This Week in Learning: August 14th, 2015

Continuing to be excited about the learning that is happening this Term. Solid, consistent progress, lessons not only about King Alfred and Japan’s closure to the West but lessons about diligence and time management. A friend and I were chatting yesterday, we’re both long term home-educators with graduates and several children still to educate, we shared how when we were young and dewy-eyed we wanted our children to love learning, well we still do, truth is though, these days we’d settle for application. Actually a whole series in the making there once I’ve formulated my thoughts.

Speech Therapy
I suspect the speech therapist twigged that I was not being consistent with homework here, ouch, so being quite the experienced teacher she devised a little chart for us. Five days work laid out in a grid, three small, achievable tasks for each day, as each is completed we place a sticker. This I can do, I have too or the teacher will know I haven’t, the stickers remember! Have cheated a little and older siblings have begged some days to do Bass’ speech lesson with him, go for it!

Last fortnight I received comments from you that this is an area many struggle with, and that you have several children in therapy, hugs of support and encouragement to you all. {{}}

Faith

Sacramental Preparation for Confirmation and First Confession/Holy Communion for JJ and Jem respectively is still a major focus. Finally finished the Sacrament of Confirmation workbook with Jack Jack, hooray!! And My Jesus and I with Jem, hooray!!!
Read My Confession – Daniel Lord
Jack Jack nailed memorising the 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit with the help of a youtube, corny actions for each Gift but highly effective, alas I can’t find the link to share.
Jem has been struggling to remember his Act of Contrition, found Raising Little Saints printable, which alas is no longer available to print but I was able to copy and paste and with difficulty make some changes, as our Act is slightly different, so changed some words, added some clipart and he’d mostly ‘had it’ by recitation 3.
Jem is most likely making his First Confession this weekend, asking for prayers please, he is one nervous boy, mostly over his struggle to remember the Act of Contrition.
Jelly Bean read Stories to Learn By – Msgr John Koenig, a collection of stories imparting values and virtues in a natural manner. She has totally amazed me with how quickly her reading skill is progressing.
Princess read a couple of chapters of Introduction to Catholicism and completed the answers.
Princess also read a chapter of Where is That in the Bible? – Patrick Madrid
Michelangelo completed a chapter of Understanding the Scriptures and read several sections of Beginning Apologetics Set and read referenced source material.

Maths

The children all worked rather hard on the maths lessons(Maths Online) this past fortnight and consequently pushed through some ‘barriers’ and started having ‘some wins’. Application can bring its own pleasure in learning, enjoyment of learning doesn’t always equate with fun but with achievement.

Science

Read Seals and Walruses – Louis Darling and Ponny the Penguin – Veronica Basser to the younger boys and Jelly Bean. They orally narrated as we went. Both these living books immediately captured interest and Ponny in particular was a huge hit!!
JB read Whitefoot: The Story of a Woodmouse – Robert McClung, half of Tiger Tales – DK Reader and Egg to Chick – Millicent Selsam
Princess read a chapter of Michael Faraday and the Discovery of Electromagnetism however as the book was due back at the library we switched to using Kahn Academy for her Science learning.
Kahn Academy has been an excellent choice for our non-interested science girl. Princess is now enjoying science!! This fortnight she watched lectures on scale: of the large, the small and the earth and sun and was most animated telling me about what she learnt.
Michelangelo read six chapters of Science Matters, he is enjoying the book. Also watched four Kahn Academy Physics Lectures about; black hole and worm holes and three dimensional travels, he took notes.

Nature

JB and the boys enjoyed an afternoon of nature journal-ling, spontaneously organised and enacted by themselves. I love it when learning like this happens.

