Weekly Report: Week 18

After a two week Christmas break, we started school on Tuesday of this week. I have tweaked a few things and we are generally off to a good start. Here's the rundown:

Bible: We are continuing to read Practical Happiness. Here are some quotes that resonated:

A man cannot successfully lead when he spends more time looking critically upon his followers than happily focusing on the goal ahead.

The goal in life is to delight in God ... In spite of the simplicity and though the whole Bible declares this truth, many folks still run for the wrong end zone. Some well-meaning people live to preach the gospel, others seek to be missionaries; some find their pleasure in giving their money to the poor. All of these things are good, but not the goal. You can do them all and be at odds with God at the same time. On the contrary, the man who delights in God cannot help telling the good news. He will give to the poor, but his delight and affection will be to his God; everything else is a sideline.

Our hymn this week was "When We All Get to Heaven." In our study of Proverbs, we learned about the connection between freedom and responsibility and began learning about how attitudes affect actions. Wise Up! continues to be a great study for this age, although I think I am getting more out of it than Rocket Boy is. 

Logic: As the semester long debate course is over, we are now studying informal logic by using Dr. Christoper Perrin's The Art of Argument. Among many other terms, this week's material has covered the definitions of formal and informal logic as well as the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. This program appears to be well written and is designed to both appeal to the logic stage student as well as to impart valuable reasoning skills. We are both looking forward to this material.

Fine Arts: A few years ago while I was at a sale, I purchased some art activities that have been sitting on my shelf ever since. This week I pulled out the Cezanne Art Activity Pack. This product is written for much younger students, however, the project is quite detailed and I thought it worthwhile to have Rocket Boy complete the project. I also added in the requirement that he read about Cezanne in The Annotated Mona Lisa and write a one paragraph summary on the artist. He has worked diligently on this project all week. It is due on Monday of next week, giving him time for the final touches.

History: At long last Rocket Boy is able to study the 20th century wars. He began with reading, outlining and time line work. He has two rather involved projects coming up that I think he will enjoy. 


Language Arts: Commas, colons & semi-colons were the topic of the week in Analytical Grammar. Having read A Day of Pleasure just before our Christmas break, Rocket Boy is now working on the assignments for this book.

Math: I have made a lot of changes here. I am still going to utilize Math U See, however it does not provide enough practice on the areas we need to review right now. I think it is more important to do the review now than blindly go forward, so I have pulled in some other resources this week. I am not sure if I've ever posted a link to Math Fact Cafe - it's a valuable resource for making free math worksheets. You can custom design them according to your own parameters. Over the weekend I did a lot of planning and made several worksheets to use for speed drills - double digit and triple digit multiplication. In addition to this, we are using Use It! Don't Lose It!, Grade 8. This is a daily math review book that has five problems per day in a variety of areas. I also pulled Life of Fred Fractions off the shelf and Rocket Boy has read and completed bridge problems for the first ten chapters.

Physical Science: Rocket Boy has been learning about the elements & the periodic table this week. He is completing reading in his textbook and answering questions in the workbook. Out of the blue, his dad handed him a copy of The Disappearing Spoon, which traces the discovery of many of the elements of the periodic table. He has declared this book to be a great read-along book for science,which is fantastic!

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