Week in Review 12/8/2014-12/12/2014

We finished week 16 this week.  For some reason the days went really long this week.  N. wasn't goofing around or doing anything different.  I think most of it was just the work load was a little heavier due to many days with 2 science lessons and also finishing up his personal essay.

He did finish up his personal essay this week.  It was over 2 pages long and over 600 words.  He wrote about an event that impacted his life.  His writing has really improved over the years.  In fact this week as we read a poor example of a paragraph in the EIW student book he laughed at it and was surprised when I told him that he wrote just like that 2 years ago.  I then brought out an example to show him so he could see his  progress.  I think that pushed him to continue to improve.  He still needs to work on changing up word order, but he is getting there.  Here is a picture of his first page.

In World Geography he drew several maps, but I failed to get any pictures.  He watched videos on Bhutan and read about Tibet.  I love how this tied in perfectly with both the World Religion study and the Living Library.  In the Living Library box we are reading "God Spoke Tibetan".  In World Religions he is studying Buddhism.  He did some graphic organizers for the different schools of thought for Buddhism.  Later he had was excited that he was able to explain Nirvana to both his dad and sister.  It's not often that he knows more about a topic than they do.  He still needs to add some more details sometimes to his graphic organizer boxes.

In literature he is reading "Men of Iron" and was struggling to understand the book.  Finally at chapter 12 I decided to let him listen to the Librivox recording while her read.  This made a huge difference in his comprehension.  It added time to his day but it was worth it.  He did that for 2 days and then the Librivox website wouldn't work on the third day so he read it without the audio.  He said it was much easier to understand because he could hear the readers voice in his head now and knew how the accent/dialect was supposed to sound.  This is an adaptation he may need to use often in order to understand more challenging books. 

He continues to love Teaching Textbooks Geometry.  It is a very good fit for him.  He also is now in a good place with The Art of Argument book for Logic.

He is almost half way through the year and I feel like he is exactly where I want him to be as far as his skills. 

Week in review 12/1-12/5, 2014

Back to school this week after taking Thanksgiving week off.  We had a bit of a slow start since N. came down with a cold on Friday and wasn't feeling all that great Monday, but he did his entire school day. 

In World Religions he finished up Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus.  I will be honest and say it wasn't his favorite book.  I don't know why.  My dh and I both read it and found it very interesting.  He may have just struggled to understand it some and then he has a tendency to kind of shut down. This is something we have talked about and he is working on.  He had to answer questions at the end and it was a struggle because he hadn't paid as much attention to his reading as he should have.  This also served as a good life lesson about giving your best to something even if you don't love it.  He did end up realizing some things he learned from it that enabled him to understand Jesus better.

In World Geography he has been reading about the exploration of South America and surrounding islands.  He watched videos about the Amazon and read about Iguazu Falls.  I love how he reads about the discovery of these places and then visually gets to see them.  He made population,temperature and rainfall maps.

He then had to show a little bit of his true personality by perching on his vault while holding his paper.

He also drew a map of South America.

One of the activities he made was a star chart, but he hasn't had a chance to use it since it has been so cloudy here.  Once again he was being goofy for pictures.  I do love that school is enjoyable enough for him that he gets silly during the day.  I am so glad it isn't drudgery.  HOD truly does make it still fun.

In Science he and his dad did an experiment on electrolysis of water.  It didn't turn out quite how they expected, but there is a lesson to be learned in that also.

He and his dad continue to meet early on Saturday mornings to discuss the book Practical Happiness.  My dh was sharing with me today the things they discussed and he is very impressed with N.'s ability to discuss biblical things at a deeper level.  This time is highly valued by both of them. 

We just finished up listening to The Captive from the Living Library-wow what a great story.  The dramatic presentation is so well done.  As soon as we finished N. stated that he wanted to give it to his dad so he could listen to it in the car.

He just started reading Men of Iron for literature and so far that is going well.  He had to come prepared with a few notes to tell me things that stood out to him or were meaningful to him.  I had to remind him about taking the notes because he wanted to do it off the top of his head, but once he took notes he came up with some very good observations.

All his other subjects continue to go very well.  He is writing his personal essay for EIW and is now doing The Art of Argument for logic.  This book requires more essay type answers and he is growing into that skill now.  I love how skills just continue to get added and build on each other.