Our Week In Review – March 28, 2009

We’ve actually had a pretty good week on the academic front.  It wasn’t exactly exciting, but a lot of learning occurred!

History/Geography/Social Science – We are still in the last part of the 1700s.  We are reading in George Washington’s World as well as listening to the Story of the World audio book.  We watched a PBS show on Catherine the Great that dovetailed very nicely with our studies.  Last night, while we were reading, we also did some looking at the globe to understand where the Spanish and Russians had settled in North America.

Language Arts

Ga’hoole Girl continues to do well in her poetry book.  She wrote a science paper for me (more on that later) which had problems with capitalization and punctuation.  From now on, she’s going to type her papers or write out a clean copy so that I know she understands the grammar. 

Ga’hoole Girl started working on her research paper this week.  I had her read the Sonlight research paper guide then gave her the eight week schedule that I had made (revised from Sonlight’s 12 week schedule).  On Wednesday, we talked about what she had read and I answered a few questions.  Today, she told me that her definite topic is “The History of
Books”.

Wild Man’s reading has gotten much better in the last couple of weeks.  Right now, he’s reading Henry Huggins with me – we usually read alternate pages, but sometimes he forgets to stop and reads four or five pages before stopping.  His spelling has also improved tremendously.  He still has to be reminded of the rules sometimes, but the whole subject isn’t such a mystery anymore.

Science – Ga’hoole Girl wrote a nice paper (except for the grammar) on forest fires based on her reading from Earth.  Wild Man has decided that he’s interested in doing some study of space.  When I was gone on Thursday for a few hours, both kids watched a History Channel show on The Outer Planets.  I have also ordered a few books from the library to read with Wild Man about space.  In addition, the kids and I are going to EAA for one day of their Space Week.  It is a day of activities for school kids, but they are happy to just fit us homeschoolers in one of the groups.

Bible – We are still reading in Exodus about the set-up of the Tabernacle.  Mr. Math Tutor and I are constantly impressed at how well our kids listen and how well they can answer the questions.  In addition, the reading often spurs other questions and discussion.

Other – Ga’hoole Girl is practicing madly for piano festival in a few weeks.  She and her teacher chose some rather difficult pieces, but she has made amazing progress.  Wild Man is doing the dance team at church that will be performing at the “Egg-venture” the day before Easter.  Baseball tryouts are coming up soon, so he’s been out practicing his sprinting.  Ga’hoole Girl is going to join the middle school track team this week, so she is also out getting in to shape!

So, there’s never a dull moment around here!  Check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see what others did this week!