Our Week In Review–November 3, 2012

It’s been one of “those” weeks here at our little schoolhouse. I was having such awful headaches that I got three days of iv medications at the neurology office early in the week. By Thursday, I was feeling better, but tired. And the migraines restarted on Friday, so now I’m on steroids again.

And, what does this have to do with educating my children? Well, quite a bit, actually. I wasn’t around to keep an eye on Wild Man who needed to do lots of catching up this week, so he ended up going to the shop with PWM on Tuesday. The good news is that Wild Man is all caught up! His biggest educational need these days isn’t his dyslexia, but his focus!

So, here’s how things stand at the moment.

Wild Man

He’s finished the Revolutionary war, read about the Constitution, and is learning about James Madison.  His history biography right now is The Great Little Madison. For literature, he finished reading Mary Jamison, Indian Captive and continued reading some poetry. (We’re not quite together enough right now to actually analyze poetry, but at least he’s reading some.) Overall, not too bad.

Volcanoes were the topic of the week in Science. I would like to have read his Science with him because it’s such a good book, but it didn’t happen this week.

Wild Man is about a week or so away from finishing Revelation for Everyone. After this, we’ll start working through a book on basic apologetics.

He needs to do more Math, but he prefers to do it when PWM is home in case he needs help. He assures me that he knows I can help, but points out that I’ve had lots of headaches lately. Deep Sigh.

Spelling has not been languishing, but it’s not on the front burner, either. We’ve been working on ways for him to learn the words he has trouble with. And he did a few pages of grammar. Yay.

Music is still where Wild Man would like to spend all his time. He loves playing his various guitars and drums. The big music store in Appleton is doing a big emphasis on percussion, so I would like to take Wild Man to one or more of their events. He says he doesn’t want to do their “Science of Cymbals” (which I’m pretty sure is a little science and lots of letting them play the various brands of cymbals so they’ll want to buy them!) but he said he might be interested in doing something to do with hand-drumming. They do have a couple of sessions of hand-drumming and improv circle which sounds very interactive. They are also doing Afro-Cuban drumming which Rosie Girl wants to attend because she’s pretty sure it’s the professor she did Afro-Cuban drumming with this summer. In any case, I hope we can get in a field trip this month.

And, it sounds like he’s going to see The Lion King with his band class sometime in the Spring.

Rosie Girl

She’s getting close to being done with American Government. She tells me that she knows all about the Electoral College now. After reading this book, I’m going to have her read Lies My Teacher Told Me and The Godless Constitution. That will make her done with American Government and she’ll move on to Sociology in the spring.

Rosie Girl took the ACT again on Saturday. She thinks she did OK. She is still working to finish Algebra 2, but she starts her Dave Ramsey Personal Finance in 2 weeks, no matter what!

Rosie Girl is reading Paradise Lost as her literature assignment. She’s not nearly as thrilled as I am. I loved reading Paradise Lost!! Of course, I was a junior in college, not senior in high school. Alas. For last week’s paper, she wrote an essay on how “The Lion King” is different from “Hamlet”. Apparently, some people think the story lines are quite similar. I’d never heard that hypothesis, but Rosie Girl had and debunked it quite nicely in 6 paragraphs. Her current “writing assignment” is to do her personal statement for her college applications. She’s not thrilled.

BYU Japanese is all finished!! It was nice to have Rosie Girl work on an outside course, but we still needed to monitor her workflow, which was frustrating. Now that she’s got her credit from BYU, she’ll do the rest of her Japanese on Rosetta Stone. We still have to keep an eye on her, but it’s easier with Rosetta Stone (which we’ve used before).

Rosie Girl read about Eastern Orthodox Christianity and is starting on Catholicism this next week. Doing World Religions has been good for us. We’ve had a number of really good discussions based on her World Religions’ reading.

And, of course, there’s music. Rosie Girl is practicing for her auditions in the late winter. She’s been doing some actual composing with her composition lessons. Her teacher right now wants quantity, even at the expense of quality – something Rosie Girl doesn’t do so well! But, she has already written two short pieces and gotten some good feedback. I  also have a feeling that she’s going to want to go see The Lion King when she hears that Wild Man is going.

Rosie Girl’s field trip and community service this week was to drive me to the neurology office for my meds. I’m sure she found it quite exhilarating to read while I was getting meds!

So, how was your week? Anything exciting happen? Check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see what others are up to!