Week in review 9/22-9/26,2014

Another week completed in the World Geography guide and N. continues to rise to the challenge of this guide.  I have talked about some of his areas of struggle, but one area I am seeing growth in is in his diligence to task.  A few weeks ago we talked about giving his full effort and I truly feel like in almost every area he is doing that now. 

The big improvement this week was in his written narration.  He spent at least 1 hour and 15 minutes doing this one, but he put some of his personality in it and really tried to use sentences with more varied vocabulary and more descriptive words.  It still isn't perfect but it is a big improvement.

He is now doing paragraph writing in Essentials in Writing and I think that is helping to remind him of what good writing should look like.  He did this expository paragraph this week.

He is back to BJU lit and I will say it is still a struggle.  On certain days he is supposed to write the answers to the end of the story questions instead of just discussing them.  I tried to have him do that this week and he just couldn't.  If I discuss the questions with him and give him some feedback on his answers he can eventually come close to what the guide is looking for or at least he gives an answer that makes sense, but to sit down and write the answers without the feedback at this point is just too hard.  He has always struggled with making a connection with excepts of stories.  He does much better with full length novels where he can develop a relationship with the characters.  This is a skill we will keep working towards.

He was thrilled this week to finish TT Algebra 1 and we have now started TT Geometry.  We will continue to add in some Algebra I review sheets so that he doesn't forget everything he learned.

He was supposed to make a star chart this week for the World Geography.  He did about 1/3rd of it before his hand just wore out so I helped him some. He decided that using the Ipad app was much easier :).

He is finishing up Mimosoa for World Religions and we have had some conversations about the trials she endured.  He is doing bookmark questions for this book and I have enjoyed seeing how his answers are more thoughtful this year than they were last year.

For his PE elective he continues to go to his B.E.A.S.T class.  This has been great for him in so many ways.  Here he is practicing a new trick called a flyaway back flip.  It just amazes me he can do this.

Week in review 9/15-9/19, 2014

This week we finished week 5 of the World Geography guide.  I really like how this guide is put together.  I like the alternating of the lit books with the BJU book.  He finished A Christmas Carol and went back to BJU lit and found that he actually did a better job of answering the questions than he did when we fist started back to school.  I think by reading A Christmas Carol he got tuned in to noticing details that he wasn't noticing before.  I thought he did a good job on his last written narration for A Christmas Carol.

In Science he had 2 labs to do that he did at night with his dad.  The first one was a to scale model of the solar system so he could look at how to calculate large measurements.  They went to the most open place they could find, but still couldn't fit the last 2 planets. Here he is showing Mercury from the Sun

 

 

Here is Jupiter to the Sun which you can see in the distance.

Here is Saturn to the Sun and the Sun is the way far off tree

The other experiment they did involved motion and forces.  It was a much easier set up.

One highlight of the year for N. is the Practical Happiness book.  He reads it on day 4 and annotates it and then he and his dad go somewhere early Saturday morning to discuss it.  They are really enjoying this time together and my dh says N. is really doing a good job discussing it.  I love that they are getting this time to discuss things that matter.

In World Geography N. did a few different activities discussing latitude and longitude and this also gave him practice with a compass and a protractor.

Here he is drawing lines of longitude on an egg so he can see that the center one looks straight until he turns the egg slightly and that same line then curves.  This wasn't the easiest task to do with shaky hands, but he kept his sense of humor about it.

In World Religions and Cultures he is reading "Mimosa", about a woman who heard very little of the gospel message,but managed to still hold on to a belief in an all powerful loving God, despite living in India in a Hindu family. She has tragedy after tragedy occur and yet still believes.  What an example this has been for N.  A few times he has come out and asked me a question to make sure he is understanding it right. It seems so hard to believe all that happened to her and yet she still has faith. Given the events occurring in the world right now this study could not have come at a better time.  He is reading about what it takes to stand firm in your faith when people all around you are trying to get you to change your mind and denounce God.  That kind of faith is becoming very real to him. 

