Week in Review November 28-December 2, 2016

Ok so maybe I should call these month in review instead of week in review.  I am having trouble finding the time or the motivation to update this blog this year.  As I said in my last post this has been our most challenging homeschool year to date.  It has very little to do with the curriculum and just a lot to do with life.

N. still likes the history in the guide.  He has enjoyed the storytime books and is reading those on his own.  He really enjoyed learning about Ben Franklin.  He just started reading "A Mount Vernon Love Story" and since George Washington fascinates him I think he will really enjoy reading it.  I am reading it at the same time.  He is doing fine with the various types of narrations.

In English he has been doing several of the short stories or excerpts.  These aren't his favorites mostly due to the fact he has to answer lots of questions and do vocabulary activities about the stories.  He is just a Charlotte Mason kind of guy I guess.  It is very good for him though to have to do these type of activities.  There are some deeper thinking type questions that are the only ones that don't have answers in the answer key.  I sure wish this wasn't the case, because it is obvious they are looking for a certain answer so why not put that in the key.  This is a minor inconvenience though since the answers to all the other questions are in the key. 

I can't say enough good things about In Their Sandals, the writing program used in this guide.  In this last story he finally found his groove and did a fantastic story from the perspective of the innkeeper where Mary and Joseph stopped.  The program guides him in creating additional characters and filling in some gaps that the bible doesn't mention, yet stays very true to the biblical story.  He really enjoyed writing the story and I enjoyed reading it. 

Chemistry is a tough course.  He is doing ok with it, but I am having to teach it some.  I doubt there are many high school students that can do Chemistry completely on their own with out some real life teaching though.  The labs have all worked out and gone very well. 

One major change we made that has been a very positive change is that we dropped TT Precalculus and switched to one of Carrie's recommendations.  He is doing mathhelp.com College Algebra.  He really enjoys it and I like that it is over some things he has already learned in Algebra 2 but presents them in a different way and in some cases goes more in depth.  The problems start easy and build up in challenge and I like that also.  He will need to take the Accuplacer test for the Community College and I think this will be a great way to prepare for that.

In Spanish he has moved on to Visual Link Spanish 2-Verbs.  He continues to like Visual Link.  I am still hoping to complete Spanish 2 this school year or at least over the summer.