Back in Business!

Well it has been almost two months since I posted anything about homeschooling.  Now that I've decided to forego chemo, I can put my teacher cap back on and get back down to work.  The kids are not so eager to resume the routine (why would they be with all the playing with the cousins, screen time, special treats, etc. they've had for the past 5 weeks?).  I must admit, I also felt a little reticent about getting back into the school groove.  But today, I feel energetic and excited as I review all the work they've done in the past several weeks.  I was so excited about our lesson plans for this year, and my enthusiasm for it all is bouncing back.

While we are behind a couple of weeks from my original schedule, I am confident that we can catch up and not have to extend the school year too far into the summer.  My sister Amy has been great about working with my kids to get some of their work done while I was incapacitated, and she has organized all the equipment and supplies I will need for all of our science experiments this year!  Awesome!

On to the report:

Willoughby Arts Center:

The boys seem to be enjoying this program.  Except, they don't care at all for the additional Hip Hop dance class I signed them up for.  Why, I don't know.  They claim it hurts.  Okay, then.

The favorite parts of this program appear to be music and theatre.  They get to play bongos and learn songs in different languages, and they are working on scripts and scenes in theatre.  Dance class is okay, too.  They are learning about moving your body to different sounds and such, as far as I can tell from their limited descriptions when they get home.  

Visual Arts seems to be the nemesis for both of them, especially Ed.  He got off on the wrong foot with the art teacher, because he drew the following picture:

The assignment was to draw a picture of Clancy the Dog (apparently from some book she read to them) in any location they wanted to draw him.  Ed chose to draw Clancy frolicking through a meat market and witnessing a pig slaughter.  Needless to say, the teacher was taken aback.  She tried to get him to draw a different picture, but being an Aspie, he kept reiterating that he had done exactly what she said to do.  I then told Ed that in the future, he was not to draw any guns, knives, violence or death of any kind while at this art class.  I think that resolved the problem because I haven't heard anything from the teacher.

Solon Center for the Arts:

Miss Christine and Mr. Dusten have different styles of teaching, but the boys have enjoyed this class.  They actually had scripts and she sent actual invitations for their performance.  It was an original production, written by Miss Christine and the kids, entitled Sam & Clarissa's Awesome Adventure, Part 2.  It was mostly about different tall tales.  I was happy I could make the performance, which was October 24th.

Memory Work:

They have reviewed all of last year's poems, and learned Proud Songsters by Thomas Hardy.  They are memorizing lists of prepositions, linking verbs, helping verbs, and personal pronouns.

Language Arts:

We've been working through MCT Grammar Town, which has been a review of the eight parts of speech thus far.  I've given them some additional worksheets to reinforce what we've been reading.

In spelling, we've been working on some various phonics combinations that we hadn't previously covered.  A new thing we are trying out this year is the Vocabulary Study page.  We will do this until we get into MCT Building Language in a month or two.  We still do Spelling City for exercises.

 



We've also been working through MCT Building Poems.  We are reviewing and reinforcing the terminology we learned last year.  The boys also spent time writing down poems with all four of the different feet that we've learned- iamb, trochee, dactyl, and anapest.  This was challenging for them, but they impressed me with their perseverance and understanding of the rhythm.

 

I've decided to give up on handwriting.  I'm tired of fighting a losing battle.  Next year we're going to focus on typing.  Yeah, that's what will do.  My kids are never going to have beautiful handwriting, nor be great artists.  I'm okay with that.

However, they are still practicing cursive writing and are on the letter H.  Here's a sample of Andrew's handwriting:

Reading has gone by the wayside.  The only thing we've read is The Whipping Boy for book club.  One of my main goals is to get reading back on track.

Math:

The boys have been plugging along in MUS and are working on Chapter 8 now.  They've done a few measurement worksheets and some review sheets as well:

This was a Pinterest idea.  King
Gallon, with four quarts, each
with two pints, and each of those
with two cups.  The kids liked this.

