Weekly Report: Jan 18-22

Due to my absence in blogging for a while this post is a little long...sorry!!

This week was another unusual week, but I've come to realize we tend to have more "unusual" weeks than "usual!" My parents were here Monday and Tuesday and Elyse turned 8 on Monday, but I think we accomplished a lot considering all the disruptions!

For Elyse's birthday, we did a few 'necessaries' like math, and then let the kids have an art day. We spread newspapers over the dining table and Elyse pulled out her GOBS of art supplies and the kids just had at it! Nothing was off-limits!

As for the rest of the week, we're still settling into our new routine we've made for ourselves this semester. After grading math work from last week, I found that Elyse needed more focused work on two things: writing money (where does that decimal point go?) and subtracting with borrowing. So, I pulled out the Singapore math that is sitting on my shelf since I knew that it is a mastery program and would be easy to find those topics. We worked some with our Cuisinaire Rods, our Hundred Tiles (from RightStart) and our place value pad to practice subtraction and trading. She just needed a little visual reminder of what she was doing on paper crossing out all those numbers. And after doing some focused exercises in the Singapore workbook, I decided Singapore would make the perfect supplement to our new-found math love of CLE. We have been using MEP, which is a great thinking math like Singapore and RightStart, but I needed a little more hand-holding and a long-term feeling of direction. I was already planning on supplementing with Singapore's CWP and IP during the summers so this would be an easy switch. Is it overkill to do both Singapore and CLE? Probably. But math is a big focus at our house. Plus, I'm the queen of overkill! LOL!

History was pretty neglected this week, but it was mostly a continuation of last week--learning about Joan of Arc, and the Hundred Years' War. I've learned if we miss something in history to just skip it and move on rather than try to catch up. Otherwise, we'd be in constant 'catch-up' mode!

We are loving Lively Latin! I really feel like Elyse is retaining so much more of her Latin than she was with Latina Christiana. She is a story girl, a big picture girl, a visual-spatial learner who needs context (meaning) in order to remember anything. (That's another post entirely.) Lively Latin gives that context. She is really enjoying the history since it's all familiar from learning it last year in our Ancient History studies. We're almost done with the first chapter, and she's got her chants down pat--even with the switch to classical pronunciation!

We've picked up Writing With Ease again and are on week 12 of Year 2. We're using the McGuffey Second Reader for our selections, instead of buying the workbook. It's actually working great--comprehension questions are included right in the reader and all of the grammar points have lined up nicely! I don't *love* WWE, but I feel like Elyse needs the narration work.

We started Rod and Staff English 2 this semester. Elyse could pick out the person, place, or thing, and she could find the action word, but to be able to give the terms 'noun' or 'verb' has just not been happening. They really are meaningless words all by themselves to a first & second grader, aren't they? This week, though, I think she has finally had the terms in context enough (again, where's the meaning?) that she is starting to remember them. Yea!!

Other work for Elyse:
-Calvert Spelling CD: Chapter 3
-CLE Reading LU 201
-Minimus Ch. 2
-Patterns of Nature Review Chapter
-Christian Studies I: Review Chapter
-GD Italics C: started cursive last week
-couple of pages in geography workbook

Aidan didn't get much school this week, but he started his speech therapy for the semester. I hope he warms up some to his new teacher, because he was a bit of a bear for her this week! I think it was because she was trying to get a baseline, and was asking really easy questions, which always gets a half-effort from the little guy. *fingers crossed*