for the next few weeks is to add all of the fun things in, including making pizza, illuminated letters and mosaics. Those I will take pictures of.
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