Weekly Report # 23 3/23 to 3/27

We had a very productive week and I'm beginning to plan what we are going to do for 4th grade. When we decided to home school years ago, I thought that by the time James was done with 3rd grade, we would have moved to a better area with better schools and we would be putting him into school. Well, we haven't moved and we have no desire to send James to public school. We have been taking things one year at a time and each year, we decide to continue with home schooling. James is thriving and at this point, it is pretty much a given that we will continue for the rest of his elementary school years. So, I'm reviewing my well worn copy of Well Trained Mind and thinking about our choices. The revised and updated 10th Anniversary edition of Well Trained Mind will be available in May and I am looking forward to reading it.

What we accomplished this week:

Explorer Bible Study: Lesson 7: Crisis on the Earth - Genesis 7 & 8. More about Noah and the Ark, their landing on Mt Ararat, including a map study of the area where the ark landed.

Voyages in English: Completed Section 6 about Adverbs. Lessons 6.6 Good and Well; 6.7 To, too, and Two; 6.8 Their and There; and 6.9 Coordinating Conjunctions. One of the most important lessons James will ever learn is the difference between there and their. Everyday I run across discussions and receive emails that mix up the two. One of my big pet peeves.

Their is an adjective and tells who owns something

There is an adverb and usually means "in that place."

Father told us how he learned to remember the difference when he was in school. All he has to do to remember Their is relating to the heir and the heir is a person. There has here in it and you are either here or just add a t and you are there.

Spelling Workout: The list words are now in cursive only which is a good test of James reading cursive skills. We completed Lesson 22 - double o.

Writing with Ease: Completed week 7 identifying the narrative thread in a passage and involved copywork, narration and dictation. The excerpt was from Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes which neither one of us had ever heard of before.

Handwriting without Tears Cursive: Practiced cursive while learning about Contractions and Apostrophes, Similes and Metaphors, and copying Quotations from Shakespeare and others. We are almost through with the 4th grade book and I will be ordering the 5th grade book soon.

Math: Completed lessons 26, 27, 28 and 29 in Kumon Workbook about subtracting from 16, 17, and 18. Father has started timing James on his days and giving him 3 minutes to write the answers. James is zooming through the answers. He is at the point where everything is clicking so we are going to move forward to get him caught up to grade level according to California Department of Education standards. I've ordered a few more of the Kumon Math workbooks including multiplication. Father wants James to take the 3rd grade cat test to see how he is doing, so we will be working toward it.

Chemistry: Continuing to read from Eyewitness Books and read about Acids and Bases. I'm going to be ordering ChemC500 chemistry set from Home Science Tools. It has 30 experiments and teaches about Acids and Alkalis, Liquids and Gas, Electric current and Chemical Compounds. James is now interested in doing the experiments himself, rather than watching me do an experiment, which is great. In Great Scientists - He and Father read all about Robert Hook

History: In This Country of Ours we read Chapter XVII - How the Redman Fought against their White Brothers

Cub Scouts: Worked all this week on Achievement 5 which included learning about Extinct and endangered animals, Choose a bird or animal and find out how it lives and make a poster showing what learned, (James choose cats), Visit a nature center or wildlife refuge and build a bird house.

He and Father have been working on the birdhouse all week and will be finishing it this weekend. Last October, James and I went with my parents to an animal sanctuary in Arizona, plus we went to the Effie Yaw nature center here in town. We are working on James completing all the achievements for his bear badge by the end of may when his den moves up to Webelos. So far we are on track.

Next week is our break and I will have the joy of working on income taxes all week. Happy, happy, joy, joy!

2 comments:

  1. That does indeed sound productive! I love that you record everything here. I need to do something like this. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. It sounds like you do a very good job of homeschooling your son, in fact, I'm sure he's way ahead of kids his age!!

    ReplyDelete

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