Weekly Reports 10/17 - 10/21

~What We Are Reading~

Me: College Textbooks - until December

Bear: Russia Journey to the Heart of a Land and its People and The Collapse of the Soviet Union

Noodle: New read aloud is Peter Pan Junior Classic plus lots of other voluntary reading!!!! (YEAH!)

We took Monday off because my Dear Mother-In-Law was here.  We miss her already! She comes to visit once a year and it is always so nice, but the stay is never long enough. 

Tuesday we got back to work.  The weather was fabulous at a high of 74.  I opened the windows and it was so energizing!  We managed to get a lot done.  I even baked a 9 x 13 banana bread with chocolate chips! Then Wednesday I had to get back on track nutritionally and otherwise.  I have gained too much weight back from my 44 pound loss last year.  I am not happy.  Now that the weather is cooler there are more walks and bike rides in my future.

Noodle

Math: Moving right along!  Took another test with flying colors.  To break up the monotony of the Abeka workbook we did a little "Halloween Math" on one day.  He learned a new concept, "borrowing" - he did OK for his first introduction to it.

Lanaguage Arts: Rumplestiltskin.  We read it and completed a TOG Literature Student Activity Page (SAP).  Continued working on First Language Lessons, CLE LA, Explode the Code 4 and WWE. I found a cute little worksheet online at a teacher blog, so he completed that too.  He had to make three sentences about a picture, using some words in a word bank.

Answers narrated to Mom

CLE LA

CLE Spelling

His reading is going so well!! I am so excited for him and proud of him.  He said recently, in a very excited voice, "I love books!"  That is music to this mama's ears.

Latin: We never got to Latin this week.

Science: We started work on the science fair project - topic is Tornadoes.  It should be fun!

History:  On Tuesday we all watched National Geographic- The Journey of Lewis and Clark, via Netflix streaming.  Additionally, Noodle watched another couple of episodes of Liberty's Kids.

Bear

Algebra: Mostly review this week and practice for upcoming test.

Grammar and Composition: The usual - CLE Grammar practice, writing- more note taking skills, literature - veered off the TOG lesson and started reading Fever 1793. He did a few assignments from The Art of Poetry.  I love this curriculum - one of this week's poems was Nothing Gold Can Stay. It's funny, I never read that poem in school, but I know it because of one of my favorite movies as a teen - The Outsiders.  While reading it to prepare for our discussion, I could hear Ponyboy's voice!

Biology: No experiments, just reading and questions.  He has also started reading about how to write a biology research paper, which he will be starting soon.

Russian: He spends a lot of time on his Russian lessons because he loves it, but it is becoming a problem because he'd rather do this than anything else!  He is even doing Russian and Algebra for longer periods of time than Biology.  He is also reading books about Russia.

History: He watched the above mentioned Lewis and Clark program with Noodle and me. More reading about Jefferson. Government readings - Marbury vs Madison.

Logic: The Art of Argument from Classical Academic Press, is awesome. 

Bear read online about a satellite that is defunct and that is going to crash into the earth.  The article gave the approximate location via latitude/longitude numbers so he promptly went to the map to find out where it might hit - and determined it will likely drop in to Canada somewhere.  Our map didn't show the area since this year we only have the U.S. map displayed.

The last two weeks have not been as productive as I would have liked.  I have been lagging in the science and history department with Noodle, but I try not to worry about it.  Especially in light of what Susan Wise Bauer says about making sure they can read and write at this stage.  If I spend time doing all the fun science and history activities to the detriment of reading and writing skills I will be sorry down the road. 

Last week we were preparing for my MIL's short visit, then she was here and we took two days off and this week was slow going getting back to our routine.  I am just going to chalk these two weeks up to "Fall Break" and move on.

Random pictures from this past week:

Lunch - grilled cheese, chips and apple juice - yum.

Two sweet and tired doggies.

Caught Bear visiting and baby talking with Cassie, our ten year old kitty.  He said, "You are going to put this on the blog, aren't you?"  Well, DUH!