Week in review for 2/10/2014

We finished week 23 in MTMM this week.  It is hard to believe.  N. had a good week of school.  He has realized that a negative attitude towards one or two subjects can affect his entire day so he has been praying about his attitude towards subjects like Math.  There were a few times this week as we were having our Biblical Worldview time together that it directly addressed some of the things he has been struggling with.  I don't know why I am always amazed when that happens.  I love how HOD continually draws N. back to God's word to see what the truth is about things. 

I made one change this week and this is where I hope others can learn from my mistakes.  I was waiting to grade his bible study workbook on Fridays.  He has been getting more and more wrong as the weeks go on and I realized that he needed me to grade it right after he does it so I can see if there is something he doesn't understand or if he is just not writing out a complete answer due to his dysgraphia. I discovered a little of both so even though it is an independent box we have a meeting time right after he does it just to make sure he understands what the point of the passage was.

In science he finished "Atoms in the Family".  He said in the end it was a good story, but he just struggled understanding it.  He is now reading Albert Einstein and I can tell that this one is much easier for him to comprehend.  He is still doing the science labs with his dad and they both are really enjoying the time together.

We have had a very snowy winter so doing nature study outside hasn't happened much.  Most of the time he picks a window to look out of and draw.  This week he decided to go out and draw.  I am sure the neighbors thought we had lost our minds.

In storytime we are reading "I Am David", and I have to say it is one of the most interesting books I have ever read.  The daily readings are longer than most at around 24 pages, but it doesn't seem like it because this book is so good.  N. is fascinated by it.  When I finish each day he says "read more". 

He continues to do fairly good narrations.  He tends to pick one section of the reading to narrate instead of getting the entire chapter.  I have allowed this due to his short term memory issues.  He spends a good hour reading and writing his narration and he is improving in his editing skills.  He does still gets some facts mixed up at times though so I have to skim read if something doesn't sound quite right.  Here is his notebook page for the week.  The map of Africa is a little messier than I care for, but he really does have a tough time coloring inside the lines.

Overall I am pleased with his progess this year and I can see where the skills he is fine tuning now will be utilized in the World Geography guide next year for high school. 

Update for week of 1/20/2014

This is a long overdue update.  As typical I have trouble getting back into blogging after Christmas.  We continue to move along with MTMM.  I think both of us have a bit of the winter blahs so our enthusiasm for school is a little lacking at times, but overall N. continues to keep a pretty good attitude.  It helps if I keep a positive attitude.

In history he has been studying WWII.  He is interested in this time period and yet he is such a sensitive boy that it also really bothers him.  In storytime we are reading "In the Shadow of His Hand".  This book is very good, but hard for a Mom to read out loud.  It is also the one book this year where he has begged me to continue reading so he can find out what happens. 

He is showing great progress with his written narrations and they have gotten to be very long.  This one pictured  I think was over 225 word and the one he wrote this week was around 325 words.

The oral narrations where I type them are slowly improving, but still an area of stress for him.  He still really wants to look back in the book to find the key words that he is supposed to include.  This is not a terrible thing, but then he ends up reading from the book as part of his oral narrations.  I think his short term memory issues really come in to play here.

We have made one minor change to the schedule and that is we have moved the science experiment to the weekend to do with Dad.  N. can't do them independently because of his tremors and his Dad really likes being involved in these and I am very happy to let him do these.

N. continues to enjoy the nature journaling although he struggles when he has to do things with markers.  He doesn't usually get the results he is looking for, but he keeps working at it.  This is one of his more enjoyable parts of his day.

Math is his other frustration each day.  He is doing Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1 and he does great with it,, but he doesn't like that it takes an hour or more to do each day.  I did feel like it was weak in the area of word problems so 1 day a week we are doing a book from the Critical Thinking Company called Algebra 1 World problems.

Now something slightly off topic from HOD. Something I have found with N. is that he really needs a certain amount of exercise each day  in order to have a good attitude about things.  This is tough to do when it is as snowy and cold as this winter has been.  He and his Dad decided to build a vault that is now residing in our living room.  Yes you read that right, the living room.  I figure for N. it is physical therapy as well as helps him emotionally and with his school work, so it is worth giving up that room.

Update week of 12/9/2013

Once again it has been a few weeks since I posted.  This year has flown by as we just completed week 16 of MTMM.  I also can tell it is close to Christmas because we have hit a few bumps in the road which seems to always happen around this time of year.

I will start with the smooth sailing parts first.  N. just completed The Elements book in science and felt like he learned quite a bit and really enjoyed it.  Here he is building chemical bonds with marshmallows.

