Weekly Wrap-Up

01.21.2011 | 11:34 pm | Homeschooling, Uncategorized

It’s my first time participating in this, but I’ve been meaning to for such a long time. This was our second week back to schoolwork after our long winter break. We’re back into our routine by now, so here goes our very first Weekly Wrap-Up.

We conquered a lot of new material in math this week, mainly multiplication—the official version. For about a year now, G’s curriculum has been teaching basic concepts of multiplication from time to time, but this week we finally began putting all that conceptual dabbling to work when he was introduced to his very first multiplication tables. First we learned the x1 table, then the x0, and finally the x2. He grasps the concept well and took to it with ease. He’s been multiplying on his own in his daily life for a long while now, anyway. He is just a really mathematical thinker. It will serve him well in life. Other things we covered were some new Roman numerals (L, C, D, and M), and slightly more complicated borrowing in subtraction (3-digit borrowing when there are zeros). Again, all easy for him, an ability which I envy. I have to say that in teaching him these concepts, I’ve gained a very good understanding of them myself along the way—another of my favorite things about homeschooling. I get to re-learn the things I missed in my schooling. ;-) And I’ve found that I’m not as bad at math as I always thought. I just needed (and still need) to learn the “whys” behind some those treacherous functions.

In Phonics, the news is that G has finished Phonics! We did the last lesson yesterday. Next week I’m going to go back through my guide and spend the entire week reviewing the most important things he learned, and after that, we’re moving on to Language lessons. I’m using Rod & Staff’s English curriculum and it will intensely cover all the parts of speech, teaching him how to properly build and write sentences. I can’t wait to start it and see how he does. I’ll continue to review Phonics for the rest of his 2nd grade year, by touching on the important factors once a week, and by a once- or twice-weekly phonics worksheet. He has a strong knowledge of it all, but I want to keep drilling it in for a while so he doesn’t forget.

For Writing this week (Writing With Ease), I read to him from “The Borrowers” and he practiced summarizing the passages in his own words, and a little bit of dictation work. I wasn’t too fond of this story, and I don’t think it was his favorite, either. He also wrote in his journal each day, as usual.

This week’s history lessons were mostly biblical. We studied the Phoenicians one day, the divided kingdom of Israel the next, and we ended the week with Elijah, the fiery prophet. G got a kick out of how the our modern-day “phonics” comes from the Phoenicians.

For his read-aloud, he continued reading from “Socks”, by Beverly Cleary, and finished it this week (we’d been reading it before our winter break and picked it back up last week. He reads one half to one chapter per day out loud). G was sad to see it end; he really enjoyed this book, especially now that we have our own cat in the house. He giggled through so many parts.

G’s reading on his own this week was entirely the Magic Treehouse books. He received the first 12 for Christmas, and has absolutely devoured them. They’re the first chapter books that he’s really looked forward to reading. There are so few quality chapter books for boys out there that are on his maturity level. The reading market is so girl-geared anyway (actually I find most everything for kids these days is incredibly girl-centric. Ugh!), but G sorely dislikes reading anything that is written for or about girls. He’s even gone so far as to make any girl characters he reads about into boys— changing every pronoun along the way to make the character a boy. The world needs more adventure books for younger male readers! Maybe I should get on that. ;-P

Science was infused throughout daily life as usual, as well as art— he worked throughout the week on his latest art project: his cartoon strip about a silly, sarcastic camel and his adventures.

And that’s our wrap-up for the week! Can’t see how it’s anything but boring to anyone besides us, but then again, I tend to love reading about other homeschoolers’ days, and I learn a lot from them. So perhaps our week is meaningful beyond our little world, as well. I hope to do this again next Friday!

2 Comments »

  1. Cam, I just read this account of the homeschooling you and Gray have been doing, and I am so very proud of both of you! I am continually amazed at Gray. He is so smart! You are doing a remarkable job with him. I wish you could have enjoyed your schoolwork back in high school as much as you seem to be enjoying this! Keep up the good work!

    Comment by Janice Milligan | 01.26.2011 | 1:10 pm

  2. Wow, that’s a ton of stuff! And most of it sounds really interesting and fun that you guys are doing. So glad it’s going well and you guys are doing such good work. I totally admire you for doing this for your children, it’s wonderful :)

    Comment by Stacy | 01.27.2011 | 9:20 pm

 

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