Friday, October 1, 2010

Weekly Report: Week 7

After the excitement of last week, it was hard to settle in this week. Here's a brief overview of what we did:

Bible: Continued in the same devotional book. The verse of the week was 2 Corinthians 5:17:
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things passed away; behold new things have come. NASB

History: Summarized the effects of European imperialism on the African continent. We are also reading David Livingstone: Africa's Trailblazer.   We need to pick up the pace if we are going to cover everything that I want to in history this year. 

Language Arts: Finished the lessons from unit 19 of Analytical Grammar - the test will be on Monday. In literature, Rocket Boy completed his work on "A Crazy Tale" and started working on Treasure Island.  Lightening Literature seems to be working well so far. 

Algebra I:  Slowly working our way through lesson one. So far, so good. Just for fun we added in Patty Paper Geometry for math lab today. Rocket Boy and I spent around 90 minutes folding patty paper to reinforce geometry concepts. This book is a great supplement, we are looking forward to doing more.
This is the last Patty Paper Geometry activity that Rocket Boy completed today. 
Physical Science: Rocket Boy did a great job on his chapter test! For a science discovery lab he spent four hours programming with Processing, an open source computer language. He wrote a program that was included in the book Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects. Renaissance Man ordered an Arduino micro controller today so that Rocket Boy can start building some of the projects he has been salivating over in his favorite magazine, Make.

As always, Rocket Boy participated in tennis, scouts, debate, co-op and First Lego League. It was a full week, it just doesn't look like a whole lot when I write it down. Maybe I'm just not as wordy today as I usually am - probably a relief to those of you who are reading! 

Have a great weekend!

7 comments:

Robyn said...

Looks like a good week! I'm interested to see how Patty Paper goes for you. I've picked this up to have on hand... it looks good. Do you have a good outlet for the paper or did you just order it online?

TechWife said...

Robyn, I ordered the patty paper through Amazon when I ordered the book. I came from an outside vendor and the shipping was a bit steep. The next time I need it, I'll look for a local restaurant supplier. The box has 1000 sheets and I can see us going through them pretty quickly as it makes great tracing paper and paper airplanes.

Karen said...

I'll also be watching for Patty Paper Geometry updates!

Bright Sky Mom said...

Your physical science stuff sounds great! Thanks for including links!
Lee (5wolfcubs)

Homeschooling6 said...

Patty Paper Geo. looks neat! I'll have to look into that.

Laurie said...

I had to LOL because your report was so foreign to me. I am so *not* science-minded, but my 9yo DD sure is! I'll have to keep an eye out for the cool things your boys work on this year so that I can show her! Have a great weekend :-)

TechWife said...

To all - I will post Patty Paper Geometry as we progress. I hope to be able to do this at least once every couple of weeks.

Laurie - I have really learned a lot about science w/Rocket Boy. I lean to the liberal arts myself, but he has opened my eyes to a different perspective of looking a things. Once I started deliberately looking for ways to support his interests, I saw opportunities all around. Now I see them without looking for them. It just takes some practice. I have had to remind myself this year not to miss other valuable avenues of education & deliberately added in composer studies and started teaching literary analysis this year as well - I had neglected these far to long. It's so hard to find a balance!