Monday, April 28, 2008

Weekly Report

This was one of those weeks where it feels like a miracle that we homeschooled. I had a lot of other things going on, but am determined to make schooling a part of our everyday life, busy or not. We were much better about spending the mornings doing seatwork, which really helped.

Read Aloud: The Bronze Bow seems to be growing on them, but we aren't getting in a chapter a day, which is what I'd like to see happening. We aren't far enough into it yet that the kids beg me to read it and it keeps falling off the radar. But we did read three more chapters this week and the boys decided that they do want me to finish reading it to them. So I'm glad we persevered. We also finished listening to the 11th book in the Series of Unfortunate Events. On to Book the 12th!

Writing: I completely forgot to post about this last week. This week we tackled some of the challenges of writing descriptively. When I mentioned that Kimball was struggling with this, Mindy suggested describing things that we had tangibly in front of us, so we took on a pineapple. We touched, smelled, listened to, looked at, and tasted a pineapple, then we wrote about it.
Henry chose to write a poem: (his spelling is cuter than mine, but I'll include a translation below.)

Pineapples are yummy
I love to eat them so
And even though they're kind of spicy,
I eat them anyway.
The end.


Kimball opted for a paragraph:

Additionally, Kimball wrote a book report on The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. We'll post that separately.

Math: Kimball completed Saxon 94-97 and aced his assessment. He was very overwhelmed with the drill that had 100 problems on it, even though they were easy problems. I have noticed this before and tried to help him cover up all but one row while he worked. I'm not sure if the issue is sensory overload, if it's tied to his Asperger's brain at all, or if it's just typical second grader, but he seemed to shut down when it was time for the drill. He did finish it in the end (with no mistakes) but it took A LOT longer than it should have. Any suggestions?
Henry wrote his numbers to 100 and continues to improve in his subtracting. I love watching him gain confidence in his own abilities.

Copywork: Kimball copied Alma 32:21 on faith. I did not take a picture of it before I left town. I mentioned last week that Kimball struggles to complete this unless he is highly motivated (translate: bribed). This week's copywork was a bit shorter and some of the days he did fine. Actually, he seems to do fine the first couple of days, so maybe I should change the verse daily instead of trying to have it double as a memorization exercise? I hate nagging him to finish. Henry copied the First Article of Faith. He loves doing copywork. I need to go get some of the lined paper for kinders. Ian is getting better at his name and at making the letter I properly.

Science: No nature walk this week. We all missed that. We did work in the garden. Henry got really excited about weeds and cleared out all the weeds by the trashcan. He is hoping for some weeds in the garden soon, so that he can pull them out! We observed that our plants are continuing to grow and a couple of them are blossoming now. We planted cucumbers this week and researched organic fertilizer. Daddy promised to fertilize and water while we are out of town this week.
Daddy also did a lesson about yeast and gluten with lots of chemistry. Then the boys and I made bread. And even though I do this once or twice a week, this time the dough over-raised and went yeasty. At least we had talked about that during the lesson, so they knew that the yeast had gotten so bulky that it broke the gluten bonds and collapsed the bread. Yuck.

P.E.: Martial Arts for Kimball two days. He is really improving in his skills. We are working on when it is appropriate to use said skills. We spent one day jogging our age in laps around the cul-de-sac. The boys did a great job and even let me off the hook before I got to 34 so that I could go in and make lunch for them.

Reading: Watch for our book list post, coming soon. We also paid a trip to the library and got as many books as they would let us check out.

History: On Thursday our new books came! We are so excited. I hope to get some lessons planned and deliver at least one this week. We will be working on history through the summer so that we can cover everything we want to before the fall. Luckily, we've done quite a bit on our own on Old Testament and Ancient Greece already.

Music: I forgot this one last week, too. Kimball is making great progress in his piano and enjoys practicing every day--some days twice. He and I are working together to be consistent in counting. Henry is anxiously awaiting the fall, when he gets to start piano.

Hymn of the Week: Lead, Kindly Light Hymn 97. Since we were focusing on faith this week, this was the perfect song. I love the end of the first verse that says, "Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene--one step enough for me!" So often I beg the Lord to let me see the distant scene, but our faith is strengthened as we move forward one step at a time, relying on Him and trusting that He will lead us to the best place.

Family Principle: Respect. Again, we discussed this in Family Home Evening. We set goals for ourselves this week to:
  • Continue to develop the habit of daily morning and evening personal prayers
  • Have family devotional (scripture study) every day--not just on Daddy's work days
  • Try to think about Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father throughout the day and do what they would want us to do.
We did pretty well at these goals, although we did miss Saturday for scripture study. I noticed Henry this morning go back to his bedside to pray about an hour after he got up and was proud of him for remembering and acting on it. To support our focus on this principle, we chose copywork verses and the hymn along the same theme.

Scripture Study: We finished Alma 12 and started Alma 13. We talked a lot about the priesthood of God--how it is given and received, how to prepare to receive it, and what it is used for. I taught the boys "A Young Man Prepared" one day after scripture study as we discussed their need to prepare for this important responsibility. We decided to make that song our hymn of the week for next week, even though it's not in the hymn book.

Life Skills: Kimball stayed for the entire process of making bread, and read through the recipe, giving me directions. Kimball and Henry both learned how to vacuum in straight lines this week. Kimball also made peanut butter-mnm cookies for Pack Meeting with very little help from me (they did start out as premade dough from a fundraiser, but he learned how to place them on the cookie sheet, press them with the fork in a criss-cross fashion, decorate with mnm's, bake, and cool on a rack.)

Cub Scouts: Kimball received his Bobcat award at Pack Meeting this week. I was serving at a wedding reception, but Daddy was there to see him receive his award.

Having Fun: We went to the park on Friday with some friends from Church. We rode bikes in our cul-de-sac. We played Golf, War, and Connect Four.

1 comment:

Ice Cream said...

Sounds like a great week even if it seemed tough to get through it all. And I had no idea that pineapples were spicy. =)