A Little Rebellion Every Now & Then

Week 29!

Gillian
Gillian read The Toothpaste Millionaire and Mustang: Wild Spirit of the West. We spent more time talking about how the author of the latter had written Misty of Chincoteague and how neat it would be to visit during the Pony Round-Up than we did about the actual book she read. She and her dad are still reading The String in the Harp at night, but he’s slacked a bit this week, so I have to remind him to keep going! Gillian finished lessons 5.7 through 5.12 in Growing with Grammar this week. She worked on “Julius Caesar” in Writing Tales. It’s really helping to cement some punctuation and she still is enjoying it. She also practiced typing fifteen minutes each day, Tuesday through Friday. And in spelling, Gillian continues to rock – steps 23, 24, and 25, and we started step 26 today!

No drill level completed this week, though she came really close! She completed chapter six through ten in Life of Fred Fractions and pages one through fifteen in Key to Fractions.

No science this week – we’re waiting on our order from Rainbow Resource.

In history, she read chapter 36 in SOTW 3 and did the accompanying mapwork. She then read Secret Missions and Freedom Train.

Jacob
I finally gave in – I started formally doing phonics with Jacob, since he’s been begging me. We’ve covered the short vowel sounds of ‘a’ and ‘e’ so far. He has ‘a’ down but we’ll spend a few more days with ‘e.’ Gillian’s been working with him in various Kumon workbooks – cutting, tracing, et cetera. I can’t remember all I’ve read to him this week. His dad is reading from The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book at night.

Me!
I placed a lot of orders for new curricula this week. Most of it is for next year. We’ll start this year, though, with the next level of All About Spelling. Also starting before next year, probably, is the math I ordered for Jacob – RightStart A. I think he’ll like it, and he’s so into addition right now. Once the state tax refund arrives, I’ll be ordering the remaining materials for next year, and I can get everything planned out before summer – a real summer off!

I’ve read and ordered some interesting books lately. I have a bad cold, so my head’s too ‘fuzzy’ for real critical thinking, but I wanted to list them. Racing Odysseus, Real Education, The Case Against Adolescence, and What High Schools Don’t Tell You. I also got my beloved copy of The Underground History of American Education returned to me at last – I sense a reread in the not-too-distant future!

Gillian
Language Arts: Gillian completed lessons 5.3 – 5.6 in Growing With Grammar, plus a page each in her Critical Thinking Co. workbooks, and each day’s Daily Paragraph Editing. She did fifteen minutes of typing practice each day Tu-Fri. In spelling, she completed steps 20, 21, and 22! At this rate, we’ll be starting Level Four just after our spring break. In Writing Tales, Gillian worked with the story of Androcles. She decided in her final draft to make the lion a lioness named Abby.

Mathematics: Gillian started Life of Fred: Fractions this week and is really enjoying it. She did her first “The Bridge” today and got all ten questions correct! She does need to work at remembering to add the units to the problems. She also finished Keys to Measurement Book 1 this week. We’ll probably put it aside until LoF: Fractions is finished, since the other three books require some of that knowledge.

Reading/Literature: Gillian read The Ballad of Lucy Whipple and really enjoyed it; she told anyone she could about the book this week. Today, she started on The Toothpaste Millionaire. She and her dad are still reading from A String in the Harp at night.

History: Gillian read chapters 34 & 35 in SOTW Volume 3, along with the mapwork and coloring pages. She especially enjoyed coloring Bolivar! She also read in The American Story and (finally!) finished Explorers Who Got Lost.

Jacob
Nothing formal with Jacob, but he recognizes even more letters this week than he did two weeks ago. He also helped address the invitations for his birthday party – he wrote out the envelope for his grandparents (wrote “Gammy” and “Gary” from a combo of copying/coaching from his sister) and his sisters (same combo of copying/coaching). He’s very into addition. He’ll say things like “I’ll eat 2 plus 4 bites of food,” and he’ll ask questions like “what’s 9 plus 4?” followed immediately by “what’s 4 plus 9?”

This was week twenty-five for us, days 120 to 125.

Gillian accomplished a lot this week. She read All Night, All Day, “The Man with the Twisted Lip” (pronouncing it rather boring), and The Whale Rider. She and Sam are still reading The String In The Harp. She also read Mill, A River Ran Wild, Thomas Jefferson (Harness), and Kids on Strike for history, and continued reading in The Periodic Table for science.

Other history work included chapter thirty-one in SOTW 3 and the accompanying map work and coloring page. Gillian also looked up various elements in the Kingfisher Science Encyclopedia to learn more about them than her book contained.

In language arts, Gillian continued working through Chapter 4 in Growing with Grammar Grade 4, as well as doing Daily Paragraph Editing and the Critical Thinking Company supplementary workbooks. She finished Step 11, Step 12, and Step 13 in All About Spelling Level 3, and started Step 14. I am so pleased that she’s able to go at this pace now! We’ll continue to work through the series, because I can see it is still not a particularly easy subject for her, but she has made huge progress. She also continued with practicing typing for 15 minutes, four days a week.

The most exciting news of the week is that Gillian has finished the Miquon math series! She also did twelve pages in Developmental Math Level 12. She beat the time on drill level 25 and lowered her time on level 8.

Jacob ‘officially’ knows 14 letters of the alphabet solidly, and he knows another five or six half the time. We’re going to concentrate on the twelve he doesn’t know solidly for the next few weeks.

Another week… week twenty-four! With one exception, she’s zooming through her schoolwork. This is good, since we need to add writing in the next week or two, and chemistry soon after that. Weekly report a bit early because she’s at her grandparents’ house tonight through Saturday, and she finished her work early so that she could go and not have to take her work with her.

Gillian did four lessons in Growing with Grammar, the week’s Daily Paragraph Editing, and her supplemental grammar workbooks. None of it seems to be busywork; I’m on a mission to ferret out busywork! In spelling, she finished Steps 8, 9, and 10, and started Step 11. Yep – three steps in one week! Hooray! She seems to have really hit a stride with spelling. We added fifteen minutes of typing practice four days of the week, which she thinks is great, since she loves the typewriter.

This week, Gillian read What’s the Deal? for history, Seaman’s Journal, an adaptation of Frankenstein, and an adaptation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She and her dad finished the last assigned read-aloud for the school year (!!), Amos Fortune, Free Man, and together they picked another book to read (The String in the Harp).

Along with the history reading mentioned above, Gillian read chapters 29 & 30 in Story of the World Volume 3 and did the corresponding mapwork and coloring pages. For science, she’s read in Basher’s The Periodic Table and looked at some corresponding entries in the science encyclopedia.

In math, Gillian started doing the word problems section of Miquon, the Purple book. She has just one more week’s worth of work in Miquon! She is doing addition and subtraction of large (5 digit + numbers), and finished Unit B in Developmental Math Level 12.

We officially stopped Latin for the year. We’re going to concentrate on writing and science when they arrive and add Latin back in, in the form of Lively Latin, when we start fourth grade. Assuming she completes Big Book One in fourth grade and Big Book Two in fifth grade, she’ll be more than ready for the first year of a ‘high school level’ Latin course in sixth grade. She can take three years of Latin, through eighth grade, and then decide either to continue with Latin, aiming for the AP test, or to drop Latin and take a modern foreign language.

I’ve been ‘testing’ Jacob on his letters and letter sounds. He recognizes all but a few letters of the alphabet and can tell me the sound that a letter makes for most of the letters, too. We worked this week on finding “N” and telling me what sound an “N” makes. After just a couple of days, he really knew it. On to the next letter!