Weekly Wrap-Up — Or in this Case, Our First Four Weeks in Review

09.2.2011 | 4:02 pm | Homeschooling

Welcome to my first “Weekly Wrap Up” of the year! We’ve been back to schoolwork for about four weeks now, so this is going to be more like a wrap-up of our first month so far. First, I’ll cover G’s studies, as he’s the student covering the most subjects right now.

In Math we’ve been doing lots of review work (a big reason I’m changing to year-round schooling; more on that later). I double up on lessons when possible, so we’ve already gotten through 30 lessons, or 6 weeks’ worth of math done. I love being ahead so that we can take weeks off when the whim (or the need) arises.

Grammar has been all about adjectives, verbs, and identifying the subject of a paragraph. We found some cute, funny books at the library that cover each part of speech. Wish I could remember the name of some of them now— I’ll check next time we’re there. They made verbs, nouns, and pronouns very fun for him!

In history we’ve studied Hannibal, Spartacus, Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, and Augustus Caesar. The Roman Empire makes for a very interesting study! When we studied Julius Caesar, we used army men to re-enact his infamous “Crossing of the Rubicon”. Then when we studied Cleopatra, we decided to re-enact her crazy stunt of having herself rolled up in a carpet and delivered to Julius Caesar. Gray was Caesar, sitting in his palace, and Des got to be Cleopatra, all wrapped up in a carpet (well, a quilt in our version!).

He’s back into writing, where he reads a passage of good literature and then summarizes it into his own words. This is such a great way of improving writing skills! The last few passages have been from biographies on Paul Revere, so he also got a little history and learned about the beginnings of the American Revolution.

We’ve just cracked open our first Apologia Science book- we’re starting with “Exploring Creation with Botany”. He’s going to be keeping a notebook for the first time as we study science.

Moving on to Little D, we’ve mainly practiced learning the very beginning stages of handwriting (tracing dotted lines), practiced counting to 20, and we’ve also introduced and covered the letter “A a” and its sound. I have him trying to learn to write the letter “A a”, and it’s definitely an exercise in patience. :D Which reminds me…

G is starting to learn cursive, and his first letter has been cursive “A a”. Wow, is he having the hardest time learning this skill! I just have him continuously practice until I see a line that has mostly perfect “A a”s. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll move on to the next letter next week.

For reading, G has gotten into reading the wonderful works of Roald Dahl. He’s gone through “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”, “The BFG” (which he absolutely loved), “The Magic Finger”, and “The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me”. He’s currently reading “The Witches”. It’s the last Dahl book we own; I’ve managed to find all those for less than a dollar each at thrift & consignment stores. Hopefully I’ll find “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and its sequel someday soon, because he wants to read those and any other Dahl books out there. He really enjoys Dahl’s dark (very dark) humor and writing style.

I mentioned earlier that I’ve decided to move to schooling year round. I’ll explain it in more detail in future post, but it boils down to the fact that taking 2-3 months off in a big block is really counter-productive where learning is concerned. It’s also silly to take all our time off in one block, during the hottest months of the year! It was an inferno out there this summer (still is!), and I think their time off will be much better spent and enjoyed when it’s taken when the weather is more pleasant. We’re going to be schooling for 5-6 weeks at a time, then taking off 1-2 weeks at a time. Year-round. And I’m looking forward to it!

Check out other Homeschoolers’ Weekly Wrap-Ups this week at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

4 Comments »

  1. Cam,
    I totally agree with you on the year-round school. I wish we’d go to it.
    You are doing a fantastic job!
    Hugs,
    em

    Comment by Emily | 09.3.2011 | 3:18 pm

  2. You know I always love hearing this stuff. Maybe this year I’ll hop in and write weekly wrap ups of what I’m doing with Rowan. I just always feel like I’d seem a poser, since we do (or at least have done so far) public school for kindergarten and up.

    I think the year-round school is brilliant. Jasper wishes school was like that. Summer break seems unbearably long to him, even when we through in a bit of learning stuff.

    Desopatra is adorable, as always. *hehe*
    –Erin

    Comment by Erin | 09.3.2011 | 9:58 pm

  3. Year round schooling is great.. Especially for math. We found that when it comes to math, if you don’t use it, you loose it. It sounds like you are seeing the same phenomena! Every summer we relax a bit after end of year testing. We continue our math and readings in history, literature and just for fun reading… And some science. Then, we work on most needed skills for each child.. For instance, my son wrote something everyday.. No matter what!

    Comment by Hilda Rebecca | 09.4.2011 | 7:18 am

  4. Looks like a great 4 weeks. :)

    Comment by Dawne | 09.15.2011 | 3:39 pm

 

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