Our Week in Review – January 17, 2009

It’s been a week of ups and downs around here.  The school part of the week actually went pretty well, despite everything else.  We skipped school on Thursday to celebrate Mr. Math Tutor’s birthday, so I gave Ga’hoole Girl until 5pm today to have her assignments turned in.  She’s finished all but one of them.  The kids have had pretty good attitudes all week, although Wild Man was a little distracted on Wednesday so we only finished half his spelling lesson.

History – We read about Japan and their growing isolation, the rise of the Manchu in China, and the Moghul empire in India.  We watched a DVR show about Pearl Harbor which prompted Wild Man to check out our world map to look at the relationship between Hawaii and Japan.

Science – Ga’hoole Girl read about lakes in her Earth Science book this week.  We watched a show about acid, so that was the topic of Ga’hoole Girl’s science paper this week.

Language Arts - Ga’hoole Girl – She wrote a poem in second person this week.  She also did some exercises in her Painless Poetry book.  She finished reading The Iron Peacock and wrote a nice little paper about iron works.  There were some capitalization errors in the paper that she will fix next week.  We continue to work through Spelling Power.  As a family, we finished reading A Murder for Her Majesty which is an excellent book.  The kids worked really hard to finish all their schoolwork on Wednesday so they could watch “Much Ado About Nothing” – for fun.  That is one of their favorite movies!

Language Arts – Wild Man – Spelling was a lot of work this week, but he did three lessons when all was said and done.  Because of his dyslexia, spelling and reading just don’t come easily for him.  He’s learning to write in cursive which some people say helps dyslexics not flip letters while writing.  I had him dictate a paper to me this week.  He chose to write about TV and why he likes it.  I’m going to have him dictate to me for a few months, then have him start copying what I’ve typed, and eventually (after spelling is a little easier for him) have him write out his own papers.

Spanish – Ga’hoole Girl is still in Power-Glide.  I ordered Wild Man’s next Power-Glide semester, but haven’t gotten back a confirmation email.  Sigh.  Ga’hoole Girl also checked out two Harry Potter books in Spanish and has been having fun trying to read some of it!

Bible – We’re reading in Exodus as a family.  Ga’hoole Girl learned to do verse and book studies as well as reading another chapter in “But Don’t All Religions Lead to God?”.  Wild Man finished Discovery 2 last week in his AWANA book and is now about halfway through Discovery 3 – Yippee!  Next week is the AWANA Derby, where Wild Man will race the car that he’s working on.

The weather this week has been bitter cold, so the only day that we went anywhere was Tuesday for piano lessons.  Otherwise, we stayed home and warm!  When I got up this morning, it was actually above zero outside!

Mr. Math Tutor has been playing Nintendo a bunch for the kids, especially on his birthday Thursday.  He completely finished Paper Mario last night!!  They were all thrilled.  Now, they can play around in the Paper Mario world, but they’ve defeated the Boss.

I haven’t played much with Ga’hoole Girl’s Nintendo this week because I’ve been on an organizing fit on the days that I felt well (and because she needs a new screen protector).  I cleaned out our medicine cabinets – yes, we had two.  Now, all our meds are in one cabinet and are organized.  I have a whole big bag of old meds to take to the pharmacy to be disposed of.  I’ve been trying to move things around in the kitchen so our pantry (actually, a tall cabinet) isn’t so full.  I can’t really organize it until I just decrease how much is in there.  My next task is to clean up the schoolroom so we can get to the bookshelf again!

So, how was your week?  Check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers for more Weekly Wrap-Ups!