Weekly Report # 25 4/13 to 4/17

This week we went gang busters with lessons and working on cub scout stuff. Last week I had the weird laryngitis virus that's been going around and tried to talk as little as possible so I wouldn't lose my voice entirely. We only did stuff that didn't require me to talk. One of my technicians has it and he is so much worse than I was and two weeks later is still not able to talk very loud. His voice is coming back very very slowly.


What we accomplished:


Explorer Bible Study: Genesis 8 - 9 After the flood which is all about the Covenant God made that he would never flood the earth again. We discussed the theories of whether the whole earth was flooded and if it was just more localized flooding such as described in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Voyages in English: We started Section 7: Punctuation and Capitalization. One of James weak areas. He loves to write either in all capitals or all lower case letters and has a habit of not capitalizing the first letter of the first word in the sentence. He doesn't like to use punctuation much either. Makes it difficult to read his stories. Completed 7.1 End Punctuation, 7.2 Capital Letters, 7.3 Abbreviations and 7.4 Personal Titles and Initials. He completed follow up worksheets with Father and did pretty well.


Spelling Workout: Completed Lesson 23 Silent Consonants. Scored 100% on the test so he's rocking those silent consonants.


Handwriting without Tears Cursive: Practiced writing Mnemonics, paragraph about the continents, and Dictionary Definitions. Dictionary definitions is a good one because he had to look up the word in the dictionary, write the word and the definition in cursive. Did an excellent job.


Writing with Ease: We are on Week 8 in the book and the excerpts this week were from the original "jungle book." One of the excerpts was about taking mowgli before the akela to discuss whether to accept him into the pack. Very apropos since James is now a cub scout so really caught his attention. We discussed central ideas and actions, James narrated the main actions of the passages and he wrote one of the sentences from dictation.


Math: Finshed Lessons 33 through 36 subtracting from 20. We are just about done with the book and he will be ready to move on to double digits addition and subtractions, plus multiplication. Things are clicking now.


Science: He and Father read all about forming salts in DK Chemistry book and started reading living history biography book - "Galen and the Gateway to Medicine." They read Chapter 1 about who was Galen. Galen was a scientist and doctor to 4 roman emperors, he learned about the human body from studying pigs and monkeys and he was a doctor who invented and recorded so of the many medicines we use today. Interesting man.


History: In This Country of Ours read Chapter XVIII - How enlightenment fought a duel with Tyranny. King James, while still in England, kept trying to tell the new colony of Virginia what to do and how to do it and who he wanted to run it. They didn't like that too well.


Cub Scout Achievements: James pack is moving up to Webelos on May 15th so we are trying to finish all his Bear achievements before then. This week he worked on several things. Achievement 9 - What's cooking: he made brownies (with mom's help of course. Good lesson is following directions and measuring ingredients. 3 more things to do to complete 9. Achievement 18 - Jot it down. Made a list of things to do and checked it off when done, Wrote two letters to relatives, Wrote a story about something he did with the family. James wrote about going to Arizona and the Grand Canyon. 2 more things to do to complete 18.


Tonight is the monthly pack meeting and James Den is suppose to do a little skit and each cub scout tell a joke. He is having a terrible cause of stage fright and really, really, really doesn't want to go. He has voluntarily gone to the other pack meetings and taken part in all the activities. I'm going to give him a break on this one, since he feels so strongly about it. Father and I have differing opinions of this. However he's not ready to stand up before a crowd and I understand perfectly how he feels. There will be other opportunities when he will be ready. Today just isn't the day.

I'm off to work on my Art History Final. I have 100 multi choice questions to answer and two essay questions to answer. The essay questions are:

Name two artworks that are examples of 19th Century Romanticism. In what ways does each of these works display elements of the Romantic sensibility? Discuss details of subject and style as they pertain to Romanticism.

Many late 19th and early 20th Century artists challenge traditional Renaissance illusionism. Name three works where artists have deviated from the optical appearance of things. Describe specific details, and explain why each artist chose to present the subject without adhering to naturalism.

I've never been a fan of cubism before but I like this painting. I think it's the colors.

Georges Braque - Violin and Palette

What do you think? I'm off to write.