Weekly Review - Week 28, 29, 30 (March 8 - March 25)

It has been fairly quiet here - not many outside activities going on right now - and that's a good thing! We've been plugging through school and are so glad we are on spring break this coming week. Take a look at the update:

Bible: We are through chapter 13 of Numbers.

Middle School Essentials: This is a homemade course that rotates on and off of our schedule. Over the past few weeks, we have read an excellent book published by Boys Town Press titled A Good Friend, How to Make One, How to Be One.  This book covers some basic friendship skills, including: Conversation Building Blocks, Do's and Don'ts and Shyness. This book is extremely well written and is not preachy or pretentious at all. Reading this resulted in starting some great conversations about friendship. We have also started  reading through Total Health: Talking About Life's Changes. This is a wonderful, Christ centered health textbook that covers not only care of our physical bodies, but mental and spiritual health as well. The exercises provided in the student workbook are very thought provoking - no fill in the blank questions here! We will cover some of this book over the next several weeks and will continue it next year.

Fine Arts: Rocket Boy is doing the same kinds of things as he was the last time I updated. Guitar lessons and a co-op drama class as well as working on his drawing. He spent a couple of weeks practicing drawing with markers and working on drawing some cars. His skills continue to amaze me - I have problems drawing stick figures! Here is one of the drawings he completed with chalk pastels.

 History Odyssey: We have studied the American Revolution, reading a few books and also reading excerpts from Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Of course, map work and timeline work have been completed as well. As soon as spring break is over, we will have to race to the finish line - all the way up to Lewis and Clark before the end of the school year. It's going to be one quick ride through early American history.


Language Arts: Rocket Boy completed reading Johnny Tremain and also continued spelling. The big news is that season two of Analytical Grammar is now complete! Rocket Boy has accomplished so much with this easy to implement curriculum and we are now laying aside grammar until the fall when he will do the third season of Analytical Grammar.

Pre-Algebra: We have completed Keys to Algebra, Book 1 and portions of book 4 - these helped Rocket Boy understand operations on integers a little more clearly. We are now reviewing the same topic in the Chalk Dust textbook and will soon pick up where we left off. Pre-Algebra will continue during the summer months.


Life Science: The study of viruses, bacteria, protists and fungi has been completed and most of the plant study. We will finish with that when we return to spring break and will work through the human body.

 That's how things stand - now I'm off to start spring break!