Geography

Read a couple of chapters from Our Friends from Other Lands to the boys yet realised we’re ‘going through the motions’, it’s not that engaging. Second week I borrowed a collection of picture books from various lands from the library and we enjoyed diving in. (see list below)
JB read Carlos the Street Boy Who Found a Home(Brazil) and Chayna The Girl No One Wanted( Bangladesh)
Michelangelo read six chapters of A Writer’s World: Travels 19-50-2000 by Jan Morris, finding it interesting.
JB drew a freehand map of Africa, impressive again.
Princess had nearly learnt all the states of America using Sheppard Software

History

Read a couple of chapters of Story of the World Vol 2 to the boys and JB. We read about the Celts, the coming of the barbarians to Britain and Beowulf. We also learnt about St Augustine’s missionary work in Britain and the Christianizsation of Britain, medieval monasteries and the art of writing books by hand.
Feeling that SOTW is skimming too fast past huge chunks of history and as I’d like us to linger longer, I cast about for a more in-depth title. My dear friend R lent us Book 3 of the set The March of Time – Horniblow, just brilliant. This week we read about King Alfred and William the Norman Duke, whom we’d previously read about in Our Island Story – Marshall (another big hit) so it was great to recap. A little tricky to keep all those Kings in order whilst narrating but with JB’s help we managed.
JB read The Drinking Gourd: A Story of the Underground Railway – Monjo and half of Trail of Tears – Joseph Bruchac. Her joining us for Middle Ages is an optional extra
Princess read 2-3 chapters of Story of the World Vol 4, we continued to work together on note taking. Princess also read Ties That Bind, Ties That Break – Lensey Namioka
Michelangelo read about Hannibal, reading relevant chapters from The History of Rome – Cary and as a supporting history read I Marched with Hannibal – Hans Baumann
Michelangelo also delved into the History of Ireland, beginning The History of Ireland – Miss Corner and as a supporting history read, read most of The High Deeds of Finn Mac Cool – Rosemary Sutcliffe

Logic

Michelangelo read and pondered several sections of Critical Thinking

Spanish

Princess increased her Spanish fluencey to 46%, She continues to enjoy Spanish and her father continues to share that love with her:)

Creative Arts

Princess attended our local homeschool handcraft day and taught one of the younger girls how to finger knit.
Extra curricula of three dance classes for Princess and soccer games for Jelly Bean, Jack Jack and Jem still continuing.

Handwriting
Continued with ‘handwriting on the board’ wherein the children gather with me, I demonstrate and they copy. The older boys and JB are focusing on cursive, Jem is working on his printing. Had a frustrating session with him in which he won’t take correction as to where he should start his letters. He was determined to begin his Rs at the bottom of the line, not at the top and wouldn’t budge.

Dictation/Spelling

Princess continuing with 20 words weekly from ‘Spelling for Secondary Students’ spelling very well.
Spelling Wisdom with our teens went well the first week, however we were slack the second. Resolving to focus on Language Arts with our teens first before I work with the younger children in future.
JB and JJ began using Spelling Wisdom for their dictation lessons too. They were rather nervous believing it too hard, which it isn’t at this stage, a little way in it does get much harder, so we shall see.

Grammar

JB and JJ – using Marist Brothers Grade 5, we focused on comprehension passages, which are a real challenge and pronouns, their person, number and gender.
Teens – synonyms and pairing nouns with their synonyms in the first week, using Ridout, in the second week we failed to do grammar, hence part of my resolve undertake Language Arts with our teens first.

Composition/Creative Writing

JB and JJ are weekly writing creative essays, each child brainstorms with me, I write on the board as they dictate and then they copy. Long gone are the days I believed in inventive spelling, what a disaster that was.
Michelangelo and Princess – Precis Writing – Ronald Lane worked on note taking.
Princess used Story Starters to write and essay titled, A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed.

Poetry/Short Stories

A Child’s Book of Verse daily with the younger children.

Princess and Michelangelo continuing to read daily from Four Corners.

Michelangelo finished reading short stories from O’Henry.

Reading

JJ read a couple of books to me(see below) sadly however he isn’t yet keen on reading, he only lacks practise and then he’ll be off ‘flying’. Consistency and perseverance is the key.
Jem completed AAR Level 1! We are now revising the cards, I was slack throughout the program and wasn’t always diligent in this area, Jem is very proud of the amount of cards he knows and he has every right to be proud.
Jem is still keen to ‘read’ and we found a couple of books for him to have a ‘go at’, most impressed (see below)