Week 4

This has been such a good week! I can't even believe it. What has been different? A's attitude. He has been motivated all week to finish his individual work ahead of time so that he can get up later on Friday. To that end he worked in a block schedule. On Tuesday, he finished all his Essentials of the English Language work. On Wednesday, he finished all his writing. We also dedicated larger chunks of time to some subject like history and science. This worked better than having smaller chunks more frequently.

Another difference: before each math lesson, I sat down with A. and went over what he had to do that day. I read to him from the Instructor Guide and try to go over the textbook orally instead of requiring him to do the textbook exercises in writing. It really, really made a big difference.

An even bigger impact was the fact that N. was not here on Wednesday. I could dedicate more time to A. without feeling pulled in two different directions. Unfortunately this variable is not going to be a factor in this equation. I can not make the poor guy disappear one day each week. Or Can I? Just kidding!

This is what the kids have been working on:

A:

• Math- order of operations, word problems.
  
• English- sentence structure patterns and diagramming exclamatory sentences. He also has done dictation, copywork and handwriting.
• Writing- he worked on polishing a rough draft about Jamestown Colony.
• Typing - only once. I have to incorporate this to his plans so I will remember.
• Continue memory work for CC.
• History- we are beginning the history cycle again. So we are at the beginning of time. He is reading a book called Bible History. This week he read about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel. He is also reading The Story of the World for his FF class. He read about Sumeria and the Jewish people this week. Tomorrow he will read some supplementary books.
• Geography- He is working on a geography research guide. This is basically a guided research. I created a guide with questions about the earth geography. He has to research and record the answers.
  
• Science- we are doing double science. At FF he is studying zoology- land animals to be exact. This week he read about bears today. To complement the CC memory work we are also studying the human body. Yesterday we learned about the skeletal system and tomorrow he is going to start to build a paper model of the human body.
• Religion- we are reading together through the book the Apostle's Creed by Inos Biffi. Today Alex wrote a short narration about the I believe in God the Father Almighty. I am using this book to get him used to write short narrations. Up to this point his narrations have been mostly oral. Now I am trying to transition him to written ones.
  
• Spanish- this week he finished copying a poem and then I had him underlined the verbs, find the meaning and conjugate them in the present tense. I also dictated sentences from our program The Easy Spanish.

N.:

• Math- he is working on addition problems. He is using some Montessori material and some Singapore pages. He also practiced some of the Roman Numerals we learned last year and went on to learn some new ones.
  
• Reading- he is reading through a book The Big Ball of String. He is doing really well. It seems that his reading has taken a great leap.
• Handwriting- he is working on a page a day of his handwriting book.
• Spanish- he is working on the same program A. is working on but at a different level. I let him copy the sentence for the day onto his notebook (at his insistence) and them I make flash cards with the words of the sentence, scramble them and have him put it together. Then, we work on translation. He also played memory match with the verb "ser". He is slowly making progress.
• Religion- we are working on memorizing the Apostle's Creed. Last week we talked about who the apostles were and the difference between and apostle and a disciple. This week we are trying to memorize the names of the twelve apostles.
  
• Science- we read about the skeletal system and he watched a movie about it on United Streaming.
• He continued to work on his memory work for CC.