Weekly update for the week of 10/11/2010

We had another good week this week. N. has really gotten where he can get his work done fairly quickly. In poetry he is choosing to memorize the poem "Fireflies in the Garden" by Robert Frost. He has been practicing the first half of it this week. The cats love that he uses a flashlight as a prop.
We officially switched to Rod and Staff English 5 this week. I wanted to see how he did with his writing assignment and it was the best writing I think he has ever done. Rod and Staff presented things in a gentle way and he wasn't overwhelmed at all. I also think it was easier because Write with the Best is giving him some confidence in his writing.

We are learning about Israel in Geography. I am learning things I never knew. N. still sometimes tends to "space out" when I am reading out loud the lesson, but if I stop here and there and make comments like "wow that is really cool" then he tends to get drawn back in. He enjoys doing the mapping activities. In "Genesis Finding our Roots" he learned all about the Tree of Life and how it is depicted in art in many cultures.

In Science he learned about horses and had fun with the science experiment where he tapped out the horses gaits with his fingers. He has heard the terms gallop, canter and trot since he was young, but never really knew what those were.

For Storytime we read the book of Ruth. That was a story we did last year and he remembered the characters in it, but not all the details so it was fun to see him anxiously wanting to know if Ruth married Boaz. One of the narration activities was doing an advertisement for the book. He was hesitant at first and then he really got into it and it was hysterical. I wish I would have videotaped it.

In history he learned about Deborah, Gideon and Joshua. He loved that his dad didn't remember anything about Deborah and he was able to tell him about her. His written narration was about Gideon and the Middianites. He still struggles right after he reads to answer the questions without looking. I don't know if it is still the difficulty of the text or what. Once he looks up the answers he seems to understand the story much better. He really liked this story and did a fantastic narration independently. This is huge for him.

His history project was making a model of the Jordan river and re-enacting how the river parted to let the Israelites through when the priests held the ark of the covenant in the water, and then how they took 12 stones and made a memorial. He had fun telling his dad this story.


This week I have once again been reminded of how easy HOD makes it to homeschool, especially since S. and I have decided we don't like her English and are having to totally revamp things. That is very stressful, but I don't have to worry about that with N. at all.