Week in Review for August 17-21, 2015

I'm back.  We started our new school year on the 13th and did one day last week and 4 days this week.  We are doing things this way due to labor day and the first day of co-op falling on the same week so that will be a 3 day week and N. likes to have Mondays fall on day 1 of the guide so it will do this after Labor Day week.  I was expecting things to start off kind of rough because there is a pretty big jump in writing work load and this guide will take even longer than the World Geography guide did to complete each day.  N. faced the first day with his typical optimistic attitude.  He wasn't read for summer to end, but be likes getting done in mid May so he was ok with starting so soon.  He wanted to do a unique first day of school pic.  I also convinced him to give me a traditional one.
His-

Mine-

He started the first day singing "Be Thou My Vision" which was a perfect way to start our school year.  It is part of the hymn study he is doing as part of the Bible credit.  He is enjoying "The Most Important Thing You'll Ever Study".  The company sent us the pdf so I loaded it on to the laptop and he is using Adobe Acrobat Reader DC in fill and edit mode to type in his answers.  What a blessing this software has been.  It is brand new and it is free!

He is also using the app for this software to type on his Art Notebook pages on the Ipad.  I scanned them in using the Scanner Pro app and had planned on using the PDF expert app to type on them, but that was difficult to use. The Adobe app works well, even if we haven't figured out how to make the type black instead of blue.  He likes the blue so he hasn't actually tried to change it.  He absolutely loves the God and the History of Art DVD's.  He even talks about what he learned at dinner.  Which if you know N. this is highly unusual. 

 In Literature he is reading Ben Hur.  We started watching the movie before he read the book and have watched about half.  This has really helped him to get excited about the book.  He loves finding where it is different.  He is annotating well and writing in a Literature journal each day.  He is using Onenote on his laptop to keep his lit journal.  He says the book is awesome-again unusual for this guy.

He has said he really likes the History spines he has used so far.  Last year the main spine took him about 9 weeks before he could really understand and like it.  These books are easier reads and he likes doing the follow up activities.  He had some Critical Thinking questions to do this week and his answers were pretty good.  I think he will show growth in this area as the year goes on.

He also is really enjoying Health.  I didn't think about the fact that this is right up his alley as far as exercise, diet, nutrition, fitness and how your body works. 

He is doing ACE Biology and I have him watching the DVD's as well as doing the reading.  He thinks the speakers on the DVD are boring and he doesn't like that they stick close to the text of the reading, but he will admit that the visuals, video clips etc to help him to understand the material.  He also isn't a fan of how many questions he has to answer each day, but he knows it is non-negotiable so he moans a little and does it. 

His days have ranged from 6-7 hours of work.  The long day was the day of the history written narration.  He has a good attitude about it all and is still finding time to practice his parkour and his American Ninja Warrior stuff so all is good.  I asked him at dinner how he liked it so far and he gave me a thumbs up which is pretty good for so early in the school year.