He was struggling with Logic, but now that I know it matters more if he is giving his best effort and if he understands the concepts than if he gets all the questions right I think it will be more enjoyable for him.

He is loving Getting Started with Spanish and was very excited to hear someone speaking Spanish to their son in the store and he was able to understand a few words.

Our days are full and he it is a challenging program, but I see him grow in independence and maturity each week. 

Week in review for Septermber 8-12, 2014

We finished week 4 of the World Geography guide-so hard to believe we have been at school for a month already.  Overall this week was the smoothest yet. 

In science he is enjoying the study, and I think learning quite a bit.  The days with 2 lessons do make for long days though and I am having to challenge him to not slack off when he gets to the last page of questions.  For science labs there is no way he can do them independently due to his hand tremors.  What works best is if he does them that night or the night before with his dad.  He doesn't mind this because, although he has to do work at night, his day ends up shorter.

He is really enjoying the World Religions and Cultures Study.  We have neighbors that are Hindu so he was pretty interested in the reading he did this week about the Hindu religion.  I am very glad that I made notebook page templates for him because then he can type right on the charts and glue them in.

In World Geography he made a cuneiform map.  He made his wedges too big so he was laughing at how few things he could fit on his map. 

He did 2 drawings this week, the Nile River, and Greece.  He likes the drawings.  He doesn't love the video instruction because he says she doesn't get excited enough.  I think years of listening to Diana Waring has spoiled him.

The one bump in the road for him right now is written narrations for history.  He has taken several steps backwards in the quality of his narrations.  I am not sure why.  He is using very few descriptive words and even though they are 3 paragraphs long they are only around 10 sentences.  We had a long talk this week about it and about the difference between trying, trying hard and giving our best effort.  After giving a visual demonstration of this for him he seems to understand and hopefully this week will do better.  The goal is to just see progress in that direction.  I have a feeling this make take a few months to get him back to nicer narrations. 

He is really enjoying A Christmas Carol and his written narration for this was better and did have more description in it.  He has never done a written narration from a literature book so I was pleased with his first effort.

The only other subject he is struggling with is Logic.  I started a notebook of the fallacies for him and now I am encouraging him to continue writing them down as he learns them.  This seemed to help when he did the exercises this week. 

Week in review September 1-5, 2014

We only had a 3 day school week this week and I think N. found even more of his groove this week.  He has established his pretty set order of boxes that seems to work the best for him.  He is schooling from 8-3 on most days with an hour for lunch.  On Tuesdays he has his gymnastics/parkour/American Ninja Warrior class in the middle of the day, but even with taking about 1 1/2 hours out for that he is done at 4 or a little after, of course he starts earlier that day. 

We did the review for BJU lit this week and I was pleased with how much he remembered from what we had talked about as he went through the stories.  It just reinforced to me that right now I do need to teach Literature, but it won't always require as much input from me.  He started reading A Christmas Carol this week.  I wasn't sure how this would go, but we have a family tradition of watching The Muppets Christmas Carol every year.  I realized as I read the book that the Muppets version actually contains a good chunk of the actual wording from the book and this definitely helped him.  When he got done reading his first day he came in and said "I love this! and I didn't want to stop reading."  This is not something I usually hear from him. It convinced me that whenever possible my visual boy needs to see a movie before reading the book. 

He is enjoying the World Religion study and we have had some good conversations.  The notebooking challenges him, but it is a good challenge.  I do label some things for him.

We finished The Sign on the Door from the Living Library.  I was able to tie it into our EIW lessons because the book uses very complex sentences.  I told him that during the EIW lesson and he started laughing when the first sentence I read in the book was very complex. 

In dictation he is really plugging along and is half way through level 7.  He types his dictations using wordpad so there isn't spelling or grammar check. 

He is now getting past the newness of the guide and the challenge of the work and starting to enjoy some of the boxes.  I am so glad that even in high school he can find things he looks forward to in his day.