Saturday, October 16, 2010

Week 6

No pictures...I inadvertently converted the iPhoto picture files on the laptop to the newer version we have running on the desktop computers.  Oops.  Posting pictures will now require me to use a desktop computer in our basement office.  It might be a very long time before I get the cool castle-building pictures uploaded!

DD15, DD13 & I have developed a good evening routine.  When I put the boys to bed around 8pm, they start watching a Great Battles of the Ancient World Lecture (Teaching Company).  I come down to watch the end and discuss it with them.  Then we go over their Literary Lessons from Lord of the Rings pages and discuss those.  Both girls are enjoying LLfLotR -- I think when we get to the Unit Studies they'll like it even more.  I've read this curriculum can kill a love of the books, but I don't think that will be the case here!

I'm not thrilled with my choices for science or grammar for DS10.  Science is Real Science Odyssey's Chemistry Level 1 for 2nd-5th grade.  Having done Ellen McHenry's The Elements a few years ago he hasn't learned anything new.  And he doesn't really enjoy experiments, which is the basis for the course!

For grammar I borrowed a book while at my parents' house in August.  The text my mom and her brother had used in high school: Woolley's The New Handbook of Composition.  Really.  I thought it would be a great free source, something we could sit on the couch and do together.  Well, it is all that.  But some of rules are over my head.  Way over.  And I'm not certain that some grammar rules haven't changed! And with no teacher's manual...

DS10 finished reading No Man's Land (a Civil War story) and will take the Writing with Ease Level 1 evaluation next week.  I'm just doing the example weeks with him from the teacher's book until we get to where he's not comfortable.

I'm not happy with science for DS8 either.  Its a slim book on Sound & Light -- but almost all the experiments have been a bust!  I don't think he has retained much at all.  What I am happy about for him is he is starting to fix things around the house!  For years he's been taking things apart.  This week he reversed the door knob to the boys' bedroom.  It was on backwards when we moved into the house.  And I gave him my little kitchen scale that was broken.  He took it apart and brought it back, working!

DS5 doesn't even have science and I'm grumpy about that too! :)  He is doing great with what he has though -- Singapore's Earlybird Math B, Handwriting without Tears, Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, and Explode the Code 1.  A pile of workbooks.  But they get done and he doesn't mind school at all.  He'd rather be outside playing though!

DD10mo has almost completely given up crawling.  She's toddling everywhere!  I must buy her some shoes.  This week.


I've been reading several interesting books including the following:

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun (Gretchen Rubin -- on February.)

Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (Robert Lacey -- about 50 pages into it, learning a lot!)

Virginia's General: Robert E Lee and the Civil War (Albert Marrin -- he had nicknames for his 7 children.)

Handbook of Nature Study (Anna Botsford Comstock -- I've been trying to read the first part for weeks as part of Barb's Handbook of Nature Study blog.)

Thus ends another week.  Now to read about all your weeks!

3 comments:

Karen said...

Have your girls used other Teaching Company lectures in the past?

Homeschooling6 said...

Your ds8 sounds like my boys. Except they don't bring things back working. Brent, took apart an old vcr and now has a nice campstove =)

Faith said...

I love the idea of your evening routine. That could work here with my teen.

I am never ever happy with any science program ever.:(