Week in review

Our first day of school was Tuesday. We took this week to ease back into it.

Steven is working on memorizing his multiplication facts, we are using Times Tales to help. He is really enjoying the silly stories they use. He is also working through Mammoth Math 3 right now, just picking things that he needs to work on, then he will be switching to Mammoth Math 4 after the first of the year.

Growing with Grammar 4 he worked through lessons 1-3 refreshing his memory on subjects and predicates.

Spelling, Steven reviewed spelling rules that he learned last year. We will continue with All About Spelling finishing up level 3 and then moving onto level 4

He started reading More stories from Grandma's Attic 

Austin is working on Mammoth Math 1 doing review and will start 2 after the first of the year.

Growing with Grammar 2, lessons 1 and 2 this week working on complete sentences and fragments and also reviewed "The Goops" poem for First Language Lessons (the second half), and Explode the Code book 5 lesson 1.

He read Clara and the Book Wagon and is really working on comprehension.

Austin also started his Montessori class this week. He will be going Mon-Wed. 12:00 - 3:00. (The school district is running a test program, part time first and second grade Montessori, if all goes well they hope get a full time program going next year.) He really had a great time, he was very excited to tell me all about what they did. I think he is happy to have something that is "his", he kept asking if Steven and Abby were also doing Montessori and when I said "no, just you" he would smile. I also think it will be good for him to make his own friends. The boys are so close in age and since we homeschool they have the same friends and we all know that when you get 3 kids together one usually feels left out.

We are starting Latin this year, using Latin's Not so Tough level 2, this week the boys started going through the Latin alphabet and learning the sounds.

This week was also the first week of Classical Conversations, which I think went really well. I am teaching the Apprentices (7 - 8 year olds).I was a little nervous, but everything went well, I didn't forget anything, and I even had fun. Steven has had a bad attitude about Classical Conversations, saying, "I'm going to hate it", "I am not going to make any friends". At lunch time I asked him how it went and he said, "AWESOME!!" I said, "what, did  I hear you say?" He obviously didn't hate it and he was even sitting by a new friend he had made. I really think it's going to be a great year.

The kids learned (in week one of CC) about Charlemagne, the 7 types of Biomes, 8 parts of speech, Latins 1st conjugations present tense, European waters, skip counting by 1's and 2's and the first 8 important moments in the history timeline. I am really amazed at how quickly they pick it up. 

Abby is also doing Classical Conversations, she is in Challenge A. This was actually the second week for her, the Challenge program runs for 30 weeks while the Foundation/Essentials only runs for 24 weeks. This year I have really put the ball in her court so to speak. She is given her assignments at Classical Conversations (CC from here on out) and then she is expected to plan how she is going to get it done and make herself a weekly schedule, I then look it over add Growing with Grammar 8, Copywork for Girls, Critical Thinking Word Roots and eventually some readers. The first week she did great, I even think her CC teacher was impressed.

This last week she was been busy studying the United States map, states and capitals. This week she will add in the mountains and major rivers and will be drawing a map of the USA from memory and adding the states and capitals. She has also been writing using Bible Base Writing Lessons from Institute of Excellence in Writing. Studying Latin Declensions and vocabulary words from Latin's Not so Tough Level 3. In Math she worked with the Pythagorean theorem and also reviewed solving for an unknown with the additive inverse. For science she has been researching protozoa, writing about it and drawing pictures. By the end of the year she will have made her own biology text book.

Next week will be a full week, with full homeschooling, ORLA (Olympia Regional Learning Academy ~ enrichment classes) starting, and Abby starts volleyball and Austin will start hip hop. Steven has decided not to do anything for right now which is a good thing, because I am not quite sure how it would fit in. It's kind of nice to get back into a routine since summer is so relaxing and laid back. Give me a month or so and I am sure I will be ready for a vacation again.

Planning and Organizing

I love planning and trying to be organized. Most people who know me would probably say I am organized, but I rarely feel like it and always in search of the best system to make life easier, whether it's for school, the housework, chores or meals.

Last year we did Sue Patrick's Workbox System,  quick overview, you take your children's assignments for the day and divide them up into a set of boxes that they work through fairly independently. The great part is that you can put fun things in some of the boxes - things that you may have on hand for the kids but you usually forget to pull out. Or things that you never make time for. The kids can see the fun things in the boxes and it is motivation to do the work in the other boxes to get to that fun activity. This worked great and the kids really liked being able to see what they needed to do that day and knew when they finished everything they were done.

This year I have revamped our workboxes and have also adding in a filling system for me that makes it easier in planning.  Each of the boys have a file container, with 1-36 dividers. 

I took all their consumable books apart and broke them up into weeks (1-36), anything else needed (readers, etc.) for week 1 will go in that file, anything needed for week 2 will go in week 2 file etc. For books that aren't consumable I made a chart divided into lessons and we will mark off each lesson after it is completed.

Behind the week dividers I have a file for each day of the week (Mon. - Fri.), this is where I will take the weeks work and divide it into days, so it is easy to grab in the morning and place in the workboxes. No having to hunt for each book or supplies, there are all right there.

Next, I have a file folder for "text" books by subject, so we don't have to hunt those down either. 

Last I have a file folder for each subject. This is where I will put their finished work.

This makes it really nice because everything is all in one container/file box that sits right by their desk on top of their workboxes. I don't have them work in any specific order they can pick and choose which workbox they want to do when. There are a couple boxes like Latin and Classical Conversations that we do together, but the rest is up to them.