For his history project this week he made Tollhouse cookies.  He wanted to make them without any help from me.  Usually I help to just steady measuring spoons etc, but he was determined to do this on his own.  He did a great job, and really didn't spill too much flour on the counter.

One of his Draw and Write projects this week was the Golden Gate bridge.  He also did Mount Rushmore but he didn't want me taking a picture of that.  It was a tough one to draw.

Nature journaling continues to be an activity he enjoys.  For a kid that has some much trouble with handwriting his drawing has really come along.

Now for a few of the bumps in the road.  The oral narration where I type it continues to be a very stressful thing for him.  He  just freezes up.  He was to narrate on the stock market crash and the Great Depression.  It should have been pretty easy, but he really struggled.  He said he didn't understand the stock market enough to really understand what was going on.  We talked a bit about that and that helped, but it is almost like he has test anxiety with this activity.  I am not sure how to make it better for him.  So we just keep pressing on and I tell him there is no right or wrong answers.  I think the fact that he has words he has to include makes it seem like there are right and wrong answers though.  They are really there to help him, but he gets stressed about including them.

He also struggled with an activity to list signs of prosperity.  He really has never seen true poverty other than on tv so I decided to pull in the help of my Dad.  My dad was born in 1927 so I had N. call him and ask him to describe his world during the Great Depression.  That worked wonders.  The depression came to life for N. and it was a great bonding time for grandpa and grandson.

Math has been our final bump.  He is doing Teaching Textbooks Algebra and I do believe it is a good fit for him.  He says he understands the teaching, but he doesn't like how long it takes him to do a lesson.  He averages an hour to an hour and 15 minutes.  He had a major meltdown this week over it and so we are continuing to talk about attitude and how this is just how the upper maths will be. 

We have one more week of school before we will take a 2 week break.

Update week of 11/18/2013

Another 2 weeks have come and gone and so I thought I would update what we have been up to before he start a week off for Thanksgiving.

In history N. has been learning about the Roaring 20's, Amelia Earhart,Louis Armstrong and the rise of Stalin among other things.  Two weeks ago he was finishing up learning about WWI and for Draw and Write Through History he drew the Red Baron's plane.  He worked so hard at drawing this and I was so impressed with his drawing.  He did use a ruler since drawing straight lines with a hand tremor is pretty difficult.  Even holding a ruler while trying to draw can be a challenge.

In story time we finished the book "War Horse" which is a fantastic book and started "Gladys Alyward". N. enjoys books about missionaries so he is looking forward to this one.

In Science he continues with the Elements.  He did an experiment with red food coloring and bleach and he made element baseball cards.

The variety of hands on activities has really helped him to become familiar with some of the more common elements and what they are used for.

In literature he finished Dust of the Earth.  We are not doing DITHOR this year since he had finished the student workbook last year, but he is reading some of the books and we discuss them and talk about some of the literary elements like conflict and foreshadowing. 

He continues to push himself to write longer and longer written narrations, which is good since that is required next year.  He still has some difficulty catching his errors when he proof reads it so we are still working on that.

This week when he had to pick his quote from Worthy Words to copy I took Julie's advice and told him to concentrate on picking the best quote that he felt covered a main idea and then if it was long he could type it.  He did a good job picking the quote and it was long so he typed it.

The only bump in the road has been Algebra.  I still think Teaching Textbooks is a good fit for him, but he has just reached the point in Algebra where the problems are hard and require him to write out so many steps to solve.  He writes all the steps, but it does wear him out and math takes at least an hour for him to do.  He had a little trouble understanding mixture problems this week so when we restart we may "sit" there a while and I will use problems from other books I have on hand to give him extra practice.

Update for the week of November 4, 2013

N. had another good week.  As depressing as I think modern times can be to study, he seems to like it.  It is the type of kid that does much better learning something if he has heard of it before so since he has heard of many of these wars and these rulers that could be why he likes it.

In history he learned about WWI and this is the first war that he ever found interesting.  We started reading War Horse for our story time and he can't wait to see what happens the next day.  Of course he also likes the fact that I keep ending up choked up by the time we finish our reading for the day. 

One of his biggest challenges this year has been doing the oral narration when I am supposed to type it.  I first tried letting him record it into his ipod and that was a disaster.  It was as if he had test anxiety.  He stuttered and stammered and got frustrated and went back to his habit of not giving many details.  So now I am typing while he narrates.  His narrations are much slower and methodical and lack much personality, but they are improved from the way we were doing them.  Right now he is looking back at the reading more than he should so I am encouraging him to look for names etc and then to look up and try and narrate.  It is funny because when he orally narrates the other weeks where I am not typing it he doesn't look at the book near as much and his narrations are better.

