What an up and down week!

I streamlined on the fly to make sure we got our core subjects in (math, Latin, history etc.). This week we were adding/adapting to new work: Son1 started his History Odyssey program and another lesson in his Classical Composition, and Son2 did more history activities. The streamlining continued all week because we had a Terrible Tuesday, a fun yet exhausting field trip on Wednesday, and recovery the rest of the week.

Monday was fine (yay! finally a start-the-week good day!), but Tuesday was... eventful. Son2 surprised me by doing his math and half his Latin before Son1 got up and before I'd had my coffee. Unfortunately I allowed this to result in a major, major problem.

When Son1 got going on his lessons I didn't keep a good eye on how long he was taking at his work, he dawdled a huge amount, Son2 wanted to do subjects the rest of us weren't ready for, I struggled to balance the different demands, and both Son1 and I ended up with major meltdowns. What a mess.

At the end of the school day I reflected, and apologized to the boys for dropping rather than relaxing our routine and then getting mad when Son1 didn't stay on task. I also told Son2 that next time he wants to start lessons before everyone else, he'll have to choose assigned reading instead of core subjects. Seems sad to do that, but it was amazingly hard for me to keep to our routine for one son while the other was completely off the routine. Arrrgh.

On Wednesday we went on a field trip to the state fair with our homeschool group -- great fun! We had never been. We visited lots of kid-oriented hands-on exhibits, ate fair food, etc. No rides or games; there was plenty to do without going there. More details are below, under "Science." Even though our lessons that morning went very well, the fair outing affected us the rest of the week because we were exhausted afterward. Son2 fell asleep in the car and slept all the way home, something he NEVER does. So, the next day had its ups and downs. We worked our way through it, and in the end I'd say it went reasonably okay. On Friday I resisted the lure of trying to catch up on our lessons, and we relaxed after math and Latin. A very good decision.

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By the way, I list our subjects in the order we do them.

= Bible study =

Didn't do it at all this week, which is okay with me. We struggled all week, and I dropped Bible study to make sure we got our core subjects in every day. The kids missed it, so I think there will be no problem getting back to it.

= Math =

Son2 encountered fractions. At first certain aspects puzzled him, especially the comparison of fractions (is 1/3 greater or less than 1/4?). We worked on the concept -- most successfully like this: if Daddy eats 5/8 of a pizza and you eat 2/8 of a pizza, who had more pizza? Hahaha! By Wednesday he was much more comfortable with it. He moved on to some aspects of telling time (25 before the hour, 35 after the hour, etc.), and then started capacity, first metric and then English. I have a clean one-gallon milk jug for him to use in pouring water into different containers -- different shapes and sizes/capacities.

Son1 worked most of the week on algebraic expressions, doing all of the word problems in the Singapore 6A Intensive Practice workbook. Late in the week he had some fun with solids and what shapes can fold up into what solids (all mental work), and finished the week with some work on ratios.

= Latin =

Son1 did chapter four in Minimus, which is focused somewhat on verbs and has a fun story about the various household slaves. He read the chapter several times both with and without the CD, and I urged him to read the non-story section of the chapter as well. He played some games on the Minimus Web site (not everything works in Firefox on the Mac OS, arrgh). He also read some of the later stories in the book, played a little with the noun and adjective slips of paper from last week, and read the stories aloud with me, taking different parts.

Son1 reviewed lessons 9-11 in Latin Book One, doing all of the English to Latin translation exercises. By the end of the week he's become much more comfortable with putting together the Latin equivalent sentences with the appropriate word endings. My way of checking his work was to try to read the sentences back into English; I had fun being puzzled in gently silly ways when he hadn't gotten the endings right. We also started reading aloud the readings, and I began to prepare him for the idea that next week he will start doing entire lessons, probably one lesson over two days. The first lesson next week will be the last lesson we did in May, and then we'll be in new territory. I think he's ready.

= Memory work =

Ha! Let's see... we recited our normal evening meal prayer in Latin on Monday evening. Benedic, Domine, nos....

