Thursday, December 18, 2008

Week Two!

This week we've moved on to conquer Lesson 2 in Prima Latina. Andrew seems to have a real knack for this. He's been shouting 'calum' at the top of lungs all week long (woohoo). Needless to say, Luke's picking up some Latin as well. I'm surprised, and pleased, at how well Andrew's doing with this. We tried Spanish earlier this year and he lost interest pretty quick, within two lessons, so two weeks worth bodes well.

We did Chapters 2 and 3 in history. I thought we would dawdle for awhile over the Egyptians, but Andrew dove so deep into it that we flew through. IOW, in stead of cruising the Nile through January, we have read all the books, encyclopedia entries, Nat'l Geographic (inc. web info), and have exhausted all of my planned resources and some I had not planned. We've even learned their counting/numeral system. In the hive, someone asked if you play to their strengths or weaknesses. Now, I have to wonder if there's much of a choice there. If Andrew enjoys something, he will study it, to pieces, with or without me. We'll be doing our hieroglyphic signs at some point over vacation. He doesn't consider it work and this way he can get an art grade in for the week ;)

What else? Oh, we've added hundreds to our math. The Egyptian numerals helped a lot. Since they have special marks for ones, tens, hundreds, etc. and write their numbers backwards (ones on the left, the higher the number the further to the right you go), Andrew has started using their numerals instead of manipulatives.

Reading, spelling, grammar and handwriting have all continued on pretty ho hum. He's still working on cursive; the FLL curriculum is a little redundant, but it's working; and he still reads a chapter a day and writes a narrative paper. Our reviews for today came back nearly a hundred percent. For some odd reason, Andrew put e's on the end of Isis and Osiris. I think he over thought it, he had not done that at all this week, until it was review time.

The most exciting aspect of this week? We fed the sea gulls french fries at the beach waiting for the library to open. Luke would throw a handful and run at the same time, so the birds didn't know whether to fly away or stay and eat, and Andrew speculated on why they had not migrated and which was the "alfa" bird. The decision was made to research sea gulls. We got into the library and forgot all about it. Lol, which is why I prefer paper to computers, if I'd have had paper and pen I would've added it to our list of subjects to research.

C'est la vie.