Our Week In Review - 9/27/2008

This week we focused more on "input" than "output" since the kids were both sick, "input" referring to taking in information with "output" referring to producing work (workbooks, papers, etc.). We spent a lot of time this week watching movies and reading and far less time doing things. This is another advantage of home education - we can work around sick kids and not have to worry about working harder later to "catch up".

To go with our Sonlight Core, we watched a number of movies this week. The highlight of the week was "Luther". The kids enjoyed it and seemed to understand the main thrust of the movie. We will also be reading about Luther in Story of the World and The World of Columbus and Sons, but I decided not to do a separate read-aloud about Luther since it seemed like overkill. We listened to several chapters from Story of the World. We watched a movie about the Aztecs and Mayas which went along with learning about the exploration of the New World by the Europeans. We also watched the first part of a movie about Shakespeare. The kids are interested in seeing a Shakespeare play on DVD, so we'll probably watch "All's Well that Ends Well" next week on Netflix Instant Viewing.

Mr. Math Tutor read the last of I, Juan de Pareja to us this week and we went online to read about Diego Velasquez and Juan de Pareja, both Spanish artists. If you aren't familiar with them, click on the links for more info. Wild Man finished Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone and is planning to start reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets next. This works out well since Core 7 doesn't have readers at his level. I think the full set of Harry Potter books will keep him quite busy. Ga'hoole Girl is reading the Lord of the Rings books and has been rereading some Ga'hoole books for fun as well as to get ready for her paper.

Both kids kept up with math and Spanish this week, but grammar, writing, etc. got set aside for the week. We didn't cook much this week, but the kids watched several episodes of "How'd That Get On My Plate?", "Good Eats", and "Ace of Cakes" (which isn't as educational, but super fun).

The big activity for the week around here was getting ready for the rummage sale. That was totally the kids' idea and their doing. In fact, they are manning the rummage sale right now, while I'm blogging! Both kids have much cleaner and emptier rooms now than last week!

I don't have real big plans for next week. We'll do some of the election stuff that we missed this week and try to finish Sonlight Core 6. In a couple of weeks, we're going to Chicago to check out the museums for a few days. Of course, there won't be any learning going on - wink, wink.