Weekly Report ...

I have not done a Weekly Report in a long time. I need to take stock of where we are this year. It was a busy week, with some very time-consuming non-school related matters to which I needed to tend (illness in one of the children, washing machine break down, flooded laundry room, Dr. visit, toothache). Just a few minor annoyances - par for the course. But we still managed to stay on track.

In World History, we completed three more chapters in SOTW, along with corresponding readings in The Encyclopedia of World History, and CHOW. Written work consisted of the SOTW tests and all the mapping and activity pages from the activity book. The kids are also reading Short Stories from English History, and the older ones read Tales from Robin Hood and Marco Polo to the younger ones. Both of those books are from the Sonlight Core 1/2. I did look on United Streaming for supplementary videos on the Silk Route or the Diapora, but all I found was the Nest Animated Classic on Marco Polo. We have watched it before, but it is enjoyable, so no one complained about another viewing. There were some Horrible Histories and Time Warp Trio episodes also available, just nothing meaty.

In Science, Little Bear read about Mars and watched a video about a futuristic settlement on the planet. She did her journal pages in the corresponding Apologia notebook. This is my second time through this book and, secretly, I am anxious to be done. I just do not enjoy the same topic for such a long stretch in science. The twins are on their own with SL Science, and completed Week 16.

In Latin, Little Bear completed another Lesson in Matin Latin, the topic of which eludes me at this hour. She is doing very well with the vocabulary, but is struggling a bit to comprehend the "whys" of the declensions. The oldest twin finished the second review lesson in LC II. She grasps the grammar flawlessly, and struggles with vocabulary. When teaching Latin, I constantly remind myself and the kids that our goal is not just learning Latin, but learning about our own language from Latin. In other words, vocabulary and derivatives are very important elements. Sometimes I feel LC II falls short of my goals, and I have the urge to switch, but Oldest Twin is quite content and will not hear of it. Youngest twin continues with his Greek studies.

In Fallacy Detective, we covered Genetic Fallacies and Tu Quoque. Everyone participates in this. They all enjoy it.

Little Bear is on the last disc of Teaching Textbooks 4. Her goal is to be done by Christmas. She is learning so much with this program. And, in a proud Momma moment, I heard her brother exclaim, "You just listened to that part ... Why are you doing it again?", to which she replied, "I did not quite understand what he said. I want to listen again." WONDERFUL!!! Youngest twin continues with TT 6. And Oldest Twin completed Lessons 41 & 42 in Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra with Biology and Lesson 18 in MUS Pre-Algebra. She is very cognizant of how silly her errors are, and is working hard to improve.

In Language Arts, the twins and I worked our way through the Analytical Grammar lesson on prepositional phrases. Although the lesson did not call for it, I had them diagram the entire sentence, after labeling all the parts. With our background from Rod & Staff, it was not that difficult. I am having a hard time adjusting to AG. I much prefer R & S, even though it was tedious at times. I believe this purchase was a case of the grass is greener syndrome ... Little Bear completed an SL LA activity sheet with dictation, and a few lessons from Primary Language Lessons. She already completed her Wordly Wise book, and did another R & S spelling lesson. The Oldest Twin also completed a writing assignment from Lightning Lit. , having finished all the readings and workbook pages for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Finally, in Bible/Christian Studies, we completed the final two lessons in our survey of the Old Testament. The kids loved this course from Grapevine Studies. Of course, any academic pursuit that can be supplemented with a Veggie Tales episode has to be fun!

All the kids had their dance classes. The twins took on the task of "speaking for homeschoolers everywhere" when they corrected the false notions of some girls in their tap class who mistakenly assumed homeschoolers sit around in pj's all day and play video games. This particular comment really upset my eldest girl. She stewed on it for two weeks. I am proud of the way they handled the criticism and did not shy away from confrontation with someone who was just ... wrong.

Those are the highlights from the crux of the three older kids' studies. Rocky and I worked our way through week 2 of MFW 1st Grade. He has now covered all the letters of the alphabet, and is getting pretty good at the dictation assignments. In math, he has been doing fact families on Flashmaster. He has a stomach bug mid-week, so we will make-up science next week. We did get to watch a video on making an ant farm on United Streaming. My kids were not blessed with a mom who will go in the back yard, dig up an ant hill, press it between two pieces of plexiglass, and keep it on the kitchen table for observation. So we watched one instead. Can I lose my home-schooling license for admitting that?