Week in Review 10/13-17,2014

Week 9 was finished this week so that means we are 1/4 way through the guide!  I can honestly say I am very pleased with the WG guide and with how N. is progressing each week.  I feel he is being challenged in so many important skills and he is also enjoying what he is learning and applying it to every day life.  Not sure there is anything more I could ask for.

He enjoys his bible time so much that he always does it first.  What a great way to start his day and what a wonderful habit to get in to.  He and his Dad continue to go out on Saturday mornings for their time to discuss "Practical Happiness".  They both really look forward to this time together and my ds is being challenged to grow in his faith and learn to be content in Christ. 

He continues along in Logic and this week as I was telling him about an "argument" 2 friends of ours were having on facebook he was quickly able to point out that one of the points was a generalization fallacy!  He has also picked out fallacies in some of the political ads.  I love that he is learning this skill.  In our world he is going to really need it. 

In Literature he is reading "Treasure Island" and he loves it!  We did watch the Muppets version of Treasure Island before he started reading the book.  This seems to really help him paint a picture in his head as he reads.  He loves to draw comparison's between the movie and the book.  I just love that he is actually enjoying reading literature.

He wrote 2 descriptive paragraphs this week.  One he did describing the steps of a parkour move that he does and the other one describing a Dairy Queen Blizzard.  For several years I have had a goal of getting him to use more mature vocabulary words in his writing.  We have done multiple vocabulary programs, I have tried to get him to increase his vocabulary in every day conversation, and we have talked about it over and over, and yet he has still really struggled with vocabulary in general, but especially in his writing.  Well I don't know what happened, but the light bulb has gone off and suddenly he is motivated to use more complex words in his writing.  It started with his Blizzard description where he talked about it cooling his innards.  That made me laugh out loud. 

His use of vocabulary continued with his written narration.  He sat with his Ipad Thesaurus app and he would type what he wanted to say and then would use the app to find more descriptive replacement words.  He actually enjoyed doing it and couldn't wait to show me his narration.  It was on Iceland.  There are still some grammar and punctuation issues, but I wasn't going to dim his enthusiasm for his narration, by picking it apart too much.  I have learned that will shut him down.  Right now he is pushing himself to do better each time so I am going to just give minimal suggestions each week and see how that goes. 

One of his World Geography projects was a Viking board game.  This was a fun break in the afternoon for both he and I.

I love the blend of the resources in the World Geography boxes.  He started out having difficulty with A Book of Discovery, but as he gets further into the book he is enjoying it more and more.  I love how the other books, which are easier reads, complement A Book of Discovery so well.  He also really enjoys the DVD's.  I have to admit to watching those with him, even though it is an Independent box. They are a great addition to the readings and really give strong visuals to the places he is reading about. 

He is moving right along in dictation and if all goes well  he will finish level 7 around Thanksgiving.
He types his dictations and this works our well for him.

I posted one of these on my facebook page this week and commented how much I love being this young man's teacher.  I never thought I would enjoy teaching him high school, but thanks to HOD we truly are having an enjoyable year.  I love watching him grow and mature into the man God would have him become.  It is such a privilege to spend as much time with him as I do.

Week in review 10/6-10/10, 2014

This week went really well as we finished week 8 in the WG guide.  I see him maturing each week in taking responsibility for his schooling.  A perfect example of this is that on Tuesdays he has his parkour class in the middle of the day.  He gets up early and starts school a 1/2 hour earlier on this day and works straight thru until 12. On other week days he works only until 11 and then eats lunch.  This week he also was going somewhere with our church youth pastor and a few kids later in the afternoon on Tuesday so he knew it was going to be tough to get all his school done.  He looked ahead in the guide and saw that 2 science lessons were scheduled for Tuesday and only 1 on Wednesday so he asked permission to move one of Tuesdays to Wednesday.  I love that he is thinking ahead and planning out how best to accomplish his work.  This is a skill that will be essential in college.

In science he continues to plug away.  He says he likes it, but it is hard.  He tends to miss the questions that require more application or thinking so he is working on improving in that area. He also sometimes just gets careless in finding the answers to the questions so that is another area I would like to see him improve in.
I really like this science curriculum.  I think it is thorough and delivers lots of information in an enjoyable way. 

He continues to really like Spanish.  He does his lesson and then he either does oral practice with me for around 10 minutes or he uses a flash card app on the Ipad to practice his words.  I don't often show his handwriting because I don't want his intelligence judged by the quality of his handwriting. However I think it can also be helpful in showing what dysgraphic handwriting can look like and it makes it very obvious why I allow him to type most of his things.

In World Geography he made a T-O map.  He had to use a compass for this and that is still pretty tough for him to do.  I think he was so focused on that activity that he did draw a permanent line over one that was supposed to get erased. 

He also drew the Arabian Peninsula and  did a review worksheet that contained smaller versions of all the maps he has done before.  He was supposed to do that without looking.  His memory issues made this pretty impossible so I did let him look back at the maps. Here he is concentrating on the video for drawing the Arabian Peninsula. 

In World Religions he has started the book "Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus".  He is finding it interesting and we have had some good conversations already.  He made a chart that outlines some of the differences between a traditional Jewish viewpoint and a modern Jewish viewpoint.  I found it interesting because I remember many years ago having a conversation with a Jewish friend about some of these same differences.

Week in review 9/29-10/3, 2014

N. finished week 7 in the World Geography guide.  He seems to just be rolling along in most subjects.

He had 2 science projects this week which he did at night with my dh.  This one involved work and power and he looked at those with ramps of different heights.  I like how he has to work some calculations as he does these labs. My dh always has him come to me after he is done and he orally tells me his conclusion and answers any questions I might ask about his explanation.  This way we can see if he really understood the concepts.

Logic is going better now that he doesn't feel as much pressure to get them all right.  When we discuss them I can tell he understands why it's a fallacy, he just might not know exactly which fallacy it is.

He started TT Geometry this week and he loves it.  He is very strong in the area of visual spatial relationships so Geometry should fit him very well.  He has learned about Deductive and Inductive reasoning and is able to tell valid reasoning from invalid.  I think doing Logic at the same time as Geometry will work well for him.

He struggled with his written narration again this week.  So I just continue to work with him and teach him what I expect.  A World of Discovery is just really tough for him to do an oral narration or a written narration from.  I am hoping it gets better as he goes along in the book.  EIW though is going very well.  He wrote a nice persuasive paragraph this week.  

In World Geography and Cultures he drew Italy and The Holy Lands this week.

In World Religions he finished Mimosa and ended up really liking it.  He had questions to answer at the end and did a pretty good job.  Still working on getting longer answers out of him.  He is a guy of few words.  He did these on a template I made so that he could type the answers and then just glue them into the notebook.

This week we were talking about all the HOD guides and I asked him what was his favorite and he answered Preparing Hearts, as he always does, but he then said that this was a good guide also and that it made high school much better than he thought it was going to be.  I loved hearing him say that.  I think he had been dreading high school and had always wondered if he would enjoy it at all.  He knew it was going to be a lot of work and that there would be some subjects he would have to really work at.  I love that he feels like he can accomplish what is required of him.  When you have a dc that has some learning challenges you always fear that at some point they will just get too discouraged and quit trying.  I love that HOD makes it where he feels like he can do this thing called high school.