Weekly update for the week of 11/12/2012

We actually just finished our Rev to Rev week yesterday.  We are now off for Thanksgiving, other than math.  N. is happy because when we start back up our days will line up again with Monday being Day 1.  He didn't think it would bother him having them not line up, but it did.

This week he continued to work with his electric circuit for Science.  He made it have a switch using a nail, wing nuts and a paper clip.  How cool is that?  I just continue to be so impressed with this science.

For his history project he made a French tri-color Rosette to go along with studying the French Revolution. Folding paper accordion style is not his favorite thing to do, but he did it and didn't want me to help.  Of course when I took the pictures he had to let his sense of humor show yet again.  The French Revolution meets a Kansas goofy lumberjack hat.

We started reading "Marie's Home", which is such a good way of showing the horrors of the French Revolution without focusing solely on the the gruesome things that were done.  As we read about Marie and her family in the Palace of Versailles when it was taken over, the author did such a good job of making you feel the panic and fear. I have read "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and "Tale of Two Cities" with S., and this book gives yet another viewpoint of the events.

Teaching Textbooks Math is going very well.  N. is enjoying math again and says they explain things in a new way that even brings a new understanding to things he already knew how to do.

I have said many times how thanks to HOD  N. now loves to cook and draw.  Those are 2 things that I am certain he would not have attempted much, if at all, if it weren't for how they are incorporated into HOD.  His real passion is helping the dogs at the shelter where we volunteer.  He loves all of them.  In his free time he has been drawing all the dogs that are currently up for adoption using the pictures that I have taken as his model.  He is then posting them up in our dining room/school room.  He says he will take the picture down when they get adopted.  I am hoping we have a big adoption weekend since I don't think there is much more room on our wall.

 

Weekly update for week of 11/5/2012

Another week of Rev to Rev has come and gone.  Amazing how fast the year is going by.  I can't believe it is November already.

The big hit this week was again the Exploration Education Science.  He loves this curriculum and I am very impressed with what he is learning and so is his engineer daddy.  This week he did an experiment where he learned about resistors and he found out that lead is a resistor.  He used a piece of lead from a mechanical pencil and found out that if he pushed the lead harder against the copper wire then the light bulb glowed stronger.  He then learned that this is how dimmer switches work.

He continues to enjoy the state study.  Here he is letting some of his goofiness show as I am trying to take a picture.

He started reading about Eli Whitney in Four American Inventors.  He says he likes reading from this book. I like that he is getting such a broad view of so many inventors.  There is lots of history imbedded in the stories of the inventors lives and this helps reinforce what he is learning in history.

The one area I feel like I have failed in this year is Math.  We started out with Chalkdust because I wanted a good video teacher.  It moved way too fast and N. was only frustrated by it.  I then switched to Lial's Prealgebra because I had it here and N. liked the look of it.  Well he is getting frustrated with it also.  In the second chapter they have some very challenging problems that are not usually tackled  until at least half way through Prealgebra. He was getting the concepts, but was overwhelmed with how challenging the problems were.  I think he also needs a more spiral based program similar to CLE.  I have ordered Teaching Textbooks.  I was afraid of it since so many people had said it was behind in scope and sequence.  However after comparing the table of contents of the new 2.0 editions I don't see that as the case any more.  They added many chapters to Prealgebra, Algebra I and Algebra 2.  I figure it is more important that he understand the concepts and that he doesn't feel so overwhelmed.  We will see how it goes.  I just wish it wasn't our 3rd math curriculum for the year.

 One family project we did this year was to fill shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child.  Both kids enjoyed picking out things and packing their boxes.  Here is even a rare picture of S. and even rarer still she has her in it's natural state instead of straightened.

Weekly update for the week of 10/29/2012

Another pretty good week using Rev to Rev.  N. has changed up the order in which he does his subjects and that seems to be helping keep the time down a little bit and also has him doing the more challenging things when his brain is fresh. 

In Science he continues his experiments with electricity.  He learned about electrons and same and opposite charges and what happens when objects with same charges come near each other and what happens with those with opposite charges come near each other.  The experiments were simple, but the explanations that the log book was looking for were ones that used more mature terms than what he has done in the past.

He also did an experiment later in the week testing conductors and insulators.  I can't say enough good things about the science this year.