= Piano =

This went very well, despite worries early in the week. Last week at their first official piano lessons (with me) they were given assignments, and early this week it seemed as though they were only practicing favorite songs and not what they'd been assigned. By the end of Wednesday, lo and behold, they had worked on all of their assigned songs.

At Thursday's lesson each boy played for me what he had been working on, and the result was the same for both: two songs mastered (kudos!) and two songs to continue working on. Son2 was assigned two new songs as well, and Son1 was assigned four new songs because he was nearly at mastery for the previous week's songs.

The next day, our relaxed Friday, the boys returned to the piano over and over all afternoon, with Son1 teaching Son2 a couple of his new songs. I think they've both mastered most of their songs (and Son2 several of Son1's). They also had a lot of fun messing with the minor key sounds from these songs, and Son1 experimented with playing a song he really likes in different places all up and down the keyboard. Amazing. How fun.

= Handwriting =

Steady progress. I have a picture of some of Son2's work. The little star is for pretty good letters, and the big star is for very good letters, words, whatever. I'll ask Son1 if he would like me to show some of his cursive.

= History & literature =

Son2 is done with his assigned reading for the week. He read ahead a bit in American studies, and I stopped him from reading the middle ages history chapter for two weeks from now! He read chapters 2, 3, and 4 of The Story of the World v.2: Middle Ages (Roman Britain, early Christianity, and the Byzantine Empire, I think); several stories in Viking Tales; two chapters in Our Island Story about post-Roman Britain; and four chapters in This Country of Ours (Columbus's story, and the origin of the name "America").

Son1 is behind on his assigned reading a bit, mostly because of our rough Tuesday and our relaxed Friday in which some of his free time was spent getting ready for a Boy Scouts campout. Also, he has decided he doesn't like the historical fiction book about Rome and Britain, Outcast, but I'd read it; it's a pretty good story and a great window into that world, so he doesn't get to quit. I'm making him put 20 minutes into it every day and he decided he's okay with that. He also read a chapter of Our Island Story about post-Roman Britain; two chapters of This Country of Ours (Columbus); and two biographies in Famous Men of Rome. He is behind by a chapter or two of church history and a chapter of This Country of Ours.

New this week, we all sat down together and decided what projects and activities the boys were interested in from the first several chapters of the activity guide for Son2's The Story of the World v.2: Middle Ages. I don't feel the need to exactly synchronize activities with reading, so I figure we can take another week or two to do as many of these 5 or 6 as we like. So... on Friday the boys played Defeat the Romans, an interesting board game that as usual frustrated Son2 who hates to even imagine losing. Oh well.

Son2 also did this mapwork for the Roman Empire. I was very impressed with the great care he took in coloring the Mediterranean Sea blue. Perhaps you are wondering why Great Britain and Ireland are blue? Son2 explained that he chose to do that because the Celtic warriors painted themselves blue! Son1 is very interested in doing the illuminated manuscript activity, and that may draw Son2 into enjoying it as well. Not 'til next week, though.

Son1 did the first lesson in his History Odyssey: Middle Ages, level 2 program, hurrah! That was Wednesday, and by Thursday I'd decided to wait on the next lesson until next week; too much upset and weariness this week. Son1 seemed to enjoy the first lesson, though. He read the assigned two-page spread in our Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and then did the map work. We pulled out a nice children's atlas that I'd bought used in August, found a map of the continents that he needed to know for his map, and discovered a nice spread on Europe (geographical features and political) that was quite helpful to him. We ended up talking about Great Britain vs. England vs. Britain, and the atlas had a nice page on that as well.

= Writing/composition =

HA! After a total struggle on the Terrible Tuesday, I pushed it off all week and gave up Friday. I think Son1 will be fine next week to do the rest of the lesson solo as usual.

