Fudge. I am unhappy to see that I haven't written a darn thing since week 6, and here I am on Week 12. I have several pretty decent excuses...DITY move to a lovely new house, a destroyed laptop, power outages and snowstorms, family upheaval...plus the pure business of the holiday season. Truman and I have in fact been working on our schoolwork, and have accomplished a lot, but not nearly as much as I would have hoped for this time of year. Of course I am aware that Truman still accomplished far more than the average public schooled kid, but we didn't keep to our schedule as written. We have kept up with our reading schedule as dictated by A/O, and have been plugging along in Math, but certain things have fallen to the wayside, like composer and artists studies. I will use the holiday break to get us back on track, and design a plan to implement the subjects that we have not managed to progress in.
To keep myself up to date, I will write what we have accomplished since Week 6. I have still been writing it all down, and putting a check next to every box, but we didn't school...very well. I would give Truman one lesson in math on a Monday morning, then he would read library books all day long, then he would get a spelling test on Tuesday, Off-campus on Wednesday, then Thursday we would do schoolwork all day, and finish everything for the week. Not the greatest schedule, and during the month of December we did manage to get back on our morning schedule, with the bulk of the experiments and games on the afternoons that Henry is at preschool. Anyway-getting off topic, back to what we have actually done.
YTD Grade 3, AO Year 2
HISTORY
The Little Duke-on Chapter 12
Story of the World-Have finished up through Chapter 15, The First Kings of England. Truman has read
all correlating topics in the Internet linked Encyclopedia of World History, and drawn and colored every single map associated with each chapter. History continues to be his very favorite subject.
Tree in the Trail-Read through chapter 18. The map I bought for this book is not useful. We just google movies on related topics-and reading Little House on the Prairie helped him gain a better understanding of the time period.
Viking Tales-even though we read this in Year 1, Truman digs the Vikings, and reread the whole book by himself.
Our Island Story- We are on Chapter 15 More about Alfred the Great.
Many other history books were read during this time, together or by Truman alone, but all were library books, short and not worth mentioning.
MATH
We are on Lesson 42 in Right Start, More about Money, which puts us on track to finish in June of this year. I wish we were more ahead than we are, but Math is the one subject where I am happy to put the lesson aside and play a math game instead. Truman is absolutely on or above grade level expectations, and certainly very good at card and math games. He is about halfway through the district's pre-algebra Groundworks book, fun puzzles that keep him entertained while I shower. We also still do a Mad Minute, and have watched and practiced the 1st Brainetics DVD, about number grids. We are currently learning multiplication, while drilling in subtraction to cement it into his brain.
SCIENCE
In chemistry, we are on Unit 6, on the States of Matter, and will finish the last Unit, on Chemical Reactions during this upcoming month. We have done a lot of experiments this month, mostly because the labs called for building molecules out of Legos, and you know that was a hit. Today's experiment calls for ice and boiling water, steam and jello. Sounds messy.
AO's Burgess Book is still being used, and we are totally up to date on our cataloging of the mammals. I will photograph the cladogram later, perhaps when there is daylight. More realistically, I will wait until we are finished. Truman reads this book on his own, then tells me about the animal of the day while he puts it in it's place on the chart. He is enjoying this book, and has to be reminded to only read one chapter at a time. I love that he loves this book, because it is such a beautiful old book, and so well written.
Our Nature walks have not gone well from a Charlotte Mason perspective. There are just too many amazing, exciting things to look at in our new neighborhood, and the boys do not stay with me when we go outside. That is fine, because honestly, I have been organizing the garage or stuck staring at the water when we go out for a "Nature Walk." We will have a new guide to use starting next week, because I am failing with the Handbook of Nature Study. I do read it-but always after the fact, and so am not prepared like I want to be.
SPANISH
Still plugging along with our book, but the worksheets are too easy. We have had a setback because my Language Program doesn't work with our new MacBook, and the PC does not seem to want to come back to life after that last move. The best way for me to teach Spanish seems to be in the car, because one of my favorite music CD's is a Spanish compilation including Juanes, Shakira. The boys can sing the songs, and occasionally it occurs to them to ask what the words mean. It is also easy to quiz them while driving, and have Henry answer in English/Spanish, and Truman answer only in Spanish.
