Every kid did math and literature every day. The rest of the time we were busy with a birthday, cleaning the house, and such.
Faith: In math she's adding three numbers and had an introduction to subtraction on the duck pond. For reading she finished a couple BOB Books and a couple stories from her CLP K level readers. She's getting brave enough to pick an easy reader off our picture book shelf and try it on her own.
Grace: Multiplication problems are growing and she's continually rising to the challenge. She's currently reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Ballet Shoes, and I think Misty of Chincoteague.
Honor: His math focused on fractions this week. He was practically giddy. I introduced him to Life of Fred via the Fractions book. He's just reading it just for fun right now, but I'll have him actually work through it in January. He's currently reading one of the 39 Clues books. Not on a "great book" list, but they're not that shabby. That, and the boy is absolutely hooked. Must. know. next. clue.
Joy: Her math is deep into prealgebra fractions right now. She says it was fun this week. For literature she's working through Where the Brook and River Meet, which also covers a little bit of writing, history, Bible, geography and such. She and that book have become great friends. When it gets left on my desk in a pile of teacher editions she raises an eyebrow at me, swipes it, tells the book it will be okay, and lovingly returns it to her pile of books.
Justice: We're getting him back on top in math. He's not doing a whole lesson each day, but he is understanding what he's doing, which is more important. In literature we've really struck a balance for daily work on The Hobbit. Each day he covers something for The Hobbit itself, something else from or on Tolkien, something Bible related, and something somehow connected to writing. Does that make sense? Here's what it looks like.
- The Hobbit: Reading a chapter from it, or digging into the allusions and rabbit trails, and occasionally drawing Tolkien illustrations
- Tolkien: We started with On Fairy Stories in small bites, and Tolkien: Man and Myth by Joseph Pearce after that (perhaps the Peter Kreeft Philosophy of Tolkien next?)
- Bible: The worldview conversation starters from the Literary Guild link about once a week or so, and Walking With Bilbo devotional the other days
- Writing: No, I'm not torturing him with daily writing assignments. I mean learning more about the concepts we run across, like poetical exaggeration (mentioned by Bilbo) and comedy relief (used by Tolkien). Though he does have to write an actual paper on this occasionally.
SilverDad: He just finished reading Insurgent (sequel to Divergent), and some tool or car part manual.
Me: I've been playing around with Jacobs' Elementary Algebra. I'm not nearly as rusty as I feared. ;-) Cambridge Latin has proven much tougher, but I'm getting through it. When I'm not reading something related to the kids' literature, I'm reading A Landscape with Dragons (subtitled The Battle for Your Child's Mind), The Annotated Hobbit, and a couple sections of The Core. That list used to be much bigger. I just don't have the time anymore, but I wouldn't trade these homeschooling days for my own Half Price Books, coffee shop and yarn store. ♥
Final Comment: I've been told that doing literature this way with Justice and Joy will ruin a perfectly great book for them forever. At this point, this style of literature study has done nothing but deepen their love for Tolkien and Anne (respectively), and increased their appetite for going deeper into literature in general. They're already excited about next year's possibilities. Ruin shmuin. I'm just hoping I can keep up with them.
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