= Science =

State fair -- Clydesdale horses, lots of farm animals in the kids' hands-on area (chickens, baby chicks, rabbits, butterflies, piglets, milking cows, earthworms!), fried peaches and fried peanut butter cups, the view from 300 feet above the fair (yikes), milkshakes vs. snow cones, fountain spray that cools you off, etc. Another day, candy making demonstration at a local candy store. Dead dragonfly on our entryway last night. Son2 teaching himself to do small wheelies with his bicycle, and to ride no-hands, oh my.

In related news, last week Son2 received a passel of belt loops and pins for completing several academic and sports electives in spring and summer, and Son1 passed his Boy Scout Board of Review, moving from Scout class to Tenderfoot to Second Class Scout all in one hour. Woohoo!

There was proud congratulations and celebration for both boys, and a promise to buy an official Cub Scout belt for Son2 so he can wear those belt loop awards. Later, dear husband and I talked with Son1 about pacing himself from this point onward. In fact, he doesn't even need to go as fast as one rank per year, because he is 11.5 and has until age 18 to make Eagle. Our troop tends to aim for Eagle by 16, but we don't see the point of doing it so early. There is so much the boys can do before Eagle, why not spread it out while gradually working on the Eagle requirements?

Son1's favorite, favorite thing about scouting is the camping. At this very moment he is the sub-patrol leader at a weekend troop campout, leading half of his patrol, responsible to keep them organized and make sure everyone is fed. He'll have a very experienced patrol member as his second in command. Go Son1!

One final note. On Monday night, after a good day, we had a wonderful conversation with dear husband over dinner. I was having the kids tell their dad what they'd worked on that day. In the midst of dear husband asking them to tell him more about Latin word endings, Son1 said, "To be or not to be," as a joke related to something. Dear husband took off on a wonderful discussion, starting with where that came from (Shakespeare's Hamlet). He mentioned that it was a soliloquy or monologue, told the boys what Hamlet's dilemma was, talked a bit about power and choices, and about suicide and various perspectives on what God/the Church thinks about it (!). Then the kids and their dad started talking about the phrase Pandora's Box, the story of Pandora and what was special about opening the box (the kids were familiar with the story, cool!), comparison with the phrase "put the genie back in the bottle, " where that idea came from (Aladdin's story in One Thousand and One Arabian Nights), and whether in the stories genies were easy to control. It was so fun! I mostly kept quiet; this was all dear husband's thoughts, connections that he drew, and so on. Very cool.

= My goals for next week =

A reasonable, steady schedule that includes History Odyssey and Classical Composition for Son1 and more history activities and a little copywork for Son2; continuing character work with the boys (making good choices, being kind, being generous, self-control); a reading quiet time at morning break and/or lunchtime because mom needs it to recharge.

Posted by Stephanie not in TX

So do you plan to continue with History Odyssey next year?

Posted by Anonymous

I can (unfortunately) related to your Terrible Tuesday because when you have 5 kids, who have varying levels of motivation...every day can be like you described. Except we usually don't have meltdowns...they're just Days, I guess! :)

Scouting & the State fair sound great!

I'm glad you've got comments enabled!
Lee

PS Your title sounds like my weekly report title...which I haven't written yet. Reading yours was more fun!!

Posted by LocalHomeschooler

Sounds like you have a handle on assessing your day and modifying as needed. That's great! And your assignments are impressiv :-) Great Week!

Posted by bubblyone

We just started History Odyssey this week, so I have no idea whether it's a good fit for us or not. Of course I hope so, but I don't know. My tentative plan is HO for a couple of years and then possible Omnibus for 8th grade. Possibly.

blessings,
Barbara

Posted by Stephanie not in TX

I can certainly relate to the chaos caused by getting off the routine. My oldest prefers to work independently, and to manage his schedule independently. It took most of last year for us to come up with a compromise that keeps him happy, and that doesn't derail me, and therefore the rest of us.

I'll be interested to see how you like History Odyssey. Last year it was a bust for us, but I wanted to try again this year. I have re-ordered the chapters, as my son really prefers a more chronological order; we don't do all of the notebook summaries. But in general, I like their plan.