Week in review August 29-September 2, 2016

I am calling this a week in review when in reality it is a summer/first 2 weeks of school review.  The summer was wonderful and went by way too fast.  A few  highlights of summer were a fantastic vacation, getting his driver's license, going to a local park where he could do parkour, and training with a few of the top American Ninja Warriors up in Michigan at an Adult Parkour camp and American Ninja Warrior camp.

 Elet Hall

Jamie Rahn

Flipping over his sister at a local park!

But of course summer had to come to an end so now we just finished week 2 of the AH1 high school guide.  I want to say up front to those that have followed my blog through the years that I may not share quite as much on here about struggles etc as I have in the past out of respect for the man that he is becoming. Here is how he wanted his first day of school picture to look.

It is taking both of us a little while to get into the groove of the new guide, but we are slowly getting there.  His favorite subject so far is history.  He is very interested in this time period partially because he loves listening to the music from the musical Hamilton.  On a side note I did buy the edited version of this CD, but  will give a heads up that it isn't very edited.  Only certain words were edited out, not others or subject matter.  Since he is 17 and he skips a few of the more questionable songs I have chosen to let him listen to this but I realize many people would not feel the same way.  Anyway because of his interest in all thing Hamilton and that time period he is really enjoying history.  He had his first highlighted narration and did very well.  He also had a key word narration.  You can partially see his writing for his notecards for his oral narrations.  I decided not to make him type these and just let him write the way he usually writes if he is just taking notes.

Chemistry is a subject I am doing along with him.  He is a spiral learner and there isn't quite enough review so I am figuring out how to incorporate the extra problems and some of the videos that are located on the website that is in the front of the book.  What I may do for now is use the test problems as a spiral review problems and spread them out a few problems at a time that he works each day as we go through the next chapter.  This is similar to what Teaching Textbooks does with math so I think it might work. 

 

He is finishing up Visual Link Spanish 1 and Teaching Textbooks Algrebra 2.  With only doing things 4 days a week we tend to not finish math in a typical school year.  He will move into Visual Link Spanish 2 and Teaching Textbooks Pre-calculus when he is done.

Bible is very similar to last year so it feels like an old friend which is very nice when he is getting used to a new guide.  He is doing the devotional with his Dad and they meet on Saturday mornings to discuss it. I love hearing him sing the hymns that are part of the bible box.  Just makes for a great start of the day.

His is doing Constitutional Literacy with just the "What Ever Happened to Justice" component from the Government box as his government.  I have also added a few videos to cover the topics that I felt he needed to fill in to make a complete government course.

His also doing the literature and composition components from the guide and is getting the hang of both. He is doing Easy Grammar for grammar.  He is reading the Robe and I think he is getting to the point where he is enjoying it more.  We may try and watch some of the movie just to pique his interest more.  In Their Sandals has him excited about writing, but it is different from the very guided scholarly writing of Mr Stevens and EIW so he is still figuring out what is expected with this. 

I have tweaked a few more things than usual this year, but I think that is pretty typical for high school.  Each child takes a slightly different high school path, especially the last 2 years and we as parents can adjust as needed.  HOD is an amazing curriculum and I feel like she makes it very easy to adjust things by saying things like "use this scheduled math, grammar and Spanish or use your own."  We are choosing to use our own for those things this year, just based on what fits him best.