His history project was making either Hasty Pudding or Bread Pudding.  We have made forms of Bread Pudding before with little luck so this time he made the Hasty Pudding.  It was actually quite good and N. and his Daddy especially loved it.  Thanks to HOD N. has become quite the cook.  Yesterday alone he fried up bacon for Men's Bible Study, then he helped his Dad make dinner and then he asked to make cookies and did most of that on his own. 

In Science he has been reading some Chapters from The Story of Inventions.  It is a little tougher read, but I like the fact that it has questions at the end of the chapters for him to think about when he is done reading.  These questions helped guide him as he wrote his written narration this week.

We continue to read The Reb and the Redcoats for storytime.  It is a very good book.  The vocabulary is definitely middle school level, but if you are looking for a book for that age that takes a different look at the American Revolution I highly recommend it.

He also has been listening to Jim Weiss's recoding on Thomas Jefferson.  This is an Independent box, but I want to hear it also so he puts it on the stereo so I can listen also.  I have learned quite a few new things about Jefferson.

The Composer study and the Worldview Study continue to be huge hits around here. 

In Math he continues to plug along with Lial's Pre-Algebra.  He seems to understand the explanations in this book much better than the ones in the Chalkdust program.  I am finding that I need to limit how long he works on this each day or else he starts making careless mistakes. I have had to curb the whole "I must make up for lost time" attitude and just go as slow as needed so that he really gets the concepts.

Weekly update for week of 10/22/12

I don't have very many pictures this week.  Not sure what happened. N. did lots of fun things, but I guess I just enjoyed in the moment and didn't snap pics. 

This week he started a new project build for Science.  He built a circuit board.  I do end up being an extra set of hands with this.   Also I usually do the glue gun because his tremors make it very difficult to get the glue right where he wants it.  He was very excited that the light bulbs actually lit up when he connected the board to batteries.  Of course he had to be goofy when the camera came out.

In the Inventor study he finished his reading on Thomas Edison from "Four American Inventors".  He gained a new appreciation for Edison by reading this book.

For his history project he tried to duplicate a painting of Cornwallis Surrendering.  He did a pretty good job.  It might look messy to most people, but I know how tough it is for him to color this kind of detailed work.

He continues to work really hard during the school day.  He starts at 8 and takes a 15 minute break for snack and then takes about a 45 minute lunch.  This means most days he is done around 2.  He has had a few days that go longer than that, but mostly because he has a co-op class that requires about 1/2 hr of reading during the week so the days he does that go longer. 

I did make a concession with his written narrations this week.  I am letting him take notes if he needs to.  In theory it adds time to how long this takes him, but in reality it really doesn't.  If he doesn't take notes he has to go back and look at and sometimes completely re-read sections in order to remember what happened.  It really isn't a matter of him not paying attention when he reads.  It is due to his short term memory issues.  If he takes 1 word notes he is able to then remember what the book says and does very good narrations.

For Storytime we are reading "The Reb and the Redcoats".  We are both thoroughly enjoying this book.  It is a very different look at the Revolutionary War. 

He continues to do well with Grammar and Dictation.  He is having to redo a lot fewer passages this year in dictation.  We are doing it 4 days a week and I think that helps.

Weekly update for the week of 10/15/2012

   This has been a very busy 2 weeks.  N. continues to plug along in Rev to Rev.  He still really enjoys it.  This is really his first time studying in depth American History since he didn't come home until he was 10 and we started with Preparing Hearts for His Glory as our first guide.  I have to remind myself of that because things that I think he should already be familiar with, he isn't.  If he hasn't had exposure to something then his reading comprehension isn't near as good.  We ran into that some these past 2 weeks when he was reading some things in "George Washington's World." 

For storytime we finished reading "John Paul Jones-Pirate Patriot".  I have to say this was one of the tougher storytime books we have done.  Neither one of us is at all familiar with boat terms so it was hard to follow at times.  The epilogue at the end that filled us in on what became of him was very sad.  We have just started "The Reb and the Redcoat".

For history projects he did a stain glass window painting using the Old North Church Steeple as a model.  I really like this painting.

He also made a Liberty Hairstyle.  He found it hilarious the different things the French did to their hair.  He decided to put a canon and a ship in his hairstyle.

 He continues to love Exploration Education Science and he seems to be getting exposure to some tough concepts. 

