Update week of 9/23/2013

     I didn't manage to update the blog the last few weeks so this post will contain pictures from those weeks.  We just finished week 6 of MTMM and I am very impressed with how Noah is taking charge of his school day.  He starts at 7:30 and takes about a 45 minute lunch break and then is done no later than 1:30.  He has decided he likes to get the right side of the plans done first and that leaves what he considers the fun stuff for the second half of the day. 

     In history he has read about the Gilded age, the annexation of Hawaii, factories, unions, etc.  He seems to find it pretty interesting.  We read the book Factory Girl for our story time and it was a tough book to read.  It really made him realize how fortunate he is.  The follow up activities for the story time have him reflect on different things that use a deeper level of thinking and I really like that.  I have been very impressed with his written narrations.  He is writing lengthy, multi-paragraph narrations.   I pulled out his CTC notebook to show a friend that is considering homeschooling and using CTC and I was amazed by how much progress N. has made in the area of written narrations. 

   One of his history projects was making a Hawaiian Lei.  Cutting and rolling paper is a little tough for N., so instead of getting frustrated he just ends up laughing when he can't quite manipulate things.  I do help him with cutting as needed because otherwise his hands get too tired for other subjects.

Nature Journaling is a subject that also can be kind of tough for him.  He always does the drawing and then I let him type any journaling, but often he doesn't write too much.  I am ok with that.  He isn't a guy that likes to express lots of his thoughts on paper.  As long as he writes something. 

 He likes the variety of the history spines this year.  Here is a pic of him with his reading companion.

He did a drawing of the Titanic from Draw and Write Through History.  It isn't his best drawing ever, but I noticed last year it takes a few drawings for him to get back in the swing of things with these.  I was pleased with his cursive paragraph that he wrote to go with the drawing.  His letter formation is still not perfect, but considering the occupational therapist in ps said the most we could ever hope he would do was to sign his name, I consider this paragraph a success.

I am also pleased with his Presidents notebook entries.  He is learning to take notes from a video, which is an important skill that I see him figuring out slowly but surely.

So far this year has been a smooth one.  I attribute that to all the skill building that is incorporated in the previous HOD guides.