Weekly update for the Week of 8/26/13

This was our 2nd week of MTMM.  I like to be very candid on this blog so I will say the first few days of this week were a little rough.

It started when N. had difficulty with his oral narration from Rescue and Redeem.  He was back to a very general summary instead of a detailed oral narration.  He only used 3 of the key words he was supposed to use.  He and I talked about it and I made it clear what my expectations were.  I don't expect him to use all the words, but he needs to use more than 3! He also struggled in his other subjects and I felt like he was not giving me 100%.  He was getting the work done, but not doing his best work.  We had several conversations about that.  I really think some of it is the age and some of it is being a boy, however as I pointed out to him the Bible is clear that we are to do all things to the glory of the One who made us.  The third day he turned a corner.  Day 3 and 4 were fantastic days. He put his full effort into everything he did.

For his science experiment this week we had the pleasure of having the principal (Dad) home to help with the experiments since they involved fire and chemicals and those thing make me a little nervous.  This is an Independent box, but tremors and chemicals don't go together very well so often we are N's hands and he tells us what to do.

He used the PDF expert app on his Ipad again to type his science experiment and it worked out well.  His experiment didn't work out as expected so he was able to figure out why that might be.

He studied Hudson Taylor this week so his history project was a scroll or in our case a wall hanging that had the word Christian painted in Chinese.

His written narration was also on Hudson Taylor.  I was a little worried about how he would do since the reading was once again in Rescue and Redeem, but he did a great job.

His Worthy Words document this week was a letter by Hudson Taylor about spiritual issues.  This is right up N's alley and we actually were able to have a pretty good Socratic discussion. 

He finished up Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra and started Teaching Textbooks Algebra.  I plan on supplementing this with some problems from other books just to give him some variety. 

First Week of School 8/19/2013

This has been a very full week.  This past weekend we spent the weekend at a getting started weekend with S. at her college.  Wow, talk about emotional.  It was hard and very strange to drive away knowing this was the first step on her way to becoming an independent adult.  We do feel that God has led her to this college and we loved what he heard at this school.  I think they truly do desire to lead the students into a deeper relationship with Christ and the Bible is the ultimate authority on all things. 

On Monday N. and I decided we would go ahead and start school since it would keep us from missing S. so much.  I am so thankful for the familiar layout of the guides.  N. was able to just jump in and start ordering his boxes and reading the instructions.  I did make sure he understood each box, just like I do every year.  He loves the bible study already.  It is a little tricky for him to write on the small lines and we have had some issue with him writing one or two word answers when he should write a sentence or two.  If I ask him what the word means he can tell me the answer in full detail, he just has difficulty writing it.  We are still figuring out a work around for that.  I love hearing him belt out the hymns in full baritone voice.

In Science he has gotten in the groove of the Tiner book about Chemistry and is doing a good job answering the questions.  He did his first lab and was very thorough in following all the safety directions. I love him in his lab outfit. He was able to type his lab report and that went well.  I need to tweak things a little  as far as formatting, but I think it is going to work.

For Storytime we are reading "Under the Hawthorn Tree".  I am still reading out loud to him.  We both enjoy it and it enables him to concentrate on the story and as a result he does a better job on the bookmark follow ups.  These he also types on the Ipad.

My dear dh designed a Word Template for the Presidents notebook to enable N. to type the information for the President's study.  This worked very well.  I can see a skill he will need to grow into is gathering information from a video.  He struggled with that some this week, but I am sure he will improve.

He did a fantastic job on his written and oral narrations this week.  I am hoping that maybe the struggles he has had in the past with these are behind us, but we will see.  He really likes The Story of the World and says it is easy to understand.

The other area that I can see that will be a skill that will come in time is the Socratic Discussion over the Worthy Words (primary source documents).  This week was mainly me modeling it for him.  He is a man of very few words so lengthy in depth discussions are a little out of his comfort zone, unless they are about the bible then he is all about it.

We are finishing up TT Prealgebra and then will move right into TT Algebra.  I plan on adding a few more practice problems, but overall I am pleased with this program.

At the end of the week he told me that once again he enjoyed his first week of school.  That is a successful week in my book.