His history project this week was a salt painting.  Not sure it worked out exactly like it was supposed to, but he did get the paint to follow the salt line.

His nature journal assignment was to draw fall leaves of which we have plenty right now.  You might wonder about the blue leaf.  We do have a pear tree where the leaves are almost a red-purple in color right now.  I think that is what he was trying to capture.  He added more typing after I took this picture and I think he is finding he actually enjoys journaling, as long as he can type it.

For Science he had the option of making a periodic table pillowcase from fabric paint or playing the periodic table game we had learned last week.  There is no way either one of us would tackle that pillowcase so he played the game with his dad.

He is doing Teaching Textbooks Algebra and that is going well.  I know some people think it is light, but we are using the 2.0 version which is more challenging and I find it is going at just the right pace for him.  I do add in some additional story problems sometimes.

Update 10/28/2013

N. continues to just sail right along in MTMM.  He seems to find this period of history more interesting than some he has studied.  He usually dislikes studying wars, but for some reason WWI caught his interest.  I think it is because we have both really enjoyed reading "Angel in the Square" for story time.  He understands more of what all was going on politically during this time period thanks to that book.

He drew a U-boat for Draw and Write Through History. He loves doing those.  You can also see that his narrations are getting quite lengthy.  He continues to do his own timeline labeling.  His copywork got off to a rough start as he forgot to do cursive for the first few words.  Sometimes those glitches in his processing just sneak in there.  He obviously became aware and fixed it so it doesn't serve any purpose to make him redo it.  He is pretty good at coming up with bulleted points about a person or topic thanks to his training in previous guides.

In Science he is working through The Elements and he is learning so much.  My dh is an engineer and loved science, but hated Chemistry.  N. shows him each night what he learned and my dh says he might have liked chemistry if someone had ever taken the time to explain things the way The Elements does.  I can see how it is laying a strong foundation for Physical Science next year and then Chemistry.  Here he is figuring out how many protons and neutrons certain atoms have.

One of his history projects 2 weeks ago was to make Sopapillas.  His dad made them with him at night.  I am finding that there is great benefit in having dh do even 1 thing a week with him.  It doesn't always work out that way, but if it does they both seem to enjoy it and learn more about each other from doing it. 

Now for a few pictures that aren't HOD related, but they were a big part of his week.  N. is very into the sport of parkour so his jack-o-lantern had to be parkour related.  He carved this all by himself after I cut the pattern out on my Silhouette die-cutting machine.

I know celebrating Halloween is controversial among Christians, but we do carve pumpkins and when he was younger he wore costumes that were not scary and went trick or treating.  This year he wanted to dress up as Uncle Si from Duck Dynasty (his favorite show) and hand out candy to the little kids.  He was so funny and he looked just like Uncle Si sitting on the porch with his tea glass.

Update week of 10/14/2013

Ok so I am not very good at updates this year.  I think part of it is that as N. has gotten older their just isn't quite as much to take pictures of and I like to have pictures in my posts.

N. just finished week 9  in MTMM.  I sound like a broken record, but things are still going along smoothly.  He enjoys everything in the guide for the most part.  He isn't real thrilled with the Presidents DVD, but I am not sure why. He says he just doesn't like documentaries, which is true.   I find it very interesting.  I do watch it with him even though it is an Independent box. He is still getting the hang of picking out the vital information from a video so I just sit and watch it and wait to see what he is going to jot down in his notes.  Sometimes he will watch almost the entire thing without writing anything down so then I have to pause it and ask him if he thinks anything they have said is worthy of notes.  I figure this is just all part of training him.  He is requiring less intervention from me each week. 

In Science he is now doing the book The Elements and is really liking this.  He seems to retain information from this book well also.  Most likely it is all the activities he does as a follow up to the reading.  We played a Make 5 game this week so he could learn about how elements combined to make different minerals.

In story time we finished reading Mama's Bank Account, which had to be one of our favorite books that we have done together.  Now we are reading Angel on the Square that takes place in Russia during the last years of the Romanov's.

One day he was supposed to go outside for his Nature Journaling.  I offered to just let him look out a window since it was cold, but he went wanted to do what the book said and go outside.

One thing he has started doing which seems like a small thing, but to me is huge, is labeling his timeline.  He has always dictated this to me since he has to write so small and neat to fit it in the box and this was nearly impossible for him.  This is just an example of some maturity I see him in and willingness to push himself a little more.