Our Week In Review – 9/18/2010

Week 3 is not going to do down in the history books as one of our most stellar weeks.  I had headaches all week, making it hard to work with Wild Man the way I’d like to.

Wild Man

History/Geography – We were still reading about the Pacific Islands until Thursday and we never got around to the map activity I had planned.  PWM and Wild Man did read about Australia finally on Friday!  We called watching Top Chef educational this week because it was held in Singapore.  Last night, we ate at Outback since we’re starting to study Australia!  Maybe not truly authentic, but it was a nice meal.

Spelling – This is where we’re having the greatest frustration.  Wild Man seems to have forgotten just about everything he learned last year!  I think that I”m just going to have to go to the beginning of Book 2 again and reteach the information,  but more quickly.  We’ll see how it goes.

Writing – We are now doing stories in IEW.  It took three days to watch the whole video section, but we got through it.  On Thursday, Wild Man started his story (a rewrite of The Boy Who Cried Wolf).  We were going to finish it yesterday, but never got around to it.  (Deep Sigh).

Read Aloud – Since we finished The Island Of The Blue Dolphins so early, we are now reading The 21 Balloons, a book from a previous core that we loved!

Reader – Wild Man is reading quite well and getting his reader read without any complaining or getting behind.  He’s also been reading Dragonspell on his own.  Since he enjoyed Henry Reed, Inc. so much, I got one of the sequels from the library.

Music – Band has been going well.  He’s practicing and keeping a practice log, just like he’s supposed to.  He also tried playing the drum kit at church and really liked it, so he and PWM are going to try to get the basement clean so he can borrow a “real” drum kit.

Math and Bible – going along well with PWM.

Rosie Girl

History – Rosie Girl is studying the early Church, prior to Constantine.  She wrote a rough draft of an essay/report about martyrs.  The good news is that there’s not much content for me to edit – the paper is quite good.  She turns in another rough draft on Wednesday which I’ll edit for punctuation and grammar and then a final draft on Friday.

Literature – She’s still reading The Flames Of Rome and wondered in her journal if Nero had a diagnosable kind of madness. 

Geometry – We’re going in to Week 4 of school and Rosie Girl is 60% done with Geometry.  She’s pretty motivated to keep going.

Community Service – She has been learning to use some music notation software from our Worship Arts Director and is now entering some music for her.

Music – Piano lessons started back and Rosie is practicing diligently.  At her electric guitar lesson, her teacher said that she was the only one who had ever learned everything he had assigned in the week.  She’s borrowing an amplifier to make her practicing easier – our little amp is old and tired!

ACT prep – She got a 27 on her practice ACT reading test.  I think she has a few issues with commas (but don’t we all?).

Bible – Rosie Girl’s reading the rules God gave to the Israelites – and saying that it’s boring.  Yeah, well, it is.  But it’s there for a reason.

That was our week.  I’m making a few changes to try to help things go more smoothly.  The main one is that Wild Man is not going to do any written work like spelling or writing on Wednesdays; by the time we do our couple of hours at the Senior Nutrition Site and Wild Man has his percussion lesson, our day ends up being chopped up and it’s hard to find some uninterrupted time for concentrated work.

I’m praying for fewer headaches next week!  Here’s  a major shout-out to PWM for keeping the house running this last week!  Here’s hoping that I’ll be a little more use in the housekeeping department.

So, how was your week?  Check how others have done at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!