Friday, February 13, 2009

Weekly Report- Week twenty-two 2008-09


This week we started learning about China.  It is strange to think about this amazing and rich culture developing so many years ahead of the Romans.  Then, they both had these great empires but really knew almost nothing about one another.  Similar feudal systems rose and then fell for basically the same reasons, but in complete isolation from the other.   It is so different from our current information age where ideas and news travels at light speed around the world.

We had fried rice for lunch today colored some pages for our history binders.  SOTW (Story of the World) one isn't scheduled into our curriculum this year but since we were going all the way back to learn about Ancient China I pulled it out and read the chapters about China.  Did you know that China is named for the Ch'in dynasty?  That's a fun piece or trivia.

In Latin and in English grammar all of the kids were learning about Predicate Nominatives and different cases.  In English we do this so automatically because it is our mother tongue.  A noun can function as many different things and we only know the function by it's place in the sentance.  In Latin they make it obvious by changing the ending.  This means that, to an extent, you can rearrange a Latin sentance and not affect the meaning.

David

David is learning second degree outlines.  It's really not too difficult and he did just fine with it.  Outlining is a great study tool and he usually outlines a chapter of SOTW although this week he outlined SOC (Streams of Civilization).

Math - MUS Epsilon lessons 22 and 23.  He is on track to finish Epsilon in the next 6 weeks or so and then start on Zeta which is the last book before Pre-Algebra (EEK!)  All of the multiplication facts are pretty much memorized at this point.  There are only a couple that still cause him trouble.  We have tried for years to get these down and no surprise, it took me being more involved.  Why does it take me so long to figure out that I really have to be more hands-on to get results?

Latin - Working on Ch. 9 but slowing down a bit to match up with the other kids.

Writing - Working on the structure of a report.  I have to remind him that scientists have to do these kinds of things all the time.  Writing is not his favorite subject, although he is quite good at it.

J

Math - Reviewing  multi-digit multiplication and long division.  After a great deal of hand wringing and claims that it was too hard he did just fine and I am glad we did the review.  There are so many steps in these types of problems that it is usually necessary to review regularly.

Latin - Working on lesson 7 and the grammar concepts happened to line up with our English grammar as well.  That was nice!

Writing - More basic paragraph writing.

Abigail

Math - She has the addition facts down now and so next week we will start on the multiplication facts.  Conceptually she worked on multi-digit multiplication and that was a lot of fun.  Five min. of explanation and she was off and running.  I love that she has no fear of numbers and loves patterns.  I have to remember that she is so much happier when her math is new and challenging.

Latin - Lesson 7.  She needs help with some of the writing but she seems to understand the grammar as well as the boys.  Actually, I think some of it is easier because of her skill with patterns.  Also, she has never learned that grammar is "hard" so she just takes in the information and accepts it as no big deal.

Writing - Just a couple of more weeks and she will have learned all of the cursive letter forms.  Really memorizing them will take the rest of the year but by next year I will have all 3 big kids doing their work in cursive.

Miriam - 

My mom got Miriam a sensory table for her birthday.  For a couple of days we had a cornstarch and water mixture in it and now there is water and bubbles.  New birthday puzzles, stickers and videos have kept her pretty busy this week.  This week Mim has decided she doesn't want a diaper at night anymore and she has been dry every night. 

 My baby is three.  I don't think I like that.  She has agreed not to ever grow up but I have a feeling it will happen anyway.

It was a good week but I am ready for our week off.  Between the five of us there are seven doctor's appointments!  Everyone needs to go clothes and shoe shopping and I have to get ready for the next 6 weeks of school.  Somewhere in all of that I really really need to clean the house!  It is so much easier to keep up when there is less clutter.  I am going to be merciless with the purging (I hope). 

1 comment:

Jenny Plumb said...

China: very cool. We have been thinking about China a lot as Josh Ludwig left this week to be a missionary there for two years. We are going to Thailand for two weeks in March, and next year we are going back to China (we've both been there) to visit Josh. So Asia and their culture is very much in mind right now. I keep wondering why God keeps pointing us back there.
PS. I still make those cookies too as it's still a family favorite. My recipe is one copied from when I was in high school too.