Week 3

Well, this was a Saturday work week, so my report will be short as there is an ever growing pile of laundry to be done, bathrooms to clean, grocery shopping to do, books to get ready and football to watch.

Leena-Lots of work, lots of tests, good grades, a homecoming dance to get ready for and she's been asked to be a sidewalker at a horse show next weekend for Saddle Pals.

Xan-Lots of math, language arts and reading. Struggling a little with guitar. He was a little discouraged after class last week, but he know he has to stick with the class until at least December. It could be that he is in a really big class and is not getting the one on one he needs or it could be he is still too young for an instrument. Fortunately we have wonderful Uncle Ed coming over this week, who knows a little something, something about guitar to give him a tutorial.

Have a great week all!

Week 2

Another week has gone by and it's hard to believe September is winding down and October will soon be upon us. Well, I guess time flies when you're having fun. In anycase, I guess I should just say upfront that if the blog seems a little biased towards one child, it's only because the other isn't as forthcoming in her participation of our blogging adventures. I'll do what I can, but don't count on much.

The highlight of our week was a field trip to the Crocker Art Museum. The museum is so graciously hosting 3-4 homeschooling days this year where the kids get in free and I only had to pay $3. We went on a 45 minute tour with docents posted at several stations telling wonderful stories about the pieces Judge Crocker and his wife collected. We learned about Salon Style presentation and gesso. Leena's favorite part was the California room where there were several pieces devoted to her favorite place, Yosemite. A homeschool moment: You know your kids are classically homeschooled when the docent start telling the story of Romulus and Remus and all the little kids jump up and tell the story first. Xan's favorite part was the Pop Art exhibit. Especially the Wayne Thiebaud works. Have you ever seen his dessert pieces? They are so amazingly done, you can almost smell the frosting. However, nobody was really all that impressed with the Lichtenstein or Warhol pieces, guess they just can't compare to pink and yellow frosting. At the end of the tour the kids got to make a project. A good time was had by all.

The Crocker

Leena hiding from the camera

Printmaking

Leena

Leena is enjoying her schooling situation, finding it the best of both worlds. Her on site classes offer a smaller personalized learning environment where the teacher actually knows each student and is actually able to be just that, a teacher, and not a shepherd or babysitter. Leena has opportunities to join the student council and participate in yearbook, as well as many opportunities for field trips. She will even get to go to Prom. And I am pleased with the academics at the school. Her assignments meet my high standards of what I expect in an education, plus with the 2day a week schedule she spends there she has plenty of time to do assignments I still have for her at home and explore her personal interests like photography and art.This last week looked something like this:
English-Spelling Test for Casey at the Bat; Precis for In Technology We Trust; Read the Red Headed League and do 2 characterizations of people from that story in addition to a short biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She also continued her lesson from Rod & Staff working on sentences and started vocabulary study with Vocabulary Cartoons.
Earth Science-Wrapped up study on the moon and moon journaling; took test on said material and scored a B; began study of our universe.
Math-Continued Algebra 1. Don't ask me for specifics, just typing out the word Algebra made me break out in a cold sweat. I do know that her grade is fluctuating between a high B and low A. Pretty good I though considering more than half of her grade based on her tests.
Geography-In a group setting Leena had to write a proposition to Apple in a bid to get them to move to a specific city describing in detail why it would benefit Apple to do so, and then give an oral presentation to the class.
Photography-Continue rule of thirds assignment and began collecting images for a magazine composition.
Spanish- Another week, more Spanish. Rosetta stone is going well. Leena gets the listening part, but is struggling with the writing part, so that's something that we'll be working on this coming week.

Xan

Xan is feeling much better and is recovering nicely from this nasty viral thing he had. He's been on the fish oil now for about 4 days and I'm beginning to see a little improvement. A good part of the week was spent arguing about doing school, he just doesn't get why he can't play with Lego's and read Calvin and Hobbes all the time. I started talking to him about balance and how I think it's great he likes those things, but it's not good to spend all your time doing one thing, no matter what that one thing is. Towards the end of the week there was more compliance and work being done. Xan's week:
Math-We cemented the long division with remainders and moved to the next lesson which was multiplying and dividing by 6,7,8 and 9. I really like how Singapore teaches multiplication and division together showing the relationship between one and the other and I really enjoy the aha moment when Xan sees that and is able to apply it.
English-More sentences, more spelling and some letter writing. We worked on the friendly letter format when Xan decided he wanted to send a letter to one of his role models: George Lucas.
Science-Read and notebooked The Kingfisher Book of Evolution and made some matchbooks for the days of Creation.
History-We finished up the introduction to Story of the World and did some Writing With Ease like worksheets for narration and copywork. He also did some vocabulary on the first and only pocket we'll be utilizing from the Ancient Civilization's History Pocket. He also read and notebooked some pages for The Magic Schoolbus Shows and Tells; A Book About Archaeology. But the best project of all for this week was his Family Tree. Xan really seems to be more willing to sit and learn something when he's using his hands. It's a good thing I've got lot's of projects and activities lined up for our Ancients study.

Family Tree

Other Stuff-There was also Lego Engineering and guitar this week and work with mom and a study time at Dad's work.

Motorized Garage Door

So that's it for our week here.

Back to the Fish Oil...

So after several consecutive days of Xander meltdowns, we finally figured out what the problem was. It's been a while since he has had Omega oils. Insert ashamed mom face here-We'd stopped buying them because they are just so darn expensive, but I guess I just needed a reminder of why he takes them in the first place. And off I went to the natural food store to buy some sanity for me and mood magic for the boy. Usually I buy the regular Omega strawberry flavored gel caps, but this time I got the lemon flavored Nordic Naturals Omega 3-6-9, which are supposed to be a better combo of oils. They're even shaped liked lemons so Xan has decided to call them lemon drops. Now it will be just a matter of time before I get my sweet boy back.

Weekly Report: Week 1-ish

We have had a rough start this year with 6 weeks worth of viral infections. Needless to say it's very difficult to be gung ho into school when no body is feeling well, so I made the executive decision to do only what they were able to do until they were feeling better. Some days were more than others, and I had to do our back to school traditions in stages, but now that everyone is doing much better it shouldn't be long until we are in the full swing of things. So without further ado, here is our first weekly report.Since Leena is a freshman now, we've decided to change the way we do things. We decided together that she will attend a hybrid school. She's taking a few selected classes through a charter school and is there Mondays and Wednesdays and an hour and a half on Fridays. So look at it how you will, but this has turned out to be a great blessing for us. The majority of her work is still done at home, but she is responsible to someone else for those classes. Plus, the drama of Mathematics has been removed from this household. At home we have continued with our lessons in Rod & Staff English, Rosetta Stone Spanish, and History Odyssey. She has also begun her volunteer work again at Saddle Pals - http://www.ucpsacto.org/saddle.htm. This is her 3rd year with the program and for the first 2 years she was a horse handler, read stable hand, but this year because she is old enough she gets to be a side walker and she is actually involved with lessons and working with the kids as they ride the horses. I am just so proud of her and the work that she does there.
Danger Boy Xan has continued his journey in Singapore Math is is now beginning to master long division, woo hoo! We've done the first unit in Christian Kids Explore...Biology and discussed the difference of opinions between Evolutionists and Creationists. He read some library books and completed reading records for each one. We've done the first lesson in Spelling workout and Vocabulit and completed the first 3 lessons in Rod and Staff 4. And if you ask him the highlight of the school year thus far it would be his guitar lessons and Lego engineering class.

Xan's Motorized Lego Car