I haven't blogged in quite awhile because the first semester of our year didn't go very smoothly. Somewhere early on, J decided that school was "boring" and simply stopped doing much of his work, despite my every effort to motivate him (I've tried both rewards and punishment, to no avail). My two boys in public school made a similar decision (finding our new school district too hard/overwhelming), so I've had a real problem on my hands and no clue what to do about it.

My highschooler has been begging me to homeschool him again, but I'm full of reservations about this because if he won't do his school work now, what will change at home? I'm not sure I can handle another rebellious student at home, day in and day out. Also, I'm simply not prepared to homeschool high school yet; the mere thought sends me into a panic!

Now, it's a new semester, and I'm full of optimism that things will improve - they simply have to. Perhaps I'm being delusional, but let's hope not. My goals for this semester are simple: a greater emphasis on writing, getting J to do ALL his schoolwork in a timely manner, and grading assignments the moment they are done. (I did great with this last goal all week and, my oh my, does it make it life easier!)

Langugage Arts

Literature:

For literature, M has been reading books from this list that I compiled (though she is not going in chronological order), in conjunction with activities from my "reader response cards." Over winter break, she was on an Elizabeth Goudge kick - her favorite author, thus far.

This week, she read Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. She enjoyed it tremendously it and requested the remaining eleven books in the series. Unfortunately the second book, Swallowdale, appears to be out of print. We ordered a used copy, but in the meantime I started her on the third book, Peter Duck: A Treasure Hunt in the Caribees.

J did not get anything done in literature this week, though I'm hopeful there will be something to report next week.

Grammar:

We've reverted back to Voyages in English for grammar - simple (for me) and effective, tried and true. This week they continue a study of verbs: verb phrases, regular and irregular verbs, "troublesome" verbs, transitive and intransitive verbs, completing one lesson of two to three exercises per day.

Writing:

We're on Week 9 of Writing with Skill and I'm really loving it. The kids merely tolerate it, but I can already see the improvement it's made in their writing.  This week's exercise on "space and distance words and phrases" did cause some stumbling, but otherwise things went well enough.

We also added The Creative Writer by Boris Fishman to our schedule for the first time, designed as a supplement for Writing with Skill. The kids had requested creative writing, so this seemed a good solution, though it is only one day per week.

Science

I've officially given up CPO Life Science this year. After the bumpy start we had, it just never really worked for me (or for M). So now, without a back-up plan in place, I'm essentially winging it for the remainder of the year.

This week, we embarked on an eleven week study of Real Food, Nutrition and Health from Food Renegade, used in conjunction with the excellent (free!) discussion guides from Gnowfglins. The way I've scheduled it, we'll spend roughly three days per week on health/nutrition. On Monday, we begin by watching a documentary - this week it was Food, Inc. (since M hadn't seen it), along with this worksheet. Generally though I've tried to align the documentaries with our reading schedule. On Tuesday, we'll read a chapter from Real Food... and go over the activities and discussion questions for the chapter. Finally, on Wednesday we'll work on the activities (though some are designed to be done over several days).

Thursday and Friday are free days for the kids to pursue something science-related on their own.  For example, this week M chose to read about squirrels and write a brief (one-page) paper on them. J never got around to doing anything, because he was still muddling his way through other work, though he did read up on this week's American Astronomical Society report on the potentially billions of other Earth-sized planets in our galaxy.

Math

Math has been blissfully uneventful, M completed one lesson per day from Teaching Textbooks, in addition to a chapter quiz. She's never gotten less than 95% on any assignment, so it's going very well for her.

French

French was review this week, at M's insistence. She wanted to make sure that she remembered everything we've learned so far this year before proceeding. So far, so good, though she's far better at translating written material than actually speaking in French - we'll need to practice this more in the weeks ahead!

History

In history this week, we began Chapter 12 of American Republic and embarked on our Lowell Mill Girls Study Unit. We're way off schedule in history, thanks to J's constant refusal to finish assignments, so will have to really pick up the pace this term.

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I scheduled this unit, but the reading this week has been intense: 3-4 chapters of Lyddie per day, in addition to comprehension questions, plus the regular textbook reading and workbook assignments. It's been A LOT, but M has handled it valiantly.

