Week in Review for the week of 8/24-8/28, 2015

We finished our second week and day one of week 3 and honestly I can't believe how smooth things are going.  I know there are some assignments coming up that will be much harder for N., but right now he is doing well. 

His favorite 2 subjects right now are Art History and Literature.  I'm not surprised by the Art History, but if you had told me Literature would be one of his top two subjects for the week I would have never believed you.  He absolutely loves Ben Hur.  We finished watching the movie and he is fascinated by all the differences between the movie and the book.  Not a day goes by where he isn't coming in to tell me something about the book and what it made him think of or what he thought about a character's actions.  He had his first written narration in lit this week and it was a very different style of written narration.  He was given the topic to write about.  He was to compare and contrast Ben Hur and Arius' view of death and then comment on how his compared to theirs.  I was expecting some "I don't know what to write" type of comments, but he was actually intrigued by this assignment and did a fairly good job.  There is room for him to grow in this area as far as details go, but he definitely got the foundational ideas. 

He also loves the Barry Stebbing videos in Art History.  Again he often has to tell his dad some of the points that Mr. Stebbing brought up.  He has already told me we have to go back to the Art Museum this year so he can see some paintings by the Christian artists mentioned in the video. He also had me look to see if Mr. Stebbing had any books he could read at night!  Ok this is astonishing because he does not read in his spare time at all, so I think it is safe to say that these videos have made an impact.  The Adobe Reader app is working wonderfully for him to type on his art notebooking pages. 

In history he really likes the book Unveiling the Kings of Israel.  He was disappointed to find out that he will finish this book up in a few weeks.  He has done 2 written narrations so far and they have been ok.  He hasn't gotten back up to where he was last year, but that is typical for the beginning of the year.  His timeline is also coming along nicely.

He also likes the bible study this year, combined with the hymns.  Hearing him sing "Great is Thy Faithfulness " this morning was such a beautiful way to start a Friday. He is using the Adobe Reader DC program on the computer for this and wow his answers are much better than when he was writing his answers last year.  He missed a few on the lesson I got the picture of and yes I do give him that grade, but we talk about what the answer is supposed to be and make sure he understands it all.

Spanish is a subject that is just going ok.  Honestly I am still not sure this curriculum is going to work for him.  He needs to have more of a spiral approach and I am afraid the Lifepacs are jumping around too much for him.  I am pretty much sitting by his side and helping him quite a bit.  Today he didn't do very well on his self test on syllabication and accents.  I will give it a month and reassess and see what he thinks at that point.  The other problem is the native speakers speak really fast and he is supposed to reply in rapid fashion.  Due to the CP N talks a little slower than most so he can't get out the words before they are on to the next phrase.

Grammar, Essentials In Writing,Pilgrim's Progress and Math are going well.  Science is his least favorite subject right now because he doesn't care for the way the presenters talk on the DVD.  He is funny about things like that, but basically I acknowledge what he is saying and he still has to watch the DVD's. 

Overall I am very pleased with how this year has started out.