Week in review for week of Oct. 10-14, 2016

We just finished week 8 of the US History 1 guide.  He has been getting up very early in order to get his school work done in time to go to work.  I am very impressed with his motivation and work ethic.  I try to always be honest about our year here and I will admit there are parts of this year that have been frustrating for both of us.  I don't think it is necessarily a curriculum issue, I think it has to do with the heavy duty subjects he has as well as just the fact he has other things going on in his world other than just school.  First let me get the things that have been struggles out of the way so I can end up on a high note.

The biggest struggle remains Constitutional Literacy.  I think this is mostly due to his frustration with the Probe paragraphs.  I have ended up guiding him way more than I want to with these, but I guess that is what teachers do.  The information truly is valuable, but sometimes it is frustrating that he is supposed to watch the video and answer the questions as he goes and he watches the video and the answers aren't in the video, they are instead in the reading he had done the day before.  Not a huge deal, but just an aggravation.  He is getting better each week at figuring out what to listen for and now knows if he doesn't hear the answer to look back in the book.  He is very sensitive to how information is presented and for some reason he doesn't care for Michael Farris's style.  He told me of all the courses he has ever done in our years of homeschooling this is his least favorite.  I actually thought about quitting it and even gave him the option of doing that.  His answer was "no mom I don't want to do that, just because I don't like it and it is hard isn't reason to quit it.  I'm not going to like every subject."  Ha well I guess he told me!  Of course his words sound pretty familar-lol, I'm pretty sure he might have heard those from somewhere.

Chemistry is a hard course, and can be a challenge due to the fact that I am relearning it as I go.  However he is understanding things better each week and taking on more of the learning himself with me not having to do quite as much teaching.  The experiments have been great.

Pre-Calculus is another challenge, again not because of the curriculum, but just the nature of Pre-Calculus.  Again I am learning along with him and I'm not sure how ready my old brain is for this subject.  He has had to teach me a few times.

Now on to the positives.  He really likes the history this year!  He laughed when one of his assignments was a typed narration.  He has done those since he was 11.  He did a much better job on his second highlighted narration this year.  He also finished his table of the formation of each colony.  It is tough to make it look nice when you are having to cut and paste each sentence.

 

He really likes the mapping activities that go along with the history also.  I do end up having to label some things for him as he points them out.  He just can't write that small.

Another positive is the literature.  He is now reading The Scarlet Letter along with a Christian guide to the book.  The Christian guide makes all the difference in his understanding and enjoyment of the book.  Today he shared with me some really good insight he had about the character of Pearl and what she represents. 

The Living Library is another positive.  He just finished a book on George Whitfield which he found interesting and now will go back and finish Ben Franklin's Almanac which he loves.  I am not making him do the follow up activities for these books, but we do discuss things verbally.

He also continues to really like reading through the New Testament for his bible study and he and his Dad have had interesting discussions about Everyday Battles. 

So as you can see despite some struggles there is still lots to enjoy and as he so wisely has told me, each year always has some things that are harder than others.