Not done this week: Religion, Art, Vocabulary and Geography - yikes!

Since I haven't posted a weekly report in forever, I thought I'd try to at least summarize our first quarter. All things considered, it wasn't horrible (given all that happened), but it certainly wasn't the best either!

In a nutshell, after the kitchen fire that started our school year, we had to temporarily move out of our house while repairs were being done, and then move everything back in - an exhausting amount of work! While that was going on, my husband was laid off, my neck/shoulder/upper back problems returned (they'll require surgery, again), and my two in public school decided to stop doing all of their schoolwork (resulting in a lot of ongoing conflict). It's been rather crazy around here!

Here's what we managed for school during the first quarter:

Religion

We continued our weekly work in Faith and Life: Following Christ and Ignatius Schuster's Illustrated Bible History. We briefly experimented with Faith and Life Online, but decided that it would not work for us.

We wrapped up our study of Saint Dominic, but did not begin another saint biography since this was the single most complained about aspect of our day. With all the other reading I've had the kids doing, the biography was too much, did not hold their interest, and they weren't remembering anything they read from day-to-day. I'm disappointed because I love the Windeatt biographies and Race for Heaven study guides!  

Math

Steady daily work in Teaching Textbooks 6 and 7 (one lesson per day) - no complaints whatsoever!

Science

Unfortunately, science got seriously neglected during our first quarter. With all the disruptions we had due to the fire, it just didn't happen like it needed to. I believe we completed three chapters, and that's it. Truthfully, I'm not really enjoying CPO Life Science - it doesn't really seem ideal for a non-science person (like myself) to teach. J finds it too easy and M finds it too hard, so I don't know, but I'm hoping for a better second quarter.

History

In history, we completed three chapters in BJU's American Republic, five "living books" from the supplemental reading schedule outlined here, and plenty of 'miscellaneous' reading. I intentionally went very slow this quarter so that we could enjoy mini-units like the one below, but I think that one textbook chapter over three weeks was entirely too slow!

I had wanted a greater emphasis on People's History this year, and so we've also been following the "Occupy" movement closely since its inception, discussing it a great deal. Some of us have had the opportunity to show our support at Occupy Portland as well.

The most enjoyable thing we did was a mini-unit on flatboats and river transportation history - M got really into this unit and became quite the flatboat expert! Here are some of the highlights:

• The kids read Hello, the Boat! by Phyllis Crawford, a wonderful 1939 Newberry Honor selection that is packed full of historically accurate details. Set in 1817, the story follows the adventures of a family traveling the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to Cincinatti on a storeboat.
• Our corresponding read-aloud was the equally wonderful Flatboat Days on Frontier Rivers by James McCague.
• I created a set of "riverboat vocabulary" cards for the kids (in the style of their other Time Travelers Early 19th Century materials) and they had to look up each word and write out the definitions. Most of the vocabulary was from Hello, the Boat!; fortunately for them, Flatboat Days on Frontier Rivers contains a very handy glossary.
• From USKids History: Book of the New American Nation (Brown Paper School) we created the game board and cards for a flatboat adventure game called "Mississippi Trist" (see below). M sculpted itty-bitty model flatboats out of clay to use as game pieces. This was great fun!
• We read bits and pieces of the massive book, A Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore, edited by B.A. Botkin (© 1955).
• We watched the 1950s Disney classic "Davy Crockett and the River Pirates."
• We spent a lot of time exploring the Steamboat Times website and watched the 1941 educational film: Flatboatmen of the Frontier.

Language Arts

Literature:

M read/studied:

• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, supplemented by The Real Alice by Anne Clark [nonfiction]
• Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti (we used a 1979 edition from the library - shown at right, illustrated by Ellen Raskin)
• The Princess and the Goblin* by George MacDonald

*This was by far her favorite and she's now reading the sequel, The Princess and Curdie.

J read/studied [in an outside class]:

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

For M, I continued to use the reader response cards that I had made (details here) and they've been working quite well.


