Bible - we finished reading Exodus and are now 12 chapters into Leviticus. We always get a lot out of learning about the Tabernacle.
Fine Arts - moving right along with Artistic Pursuits. While Rocket Boy likes drawing, he had a bit of difficulty with the fountain pen. Guitar lessons continue, however we will most likely be holding off on lessons this summer to assess whether or not Rocket Boy remains interested. In our co-op, he is enjoying an introductory drama class and is working on writing/memorizing and delivering monologues.
History Odyssey - Rocket Boy studied and then created a story board of the Seven Years War and began to read about the Enlightenment. He continues to complete map work, add information to his time line and summaries to his history notebook. Here is the story board:
Literature - Read Kidnapped and completed a book jacket for the book. The book jacket includes a biography of Robert Louis Stephenson, historical background, a story summary and a book cover design. Here is the cover with the story summary on the back:
Here is a shot of the inside flaps with the historical background and biography:
He is now reading Island of the Blue Dolphins and has started taking notes for character comparisons. Over the coming weeks, he will complete reading this book and will also read The Sign of the Beaver and Robinson Crusoe, then complete a character comparison of Karana, Matt and Crusoe, the main characters in each book.
Spelling - We have picked up the pace in Apples 2 and are now doing two lessons per day. This is an effort to complete this review and move on to other things.
Grammar - This continues to go well and ds has only a few weeks left in this program for the year. This program covers so much. Typically a student is to complete only one "season" per school year, but since we didn't start until 7th grade, this first year we are using it he is doing the first two seasons. Most recently he has been working on infinitive and appositive phrases and adjective clauses.
Pre-Algebra - Rocket Boy completed chapter 5 in his textbook. Manipulating negative numbers continues to be a bit of a sticking point for him, so we are spending time reviewing with Keys to Algebra. He is also continuing with cryptography, the class I am teaching in our co-op. Recently the kids have been learning about letter frequencies and calculating relative frequencies.
Science - The Life Science textbook we are using is jam packed with great information and easy to do labs, and we have been taking our time with it. Most recently he has completed the chapters on genetics with some great discussions about genetic engineering and how that might play out in the future, good and bad. However, in an effort to pick up some speed, we are beginning to read through some of the chapters at a pretty good clip. We read through the chapter "Changes Over Time" and talked about God's role in creation. We have also started learning about viruses - this coming week is bacteria, protists and fungi. I don't think we will cover everything we want to cover this year in life science, but it sure is fun trying!
The First Lego League season has come to a close for our team. They competed in the Region 4 tournament at the beginning of February and earned the 1st place award for Robot Design. They went on to the State tournament later in the month where their inflatable bike design won 1st place in the Innovative Solution category. We will be having our end of season party next weekend!
We attended the Design Revolution Road Show this week - a quick but fun field trip followed by a visit to a used book store where Rocket Boy found some inexpensive military history books.
For something fun, click on the Connect a Million Minds button on the right of the screen - there is a great commercial there that is showing on television - an advertisement encouraging geeks!
How has your home school been doing lately? What are your kids learning about?
2 comments:
Wow! I am absolutely loving the book jacket idea and the story board. We are definitely going to try that around here.
Daisy,
They were a great break from writing papers and let Rocket Boy show his creative side as well. I am really liking History Odyssey, it's such a good blend of papers and then shorter projects like the book jacket. For the first time, I haven't had to think up ways to add interest to assignments. What do you use for history and literature?
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