Weekly Update - Week 17 (12/7-12/11/2009)

We had an excellent week this week. Here's how things went:

Math - still working on chapter 3 of Prealgebra. Rocket Boy is having some difficulty with keeping up with all of the little details in the longer problems, so we spent some time reviewing this week. We also started playing math games every day.  We played Knock Out from Muggins Math. There are several different versions/levels of this game and we choose to play the "face value" and "place value" versions. We had great fun trying to out strategize one another! I have ordered some additional games from Muggins Math that will give us more strategy practice as well as cover prealgebra concepts. The cost for the wood versions is quite high, so I ordered the laminate board versions and we will share the pawns between all of our games. The savings is significant. We are both looking forward to their arrival.

History - we have kept up pretty well with the schedule that I set out. We should be at the half-way point of the curriculum when we finish up before Christmas. Peter the Great was on deck this week and Rocket Boy has started to write a biographical paper on him. He has gotten a great start, but it still needs to be polished up.


Spelling - Apples 2 is continuing to provide a logical review for spelling rules, although I am sometimes inundated with the phrase "it's boring."  Nevertheless, he perseveres and is doing very well on the review.

Analytical Grammar - Rocket Boy is working on the last unit in season one! It covers compound subjects, compound verbs and compound sentences. This is the point at which sentence diagramming starts to look a little bit like a geometry project!

Bible - we are reading the Advent book Jotham's Journey this year. It is quite the adventure.


Science - lots of labs and activities this week! Here are pictures of Rocket Boy's mitosis models (the last two phases are incomplete, we'll work on it this week!):

The Prophase

The Metaphase

The Anaphase

The Telophase

 

Literature - finished up The Witch of Blackbird  Pond and checked out a really good site on the Salem witch trials.


Fine Arts - Rocket Boy is working on Canon in D  and some Christmas carols. There is one last lesson this week before the Christmas break.

One more week before Christmas break!!