Grammar:

We finished the first portion of Grammar Town, but I don't think we'll be continuing with it as it is simply too teacher-intensive for me right now. For the second quarter, we'll be resuming work from Voyages in English (Loyola Press).

Handwriting:

M continued to work on her French cursive daily using the Méthod Boscher books we'd purchased, she is doing beautifully. J worked on weekly handwriting assignments from the Time Travelers Early 19th Century CD.

We've managed six weeks of Susan Wise Bauer's Writing with Skill for Composition (we started this later in the quarter) and so far, so good.
Geography
We continued twice weekly work in the Maps, Charts and Graphs workbook, but the Geography and Culture task cards haven't gone over so well. M has been working on geography in an outside class, so I hadn't stressed about it too much, but now that the class has ended, I'll have to come up with a new plan.
Foreign Language
Progress has been slow in French I (So You Really Want To Learn French), mainly because we failed to do anything in the subject for several weeks. However, work has resumed, and M is doing extremely well. She has an excellent memory, which helps a lot, but has already shown a preference for translating written material to speaking the language.
J is doing poorly in Japanese I - he didn't want me to formally schedule anything in the language for him, and instead has been plugging away on his own when he feels like it (which isn't often now that he's discouraged by it).

This was our second week of school and we are not off to a good start. Last week, I managed three solid days of school work despite our fire on Labor Day, but this week my whole world fell apart. On Wednesday afternoon I received a call from the restoration company hired to repair the fire damage. They informed me that ALL of our property has been "contaminated" by the fire and said that everything in the house would have to be packed up and moved out. Some of the contaminated property could be professionally cleaned (if our insurance will cover it, which is still uncertain) while the rest had to be disposed of and/or replaced. He also told me that we would not be able to live in the house for several weeks while the work is being done and would need to find someplace else to stay. Further, if our property is not cleaned and/or disposed of, we would not be allowed to move it back into the house because we would re-contaminate it. Given that we just barely got settled into the house, after so many months of careful packing and planning, this is all quite a shock.

Religion

This week we read the first chapter in Faith and Life: Following Christ (again) and completed the corresponding Activity Book pages. The kids also read the first four chapters of Saint Dominic: Preacher of the Rosary and Founder of the Dominican Order by Mary Fabyan Windeatt and we worked through most of the Race for Heaven Study Guide questions and activities. Lastly, the kids read the first two chapters of Ignatius Schuster's Illustrated Bible History and answered the chapter questions.

History

Our week began with a field trip to the World Forestry Center Discovery Museum. In trying to fill a gap in our history reading next week, I had considered assigning a book that I'd seen on other middle school reading lists- The Trees by Conrad Richter. The forestry museum seemed like a good tie-in with the book. However, after pre-reading the book on Tuesday (after our museum visit), I decided that it should probably wait until high school, though it is an engrossing book that I enjoyed. That being said, the museum was a bit of a disappointment anyway and wasn't quite what I'd imagined.

To compensate for the museum, we took the beautiful Columbia River Highway to Multnomah Falls - the second highest year-round waterfall in the United States and a place where Lewis and Clark camped twice on their expedition (in November, 1805 and again in April, 1806). We read the applicable journal entries by Lewis and then the boys ran (literally - where do they find the energy?!) to the top of the falls, while M and I only managed to hike halfway.

Field trips aside, history was probably our slowest subject overall this week, but this is mainly because I've stretched my scheduling of our spine out ridiculously so that it will last us another two years. It's the kids' least favorite subject (but my favorite) and since I usually include tons of extras and get easily distracted by rabbit trails, I wanted to have time for everything without overwhelming them. Since this week fell apart, not a lot got done:

• One assignment in their American Republic Student Activity Manual ("The Journals of Lewis and Clark")
• Watched the second half of Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery on Netflix Instant
• Finished reading their biographies of Lewis and Clark. M read The Lewis and Clark Expedition by Carol A. Johmann, while J chose to switch to Lewis and Clark: Blazing a Trail West by John Burrows.
• Lessons 2 and part of 3 from the Time Travelers Early 19th Century CD: Westward Weekly newspaper and Growth of the Nation map (we skipped the field book project).
• Read 'Hasty Pudding' by Cornelia Meigs and 'