Friday, September 18, 2009

Weekly Update - Week 6 (9/14-9/18)

This is my first weekly update. I came across the idea on The Well Trained Mind forum. I enjoyed reading about everyone's week, so I thought I'd participate as well.

The fact that this is week six of our school year is absolutely amazing. Time has gone by quickly, accentuated by our irregular schedule and family events. It was a rough start to the school year. Things seemed to have smoothed out this week and I think this was our first really good week. We had a lot of tests this week, which was surprising to me when I sat down to write this entry!

Bible - We read 1 Corinthians this week. My son did not get his Bible Study lesson done, however.

Art - Unit 2 of Artistic Pursuits was completed on Monday, one day past due.

Music
- guitar lesson and practice as usual.

History Odyssey
- I am not sure where we are as far as lesson numbers go. The record of war & conflict on the 30 Years War and the English Civil War are complete, as is the page summary on the Divine Right of Kings. We talked about how to analyze a time line, looking for the relationship between events.

Grammar
- Analytical Grammer is going very well - a great unit 3 test was completed today!

Spelling
- continuing to plug along on our review - up to day 17 now.

Life Science
- we haven't managed to do a lab yet, but we did get through the chapter test, so that is progress! I hope we can pick up the pace here a bit - this first chapter took about 1 week longer than I expected it to, and that was without the lab.

Swimming
- My son is participating in a swim team style practice this semester. It is great because the class meets daily and I can choose how many days per week and which days we go. The days can be different each week, so we can suit it to our schedule. Right now I'm trying to get there once a week, but I would love to go twice a week. It's a great public, indoor pool so the prices are awesome and the pool is heated!

Co-op
- My son continues to enjoy his co-op classes - Model Rocketry and Geometry Gems. The Model Rocketry is all review for him. He is enjoying learning about using geometry in art as well.

Pre-Algebra
- almost forgot this one! We are actually on target with the schedule in this subject. The chapter one test went well, although some hard lessons about showing your work were certainly to be had! We have now moved on to chapter two. The videos are short and to the point and the exercises in the book are good as well. I'm very satisfied with Chalk Dust!

As far as extra-curricular activities go, Boy Scouts had a week off due to a camping trip the previous week end; speech club continues to be a great learning experience and my son is in search of a humorous piece for Humorous Interpretation; First Lego League is in it's third week of this year's challenge and the team has a working robot and can score 10 points (they actually scored 25, but lost 15 because they knocked something over). This past Sunday we participated with other teams at an FLL Expo at an area mall. The kids had to do some old challenges (from2008) and after some false starts, they rose to the challenge of programming old challenges on a newly designed robot right on the spot.

I'm praying for an even better week next week. I really need both History Odyssey and Life Science to smooth out - it seems we can get one of these two subjects done each day, but not two of them. I also need to get several household things taken care of, so I am hoping to have a little bit of time each week to make some phone calls and get some things on the schedule.

This weekend will be busy, but we will have some time to relax as well!

3 comments:

Christie said...

GREAT week!! Looks like a lot of work accomplished!

Do you mind if I ask about the guitar lesson? My oldest would LOVE to take lessons but we live pretty far from the closest place. Does your son take lessons at home on his own by chance? If so, what do you use?

Thank you!! =)

TechWife said...

Sorry, I can't help with an at-home curriculum, he has an instructor! I hope you find something that will work.

Unknown said...

What a great week! Sounds like you achieved so much.

My children have just started formal swimming lessons again ( after taking a few years off). We too are lucky in the sense we can take the lessons as needed, and when it suits.