Weekly Update

I think instead of weekly updates, I should do monthly updates, at least it seems like that is about how often I end up posting. I guess I really don't have as much to say as I originally thought. ;) But anyways, here a bit of what we've been doing -

Math: Jake is FINALLY finished his geometry. Now again, he didn't do ALL of the books in the set, just a few. If he feels later he wants more we'll either get the rest of the set or a different curriculum. But I am pretty sure he'll never, ever want more Geometry.

English/Writing: He's getting a little further into his book and finding the exercises getting a little harder. He is not enjoying "finding such & such clauses" and all that sort of stuff. hehe His writing is still horrible, and I hate trying to read anything. He insists on writing so tiny.. *sigh*

Geography: I am REALLY hoping that by the end of April we will finally be finished with this. It was started forever ago. We did great when first starting, because we were doing this as a group with some others. Then that fizzled out and, well, it just got pushed to the bottom of our pile. Here and there I've tried to get it going again, but it fizzled out every time. But no more, it needs to be finished. So he is almost halfway through it. So if we keep at this pace, then it should be finished by the end of April if not sooner.

History: We've been jumping all over the place here. I was going to start with Ancient History using Susan Wise Bauer's The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome. But instead I think we are going to do a US study first using America The Story of Us book & DVD first.That won't take us long. Basically I'll have them (Amanda is doing this as well) read a Chapter sometime M-Th and on Fri we'll watch the DVD chapter and do any lessons from the Teacher's Guide. I think there are like 9 Chapters or so in the book. If they end up reading the chapter early enough in the week, we can go ahead and do 2 per week instead.

Science: We are changing this, yet again. Not sure what I am going to pull of the shelf, but something Biology. And I think we'll do Chemistry at the same time, using The Joy of Chemistry: The Amazing Science of Familiar Things

Amanda's been really into artsy stuff lately; working in her sketchbook, crafts of one sort or another, etc. We've made pom-flowers:

Notebook paper t-shirt:

Crayon art:

And we had a failed attempt at an altered t-shirt, which then become a cleaning rag. LOL So no picture of that one. ;) Oh, and I finally finished my tiles I made the beginning of Feb.

Week in Review

Yeah, I know a little late on the posting. But it was a good week. We did get a fair amount of work finished.

I let him slack a bit on math so he could get caught back up with some other subjects: writing, grammar & geography. So really there isn't much to report. Next week we'll get back into ALL subjects, including science. We're doing some biology work and we'll get into our chemistry work soon. I finally got my order placed and should have all the materials needed by Wednesday. I think this week we'll get our solutions made up that we'll be needing for the first few chapters. The weather is supposed to be decent, so we can head outside to mix our noxious chemicals up without worrying about ventilation. lol Should be fun. :)

I've been finding some fun things on Pinterest lately. I've been doing good about not getting too sucked into it, but I can spend WAY too much time looking around.

I had a Mom's Night Out (MNO) craft party last week. Several friends from our homeschool group came over and we made tile coasters. It was a fun evening. I didn't get pictures of everyone's tiles (bad me), sadly. They all looked wonderful though. Here are the set I made.

I want to make some more, plus have a few ideas for other things to do with the tiles. It was fun and easy.

So anyways, short update. Hope to have more to tell next week. :)

Week in review

We are trying to get into a better routine here. Well, at least I am still *hoping* we can get into a better routine. I am being met with much resistance though from the boy. But this week we've gotten a fair amount of work done. No where near what I had hoped for, but...

Jake's doing pretty decent at getting caught up on his math. He in finally on book 3 of the Key to Geometry. He HATES Geometry. He HATES using the compass. But I wanted him to do a little bit of the work, which is why I didn't order ALL of the Geometry books and just the first 3. If the time comes and he needs or wants (HAHA) more, we can get the rest or find something else. He has no problem with the Algebra, so I shortened his work on that. Basically he just has to do half of the problems on each page. As long as he isn't struggling, we'll continue this way for now. He does make careless mistakes, but when I say "hey fix this answer" he knows exactly what he did wrong as soon as he double checks it.

He is WAY behind on Grammar and his writing. So I need to get him moving there. I know he hates the grammar as well (must be something with G's.. grammar, geometry and geography, he hates 'em all) but seriously it takes 5-10 minutes for each day.

We still haven't started our chemistry. That's my fault though. I still need a few supplies and I've been dragging my feet on getting things in order. We WILL get started on it in Feb. though, I swear! I had expected to do some simple & fun biology work this month. I ordered one of Janice VanCleave's biology books from Paperback swap earlier this month. It, of course, has not shown up yet. I have 1 more day before I can, hopefully, cancel it and order from someone else. I just wanted it to do some simple, quick experiments.

Week in review

Ok so this week was a little better. :) Maybe we'll get back into a routine by, oh Jan or Feb. hehe It is hard enough getting back into a routine after "taking a break for the summer" but after taking a break from sit-down-book-learning for a few years, it is REALLY hard to get back into things.

I had hoped to do some geocaching this past week, but the weather was not all that great for being outside. The temps were low but the humidity was just ridiculous! I felt miserable just going out to get the mail. Our upcoming move (no clue as to where yet, but we are staying in the same town just really need to get out of this apartment!) is looking like it will be Nov or later. We're going to have stay here at least another month. The places we've been looking at just aren't nice on the inside. And while we hate living here, moving into a new shitty place just to get out of another one isn't going to work. So the search continues!

On the school front, here's what we did:

We have everything (or will after I go shopping for the last few items this weekend) for chemistry, so Mon will start on that finally. My Home Science Tools order came in on Thursday right before I had to head out for my weekly MNO. (A bunch of us went to see The Help, great movie! We were all crying, and a group of 8 ladies crying together is quite a scene! We all looked like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer coming out of the theater. hehe) So anyways, back to chemistry... I should have lots of fun reports next week on our experiments. We're looking forward to getting started.

Math - Jake finished book 1 of the Key to Algebra. He breezes right through most of it and actually went ahead and finished this coming weeks work as well. As for the geometry, he only did the minimal amount he had too. LOL There are 8 books in the set but we only have the first 3. Not sure if I'll have him do them all or not. I just wanted him to have a little bit of geometry, so if we do more it might be next year.

Writing - This weeks lesson was on Parts of Speech. He had to copy out the sentences and label the parts of speech. Not the boys most favorite way to spend his time. LOL But he got through it ok and didn't do too bad.

Grammar - Not much to say here, he finished up his 5 lessons for the week.

Economics - Same here, Chapter 3 read and questions answered. These chapters and questions are usually pretty short, so he gets them finished up quickly.

Art - He finished up his chapter reading, but didn't get the Artist Bio pages started. So he can either do them over the weekend, or first thing Mon.

He also finished up a "small" amount of his geography work. Why he is dragging his feet on this is beyond me. *sigh*

Another thing I wanted to note is the reason I do not mention Amanda in my posts is because she has basically "finished" homeschooling. But she isn't quite ready for taking classes at the community college yet either. So she is actually doing some things at home as well. She needs some math review so we are working on that. But she also wanted other work so she is doing the art lesson along with Jake. Plus she is doing a Shakespeare unit study and some other Language Arts "classes" (vocabulary and writing). And of course reading history books. We have to go digging through the boxes of books I've already packed up because apparently one of her fathers military dictionary type books was packed away by mistake. And she needs it out.

So that's out week. Hopefully I'll have picture to add in next week. :) Of chemistry and hopefully some nice Fall scenes.