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.