The big news this week was that he earned his Black Belt in Karate!!  It has taken him 6 years, but he has stuck with it, even though it took him much longer than a neurotypical kid.  He even had to write a 500 word essay.  Thank goodness for the IEW writing program last year.  It was a pretty painless process due to all he learned doing that program with RTR.  He also had to break a board with his hand and with his foot.  I am very proud of him.

Weekly update for the week of 10/1/2012

This was a much smoother week.  Math went much smoother using the Lial's Prealgebra book.  I go thru the lesson with him and then he does half of the odd problems one day and the other half of the odd problems the next.  It is taking about 40-45 minutes I think for math, sometimes less.  We still haven't got into the types of problems that caused the meltdown, but he seems to like the smaller chunks that this book does. 

We finished reading "The Secret Wish of Nannerl Mozart" for storytime.  He loved it.  I was surprised that he enjoyed it as much as he did.  It is a very good book, but I didn't think it was his type of book.  We just started the book "Pirate Patriot" about John Paul Jones.  The first chapter was kind of confusing and he struggled with the oral narration,but I am sure as he gets to know the characters better he will do fine. 

One of the things he has really enjoyed this year is researching the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.  He is supposed to put brief bulleted answers to several questions on the back of the cards.  I don't make him capitalize or write complete sentences necessarily.  Not sure if that is right or not, but I look at it as similar to note taking. He can't write that small so he is using the Ipad with a keyboard to type them in an app called Notability and then he sends it to the computer and we print it.  He does still use the 2 finger typing method.  He has gone through some typing programs, but when he tries to use 5 fingers his tremor really kicks in.  We still are working on it, but I am not sure he will ever be able to type the typical way.  He is pretty fast with 2 fingers.

He finished up his mystery book from DITHOR and then made a board game to go along with it.  He read the 3rd book in the Viking Quest series.  It was an easy read for him, but he really wanted to find out what happened to Devin,Bree and Mikkel so I let him read it. 

He told me this week one of his favorite boxes is the one where it alternates between the composer study and the "Who is God" book.  He really enjoys music of all kinds.

In Science he did experiments with ramps, and pulleys and levers this week.  He doesn't always write as detailed a theory in his log book as what the answer key says, but his ideas are always correct.  We are talking about using the correct terminology when writing up science lab reports.  He was able to give his dad a pretty detailed explanation at dinner about levers.

On Fridays we do a co-op and he is in a Musical Theater class.  He just found out this week that he got one of the leads in a play they will do around Christmas time.  He is very excited.  He has a lot of lines to memorize.  Thankfully HOD has prepared him well to memorize lengthy things. 

Weekly update for the week of 9/24/2012

     This was an interesting week full of highs and lows.  The highs were the things in the HOD guide.  This weeks history project included lots of cooking.  My ds has grown to really enjoy cooking and I know it is because of HOD.  This week he made English Tea Cakes. His independence once again came through when he said "Mom I've got this, I will let you know if I need your help."  Then he realized he needed an extra pair of hands and he said "well it is a semi-independent box, so it is ok for you to help."

He then made French Tea cakes, which I forgot to take a picture of the final product.  He decided he liked the English ones, better than the French.  In fact he plans on making the English ones again around Christmas time.

     In Geography he continues to do his mapping by using our shortcut method with the numbers.  He says the locations outloud as he numbers.

     He continues to really enjoy the state study, the composer study and our time together doing "Who is God."  We have some great discussion surrounding that book. 

     He finished reading Michael Faraday, in his Inventor study.  His last written narration of this book was his best by far.  He also did more experiences with his racer and learned to calculate things like horse power and work.

    Our low came in the area of Math.  I have sensed his frustration building for about a week with how fast Chalkdust math moves.  I think Dana Mosley is an excellent teacher, but he does talk fast and is wordy with his explanations and for some reason it just was too confusing for N.  He had a huge meltdown and after we talked it through he was able to verbalize some of the issues.  So we are back to square one with Math.  I have a Lial's Prealgebra book here.  He thinks it looks better.  I think it may still move to fast and I am not sure the mastery style of teaching is going to work for him.  I will try it this week and see how it goes.  I think if it doesn't work I will order Teaching Textbooks.  The new editions are supposed to be more complete as far as concepts covered so I am not as hesitant to use it as I have been in the past.  Just like teachers in a classroom, homeschool teachers have to be ready to make adjustments for their students if something is not working and so that is how I am looking at it.