I've come to realize, though I'm sure it's obvious to any who stop by and read, that I write long weekly updates as a way of thinking through our week!

The big news this week was that I wrote up a daily checklist of assignments for Son1 to work through somewhat independently. This was because I wondered if our struggles were somehow related to me running his life, er, I mean, his school day, and only offering information about his lessons as we came to each subject in the day. Thanks to some related discussions on my homeschooling discussion board hangout, The Well-Trained Mind boards, I decided to try providing him with a daily assignment checklist.

It was a good idea and I plan to continue, but here's a tip: don't hand your preteen an assignment checklist, expect him to work on it steadily, AND let him work out of your sight... when he has finally gotten from the library the latest book in a series he really loves. OOPS. Next, he thought having a checklist meant he could do all of the easy subjects first and then dawdle and balk at the stuff that requires some mental focus. Ahem. After those glitches, the rest of the week went fairly well. The checklist/independence idea was most successful and least frustrating when I nudged Son1 along to his choice of acceptable-to-me subjects, rather than leaving him to his own devices, and told him what time he needed to be done with his work for the day.

Math

Son1 continued with his Singapore Math 6A textbook and Intensive Practice workbook, doing ratio and proportion. Through checking his work (working the problems myself) I learned some stuff I don't remember ever learning!

Son2 is nearly done with the Singapore Math 2B books. He did a review of addition and subtraction of money (making change, etc.), and had fun with some geometry and an introduction to the concept of area -- I got out the pattern blocks for that. He completely finished the Extra Practice workbook and has one day's work left in the textbook. He also played some math games online, practicing addition to shoot the asteroids or some such thing, and learning about angles.

Latin

Son1 did two lessons in Latin Book One over four days and took it in stride, yay! He also wrote out conjugation drills twice and did some Latin copywork (see below).

Son2 did Latin activities most of the week. Day 1: we made word slips with verbs and with Latin versions of friends' names. Day 2: Son2 cut them out and put them in the baggie with the previous slips. Day 3: he made sentences with the slips and decided he needed more "est" slips, so he made some. He also did activities on the Minimus Web site. Days 4 and 5: he listened to the current lesson on my iPod.

Piano

They both played the piano a lot. They spent most of their time mastering a song they found at the end of Teaching Little Fingers to Play -- not actually their current piano book! -- and playing every song in TLFtP. We never quite got to a lesson this week, but I can live with that. Oh, and I worked with Son2 on a rhythm exercise/challenge; I need to give him a good foundation in all that rhythm stuff before he gets much further in music study.

Handwriting and composition

The boys did their regular penmanship workbooks on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I introduced copywork for Tuesday and Thursday, which for Son1 is more handwriting practice but for Son2 is also practice in grammar, mechanics (capitalization, punctuation), and a model of good language.

After they got over the change in expected routine they seemed to enjoy the copywork. I gave Son2 blank notebooking pages from History Scribe files so he could draw a picture if he wanted to (um, nope). I've been working on character and discipline issues with the kids, hence the Bible selections for Tuesday. On Thursday I chose the John 1 verses, and then realized I could look up the Latin and did so for Son1's copywork. I think he thought that was kind of cool, actually.

Son2's Tuesday copywork, Ephesians 4:31

Son2's Thursday copywork, John 1:6,7

Son1's copywork, Ephesians 4:30,31 and John 1:1,2

In Son1's Classical Composition program, he picked up where we dropped it last week. He finished the rewrite of the story using the outline, and learned and added two figures of description. He'll continue with the lesson next week. This fit pretty well with my new plan of smaller bites of CC, doing a lesson slowly over two weeks, while also doing the writing and analysis in his History Odyssey lessons. Indeed, late in the week he outlined a text as part of his history lesson.

Music and art

In history they've both read about monasticism and early Christianity, so one day this week I played a CD of Anglican chant -- sung Morning, Noontime, and Evening Prayer and Compline, in English. Another day I played "Chant," a CD of Benedictine monks chanting their daily prayers in Latin. None of these are strictly of the correct time period, but I decided to go for music and art that are related in some way. As far as general music appreciation goes, the boys also got a little exposure to Elvis Presley, the foxtrot, and the cha-cha; we watched the "Dancing with the Stars" TV show...

No particular art study this week. There is still much doodling on Son1's papers and workbook pages. Oh my word, there's a lot.

History and literature

Son1 kept working on his monastery floor plan -- the graph paper turned this into a fun rather than frustrating project, hurrah -- and continues to avoid The Door in the Wall. To his surprise I made him move on to the following lessons and finish those other lessons on his own time. He did two substantial, writing-oriented History Odyssey lessons with little complaint, which is downright wonderful. One lesson had him outline the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia text on the medieval Diaspora of the Jews and record in his notebook the definitions of a bunch of relevant words. The other lesson had him map the Diaspora, write a one-paragraph summary of the origins of medieval anti-Semitism -- I typed as he dictated, in order to focus on the analysis and structure rather than the agony of writing on paper, haha -- and create a mini-timeline of related events that folds up and fits on a page in his notebook. This was a great, steady week in history for Son1!