 

 

You can see on some of the above papers, Eddie went through a phase of writing his name in various and assorted codes.  I had to try to figure out the code.  Not quite as challenging as Andrew's habit of hiding the letters of his name on his paper and making me search for them.  Fun and games, fun and games.



History:

We are still focusing on the world from the mid to late 19th century. We've covered happenings in India, Japan, China, Italy, and the United States.  We've now commenced a more in depth look at the Civil War.  I'd love to be able to take them to some Civil War sites, but seeing as how we're broke, that ain't gonna happen.  Maybe if we're still doing this in 4 years and we go over this cycle again, we'll be able to take a trip and maybe see some reenactments.  That would be cool.

Another code name

This year is very different from our previous SOTW study.  They actually have to fill out outlines with information from each chapter.  I'm helping them quite a bit for now, but I hope by the end of the year that they can mostly fill these out themselves as we're listening to the CD.  I have to pause a lot, because their writing can't keep up with the audio.

Here was a fun project- they used paint to show how Afghanistan was a buffer between Russia and India:

In the top painting, you can see how the two countries could mix together and cause a new "color".  In the bottom painting, with Afghanistan in the middle, those two countries can not easily access each other.

 

And, of course, we still have the maps.  Although, this year, everything is blank and you have to label it yourself.

We also learned about the Crimean War, and read the Charge of the Light Brigade poem by Tennyson.  The coolest thing of all, though, was listening to this recording  done by a bugler who ACTUALLY PARTICIPATED in the charge of the light brigade. The boys were impressed, as was I.

Science:

The boys like Physics so far.  We are learning about the laws of motion, force, energy, work, inertia, friction, etc.  We've read 4 chapters in RS4K Physics, and have done 3 experiments in the lab book.  Thanks to Aunt Amy for conducting the last science experiment.  I love the lab book because it is laid out in a scientific method form and makes the boys really think through each experiment.

Here's what the first page of the lab book look like:

Evidently, I forgot to take pictures of the 1st and 2nd experiments, so here are some pictures of our 3rd experiment about gravitational potential energy:

The cousins got to participate in this experiment, too.  First the kids had to log the weight of their toy car, then race it down the track toward some banana slices that were pinned to a box.  They had to try it  several times, with different heights each time and record their findings.  Then, they added weight to the car and repeated the experiment at the different heights.  Before they began the racing, they were asked to formulate a hypothesis about which factors would affect the gravitational potential energy.

Logic:

They have completed their Beginning Analogies workbooks.  They weren't supposed to be finished, yet, but they both think the books are FUN, and have worked ahead.  I'd rather poke myself with needles than figure out analogies. 

French:

We are moving slowly through First Start French.  I plan to take 2 years to complete this book.  The boys study vocabulary flashcards and do the exercises in the books.  

Latin:

We've done the first two chapters of the Minimus book.  They are enjoying the cartoon-like stories in the book, and they are learning quite a bit of vocabulary.  I had them take a test on the first chapter, which didn't go well, so they've been improving their study skills a bit in anticipation of the imminent test on Chapter Two.

For some reason, the story of Daedalus and Icarus was in their Latin books. I had them read the story independently, and then draw a picture of it.

Eddie went for a straight out representation of the gist of the story.  Don't fly too close to the sun, you knucklehead!

Andrew chose to retell the whole story in comic book form.  My favorite cell is King Minos looking on the Labyrinth in dismay.

Health:

Ironically, health has kind of been on the back burner so far.  We have read a couple of chapters in our book about the nervous system and the brain.  We talked about foods that are good for these parts of our bodies.

P. E.

I've been counting dance class at Willoughby as P. E., since I haven't been able to do much else.  Before my surgery, we were taking walks and playing outside a lot.  Eddie told me he'd like to go back to Swim & Gym at Cleveland State, so I will look into that.

Here are some pics from September when we walked up to the empty parking lot near our house and played with the big frisbee and had races.