'13-'14 - First Two Weeks

Kindergarten

    Faith had a great first two weeks of school. You can see what an average day looks like one post down from this one.
Phonics: I can see a huge difference in her reading confidence already. She's leaping ahead daily.
Math: She's working through two lessons a day, and was offended when I suggested she only do one. Her comprehension of the math facts blows me away.
Goops/manners: She adores these. They've stuck with her, and she tries to catch real life examples.
Charlotte's Web (read aloud): She was apprehensive about a read aloud just for her, and thought it was silly to read it when she's already seen the movie. Two weeks in her tune has changed. She looks forward to hearing it read aloud, and picks out the differences between the book and movie without prompting.







     Grace is soaring. She loves school.

Third Grade

Grammar: She's blazing through the review portion of the book. Only one lesson made her pause and really work at it.
Spelling: The little portion left of her 3 book has been devoured, and she is ready to eat the 4 book for breakfast.
Writing: She finished rewriting Town Mouse and Country Mouse. Highlight of her week.
Literature: Narnia is going great! We're 8 chapters into The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
Math: Horizons covers some more volume of topics than her last book did, so she's needed some taught on the fly. None of that has slowed her down much. She'll do the first test today.
Science: Win-win. The pre-made notebooking journal has made all the difference. Chapter 1 is done.
History: First two cards are done. She filled an entire notebook page with her summary for card 2
Latin: She spent the first week reviewing old material, and the second week plunging into a new lesson.

Fifth Grade

     Honor has started strong!
Grammar: Two weeks in. Not a burp.
Spelling: He also had a little bit from last year's spelling book. He's working hard to get out of it as quick as he can.
Writing: Wordsmith Apprentice for the win! He calls it a favorite subject.
Literature: 8 Narnia chapters. Going awesome. He's reading When the Sirens Wailed on the side.
Math: He had some summer brain rust to scratch off, and a few *facepalm* moments when I pointed out the obvious. He's on the upswing now.
Science: He covered the history of skyscrapers, learned gobs about the Reliance Building in Chicago, and began construction on a cardboard city block.
History: Two history cards down. His notebook is full of great illustrations.
Latin: He spent the first two weeks reviewing old words and grammar. Today he'll start a new lesson.

Eighth Grade

     Joy looks like she's having way too much fun to call it school. ;-)
Grammar: Summer brain rust. She's getting it scratched off.
Writing: Flying ahead. She enjoys it, and at the current pace she'll finish it pretty early.
Literature: Finished the Tolkien/Hobbit introduction work, and started the chapter 1 trails.
Latin: Runaway freight train! She did four chapters in two weeks. That's double-time.
Math: Strong start. First subject of the day. "Start with the best!"
Architecture: Same as Honor's science. Her favorite Reliance Building fact was finding an Old Navy across the street.
Astronomy: Strong start, but she's itching to get out of the introductory chapter.
History: This one lagged a little bit, because of scheduling snafus. We worked on daily amounts and long term goals.  

Ninth Grade

     Justice is solidly on the upswing from summer.
Grammar: homestretch! He'll be done with the subject in a little more than a month
Writing: He's not a fan of the Killgallon book he's working in, but he's made a daily page amount goal to get it out of the way quickly.
Literature: Tolkien. 'Nuff said.
Greek: He ate Code Cracker for breakfast, and is practicing with a vintage text until his main text gets here in the mail.
Math: His least favorite. It's starting to get some momentum going...
Science: This took awhile to get off the ground, but he's moving nicely now. The notebooking journal pages from Knowledge Box are working well, and we'll use them for the whole book.
History: Very nice. He read Genesis as literature, and the Mesopotamia section of Human Odyssey (Spielvogel)
Mythology: He researched various creation myths and wrote a contrast/compare paper on them.

The Baby

     Little Valor just turned 3. He doesn't have a lick of academics to report. He spends our school days driving trains on a track, playing with his toy cars, watching cartoons, climbing the furniture, doing something ridiculously silly to make the whole kitchen of kids working on lessons bust out laughing, and eating. Occasionally he'll climb up at the table between two kids, comment on their work, offer hugs, get tickled, and go off on his merry way. ♥