Son1's map of the Diaspora

Son1's outline about Jews in the Middle Ages

Son1's summary of roots of anti-Semitism

For Son2's history he really needs more activities and reading, and the basic map work annoys him, so I worked on a year-long plan of activities and resources (see below) and decided to add the advanced map work from the SOTW2 activity guide.

This week, anyway, Son2 did a map of St. Augustine's travels to Britain as sloppily as possible (which is when I realized this map work was too simple, "easy," boring). Mid-week we all had a "monk's supper" for lunch, with a delicious lentil soup (I used the recipe in the SOTW2 activity guide), and bread and butter. He also watched "Timeblazers" episodes (Discovery Kids?) about revolutions, and another about disasters through history, and a couple of episodes of "Liberty's Kids" (PBS) set in the American revolutionary times.

As for reading, Son1 pretty much caught up with Our Island Story (British history, currently Alfred the Great, etc.), Famous Men of Rome (Cato the Censor, etc.), and This Country of Ours (Amerigo Vespucci and the name "America"). I put off the planned Tales from Shakespeare reading for literature because he'll be assigned some in a few weeks with History Odyssey. As it turns out, Son1 also picked up and really enjoyed reading the original Pinocchio story, a translation of C. Collodi's Italian tale, that I borrowed for Son2's literature reading. No church history reading this week 'cause Son1 read way ahead last week.

As for Son2's reading, he started Collodi's Pinocchio and also read the story of Saint Genevieve, the first half of a Mary Pope Osborne book about Christopher Columbus, and a chapter in The Story of The World v.2 about medieval India.

Science

Last weekend Son1 camped with other members of his Boy Scout troop when they attended the Oklahoma Centennial Camporee... with 5,000 other Scouts, adult leaders, and family members. Wow! He had a great time, spent the whole weekend outside, and came home pretty tuckered out.

We looked at weather data after a cold front came through, because I have a little desktop program that plots the last 24 hours of humidity, temperature, pressure, wind speed, wind direction, and rainfall. The cold front was easy to see in the data, so that was fun.

Son2 brought home seeds from pods that fell off a tree down the street, and we discussed seeds and the acorns that will soon be all over our front yard and driveway thanks to our young oak tree. Son1 and I spent some time watching spiders in spiderwebs outdoors; we have noticed a lot of them this summer, for whatever reason.

I recorded a National Geographic TV show, "Inside the Living Body," for the kids. Son2 watched it twice! Since then, he has talked about the blood vessels in his body, and mentioned that when a baby is born its heart is the size of a walnut. He also watched an episode of "Survivorman" set on the African plains.

Other stuff

Hmm, I didn't mention Bible study or memory work, did I? On the other hand, I am delighted that everyone did well with the core studies all week and we even added copywork to the mix at last. We had a difficult day on Monday that I didn't even mention, a meeting that I combined with a library visit on Tuesday morning, chess club on Wednesday afternoon, and plenty of work all week on character, discipline, and how to tackle an assignment list. So, I'm very pleased.

Alongside all that, this week I worked on a year-long plan for Son2's history. I decided to reorganize his The Story of the World: Middle Ages chapters and activities to fit with Son1's History Odyssey Middle Ages 2 order of topics, so the other activities, music, and art would fit both boys' history studies. After setting that up, I chose activities from the SOTW2 activity guide for each lesson AND scanned the ones I thought we would use this fall (for easy printing later) AND brainstormed and researched art and music for as many of the lessons/chapters as I could. It didn't help this week very much for Son2, but next week should be better.

I'm off to reserve books for Son2 and get my ducks in a row for the coming week.

Posted by cellista

I can sure write a long report too and my son doesn't really like to draw on those History Scribe pages either.

Posted by Laurie in VA

I enjoyed reading about your week! I, too, write fairly detailed week-in-review posts and it always helps me to see where we did well and where we need to improve.

http://thecheerfulpessimist.blogspot.com/

Posted by Anonymous

reading your reports! Is your schedule fitting together HO and SOTW 2 something that you would mind sharing? We will be doing SOTW 2 next year and I will need more for my oldest. Your talk of HO is intriguing...

Melissa
http://oursidehomeschool.blogspot.com

Posted by my5wolfcubs

I think your long reports are great...come Thursday or so I start wondering "what did we do Monday??" :) Son 1's map you showed looked great, not one of mine has enjoyed mapwork, much to my disappointment. I hope you share some of the more detailed work he does!!
Lee
my5wolfcubs.blogspot.com

Posted by bubblyone

Yes, I will post my plan for SOTW2 that fits it to the History Odyssey Middle Ages level 2 lessons. It's not perfect, and I need to remove the SOTW2 activity guide info from my plan, but I'll put it up soon. This week if I can. I'm glad it's of interest to someone!