Weekly Report #29 5/18 to 5/22

We have 7 more weeks of lessons left and with our 3 weeks on and one week off schedule, we will be done the end of July. We could power through and not take our breaks and be done by the end of June. But I'd end up being a grumpy old mom and hating life in general, so slow and steady we go.

What we accomplished this week:

Explorer Bible Study: Lesson 12, Genesis 15 - Covenant with Abram. We are slowly working our way through Genesis. In Genesis 15 the Lord made his covenant with Abram giving all the land from the river of Egypt to the great River Euphrates to his descendants. The study is still holding James attention. I asked him because it seemed to be getting a bit dry, but he said he likes it, so we'll keep going. He keeps asking when we are going to get to the part where God renames his Abraham. Almost there.

Voyages in English: Started the very last section, # 8 all about sentence diagramming. Made an interesting discovery. Father never learned about diagramming in school, which surprised the heck out of me. I remembered doing all kinds of sentence diagramming way back when. So, Father and James got to learn all about diagramming this week: 8.1 Subjects and Predicates; 8.2 Possessives; 8.3 Adjectives and 8:4 Adverbs.

Spelling Workout: Completed lesson 27

Writing with Ease: Week 12 still continuing to identify the central narrative thread in a passage. The excerpts this week were from John Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress. It was interesting reading the passages with James and telling him about the story. What the names represented and explaining the meaning of carrying a burden on your back. Makes me want to read the story again, plus find a children's version to read with James. Also, discovered that Father had never read the story either. Maybe we'll make it into a family read.

Handwriting without Cursive: Completed review and mastery section and started with the Grammar section. James is not having any problem writing words in cursive now and doesn't need examples to show him how. By george, he's got it.

Math: Alternating between subtraction and addition workbooks. Now doing 2 digit subtraction and explained about place value and putting the numbers in the proper columns.

Science: Continuing with Galen read Chapter 9 - Galen goes to Rome and Chapter 10 Galen's medicine. Father and James read all about the first plastics in DK chemistry book and discussed.

History: Read chapter XX in TCOO - Story of the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe. We've finally finished with the story of the colony of Virginia and the demise of Jamestown. Next up, the Plymouth company.

Besides the formal lessons, we are working on attitude, good sportmanship and conduct. James seems to think he should win the wii races every time and gets upset when someone else does.

Cub scouts: The advancement ceremony to Webelos was held last week. James hadn't quite finished his bear badge achievements and only has three or four things left to go. Those will all have to be finished up this week before his den master submits the advancement paperwork to webelos. The den leader told us we had time to complete the rest of the achievements during the summer, but the master said differently and said should have been finished by the ceremony. Because of the miscommunication and the fact it wouldn't be fair to James, since he has worked really hard to get the achievements done, she gave us to June 1st to finish.

My education: Reading and analyzing "Heart of Darkness" this week and next week. I read "Heart of Darkness" last year so at least have an advantage. My tasks will be to

1) Do a close literary analysis of one section and chose at least two things to follow: imagery, symbolistm, diction, metaphors, similies, or character development.

2) Chose one example of foreshadowing and describe the effect it has on the reader and characters.

3) Characterization: Choose a character other than Marlow or Kurtz and analyze. Tell how the character is developed and by what means.

4)Take one of the three questions and write a 500 critical essay about it.

That aught to keep me busy for a while. :)