Week 22 in Review

No pictures this week (and everyone stops reading the blog) sorry, but we've been busy living and haven't stopped to keep momentos.

Greek, we're through lesson 19 in Hey Andrew! 3 and Andrew has finished transcribing 1.12 in John, which means he finally gets to flip to the next page!  It may seem silly, but we take our triumphs where we can find them.

Latin, we've done lesson 16 this week.  It's nice to have some more verbs to work with and conjugating them has proven pretty easy, for Andrew anyway.

Science, we finally finished Unit 4.  It was a bit harrowing.  I'm not sure that Andrew was ready to know how fission (nuclear power plants/bombs) could effect things.  Sometimes I wish he was a little slower on the uptake.

History, we went ahead and did two chapters this week, 5 and 6.  We covered some interesting stuff about Japan and then skimmed through the pilgrims.  It may seem wierd to fly over that particular section of history, except that we already learned all that around Thanksgiving.  There were some new little tidbits, especially from "You Would Not Want to Be an American Colonist."  Ah, cannibalism, always a fun topic.  I think everyone, Dad included, would say that learning the history of New York was the favorite part.  Wall Street?  Broadway?  Those alone kept us in stitches.

Reading, Andrew has started 'Through the Looking Glass' and is loving it.  He's also read a few books on the early colonies.  We checked out a book called "Mouth Noises" from the library and he's been popping, barking, and clicking ever since.  I really need to update his reading blog, I'm getting rediculously behind.

Writing, WWE 3, week 22, same old same old.  Sometimes I worry about the monotony and wonder if I should get the workbooks, but I hate the idea of spending that much money for something I can do myself.  I'm thinking about doing the end of year evaluation next week, just to see if he can do it (I'm pretty sure he could), but then what?

Spelling, we finished Spelling Workout C this week.  D was supposed to be here last Friday, but apparently the shipper didn't put it out until this week.  Wierd, because I had gotton a notice that it was on its way.

Grammar, FLL3 and the beat goes on.  We both like grammar.  This week Andrew got to diagram adverbs that described adjectives and other adverbs.  We both thought this was really neat.  There is something very satisfying about making a simple sentence turn into something with legs that looks impossible to decifer.

Math....  well, a while ago I made the mistake of giving him some placement tests, just for giggles (I know, baaaad idea) and I discovered that while he can do some really difficult math on a white board, or in his head, if it's simple math on a worksheet he completely freezes up.  So, he ended up testing at 3a for Singapore math, which is really where we're at age wise anyway, but STILL!  I ordered it, in a panic, and we've done the first four lessons this week.  It's much easier than what we had been doing (which means less time, I'm going to end up turbo lazy), but this is so thorough that I can relax knowing he won't choke on his standardized testing later.  I do have to say, that while he misses the geometry games (we focused on Singapore this week), Drew is glad for the break.

Luke has had a wonderful week, mostly thanks to Joanne on the WTM boards and her web site Get Off Your Butt Parenting.  I knew Luke was different, but I did not know how different extroverts are from introverts.  My poor baby is living in a house with three people that define comfort by time alone.  So, we are changing things and Luke is so much happier now that we're more considerate of his need to be with people.  I even took him to McDonald's to play with the tons of other littles that congregate there with their tired mothers.  He is, get this, peacefully napping at this very moment.

Besides all that, Luke made a little bird puppet and we learned the poem "Little Bird."  He continues to practice writing.  I had an 'aha' moment and found out I could tuck his books into the plastic sleeves on the outside of our trapper keepers and let him use my dry erase markers.  His writing is really improving and he's even started drawing people.  At library time today they read some bird books and made bird feeders from waffle cones smeared with peanut butter and rolled in bird seed.  Luke did all the crafts all by himself, while Drew made various bird calls he learned from "Mouth Noises."  I was one proud mommy.