LITERATURE
We finished ...sob. It was a darling book, and we all loved it. We are almost finished with 5 children and It, Romeo and Juliet from the Lambs Shakespeare, several stories from Among the People. We are almost finished with Dangerous Journey-The Pilgrims Progress....the sooner the better. Truman has read so many books in the past couple of weeks, we can't even list them all. The school district has a guided reading program, and I took all the 3rd and 4th grade required books ( I would definitely NOT call them literature), just to let Truman read them in his free time. I have him write the titles and authors of these books on a list, to practice writing in this format, but do not require anything other than that. No narrations, because these books are so simplistic that T usually reads them to Henry, who enjoys them.
SPELLING/GRAMMAR
We are on Lesson 47 in Sequential Spelling, and Truman is very interested in how much his writing has improved since the beginning of the year. Having all of his lists in one book lets him track his progress himself, and he loves to look back and notice how silly he was writing so badly, or erasing so many times for one easy word. I still think that this is the greatest program ever! I am sure if I would have used it growing up, I wouldn't have to make all of my computer passwords words that I have difficulty spelling.
Truman whizzed through the Wordly Wise Grade 3 book, finished before Christmas, and doesn't have to do another until 4th grade. These are also district books, but pretty decent vocabulary development, although I do not require the "busywork" like crossword puzzles.
POETRY/ARTIST AND COMPOSER STUDY
We are finished reading the poetry of Walter de la Mare, and it was very nice. Truman read almost all of these by himself, because he enjoys poetry, and we talked about a couple that I had read before-hand. I did forget to have Truman memorize a poem this term, how did that slip my mind?
The Artist of the Term-Albrecht Durer......we only looked at a few pieces and read his biography, and a story about him. I certainly didn't teach according to AO guidelines, and I feel a bit guilty about it, but this is an area where I lose interest pretty rapidly unless it is riveting, and Durer was not. I have a feeling the I might be failing Truman in this area, and so I have a different approach planned for the rest of the year.
Composer of the Term was Beethoven. This was easy to do, since the music is generally always on. We read a book on Beethoven, a couple of different versions of his life's story, picked out some of his music on the piano, played the CD in the car. Truman can't name each composition, but he can recognize Beethoven when he hears it, which is an accomplishment in itself.
EXTRAS
We attempted another district book called Living in Our World, which is the grade 3 "geography" text. It was so disjointed though, and Truman complained a lot. It has units on "living together" "working together" "communities grow and change." There was a workbook that came with it, but it was mostly more and more writing about how Truman felt about "the Sheldon's Move to Aurora, Ohio ( a puny story in the book" and NOT enough charts, maps, time lines for Truman.
NEW PLAN
For the 2nd and 3rd terms, I will stick with AO Literature, Right Start Math, Spelling, finish Chem, and generally everything else will be the same. I am adding a few new books,
Meet the Great Composers by Montgomery and Hinson
Lives of the Musicians, Good Times, Bad times, and what the Neighbors thought, by Krull
The Story of the Orchestra, by Robert Levine
Discovering Great Artists by Kohl and Solga
Lives of the Artists, Good Times, Bad Times, and what the Neighbors thought, by Krull
My Nature Journal, by Olmstead
A Child's Geography of the World, by VM Hillyer. This book looks entertaining, and has a great musty old look and feel to it. I have a schedule-made by someone else-as to how to implement this book, and I can't wait! AO geography, with Tree in the Trail, is fabulous, but just not enough for Truman. I did discover this book from the AO sites, and was happy to find a great old copy in the Used Book Store.
These additions are to cover the gaps that I feel we have in our school, gaps that are only there because of my inadequacies. I am totally aware that there are tons of bits to be gathered from the internet about each of these subjects, and that is what my AO friends do...for free, even, but I would much rather have it written out for me. A book that we can sit in a chair with, a CD to stick in the car. I wish I had the free time to gather up all of the free resources available and implement my own plan, but I will be just as happy to take a shortcut. I only need to check out the indexes and correlate the books with each other, divide up the books to cover the rest of the year.
TESTING
After week 12 is the testing week for AO, and I did this by asking Truman to tell his favorite part about all of the books that we have read. He remembers everything beautifully, gave lovely narrations, even had a glow and a dear reminiscent look to his face when talking about certain books. No doubt due to the relationship he had with them, being read over such a long period. His facts are pretty good, although he forgot a few minor characters in history (Clovis) and was a little bit confused about the sequence of events in New Zealand and the dynasties in Japan that we studied. He still has the big picture firmly in place, and is excited to move on. All of our other programs, math, spelling, chemistry have periodic reviews that we complete without issue.
This is my catch up post, from here on out they will be current. New Year's resolutions will see to that.