Week 6 is over, ¼ of our year is done and behind us. The kids did their usual, math, grammar, writing, and reading, so I won't bore you with details about that.
For history this week we started working on modern history of the world (1850-present) Everett and Annika had fun learning about The Great Exhibition put on by Queen Victoria, and then had not so much fun learning about The Sepoy Mutiny. The bright spot of the second lesson was that I made some Enfield rifle "cartridges" out of wax paper, flour, foil and an index card. I then timed the kids while they loaded their paper towel tube rifles, with traditional pour in the gunpowder (aka flour), and ball (foil) and then with the Enfield "cartridge" They had lots of fun with that and learned how much faster the cartridges were.
They also had fun with science. Lucas got to put a series of batteries together to see what the difference was when lighting a bulb. He also learned about opposition. Everett did a lab about the fermentation rates of yeast when placed in various temperatures. Annika started chemistry for middle schoolers, with a new program and had to pick an element to do a profile page on. She chose plutonium and had some fun learning about it with Matt this weekend.
I realized today that we're in week 5 of school and I've been MIA. We had good weeks, but unfortunately for week 3 and part of 4 I was without my beloved Macbook Pro. It was in need of a new optical drive, and typing or posting from an iPad is less than ideal if not a full out way to drive a person to drink.
Now that I'm back I'll share some pictures of the science things the kids did during those weeks.
Other than the usual school day work here's what we've been up to.
Annika has been taking classes at MCA (Memphis College of Art) on Saturdays and is enjoying it immensely. She's finally started Latin and it's going well.
Lucas and Everett have been having some fun biking or going for jogs from time to time with Matt.
I've been working on a knitting project as well as sewing some cute doll dresses for my Etsy shop.
We've made a few changes in the items we're using for school as well. Everett has decided on Spanish as his foreign Language, we've set aside BookShark in favor of History of Modern Times with Story of the World and history encyclopedias, and we're adding in Trail Guide to World Geography.
Some items that are going really well are the new version of Fix It Grammar from the folks at IEW. We had some bumps in the road with the writing program from the same company, but seem to have found our groove with that.
We hope to keep trucking along. This year has been one of our best starts ever.
It's done, it's over, we all survived. We had the good, the bad, and the "Oops, let's change that"
The Good
The kids got up at a reasonable hour
There was no complaining
We managed to be done by 1530 each day
The new school room layout seems to be working really well
We got a new computer for the school room
Everett really enjoyed the science project he picked to do
Lucas is a full on, no more phonics lessons, reader
Annika has become very independent in her school work
Annika loves her science program
The Bad
Everett's not sure he wants to take Latin as his foreign language
Annika didn't like the first book assigned to her for history reading
Lucas hated the new math book I picked
The "Oops, let's change that"
The math I picked for all of them, didn't seem like it would work so I had to order new stuff
The history program uses the World book Encyclopedia which is DRY, DRY, DRY, we got some new books on the way to replace it.
Over all I'm happy with how this week went. This post was short and to the point, because I had already posted all the pictures in the First day of School post. Next week I'm planning to add in art and foreign language, guess we'll have to see if I'm successful with that plan.
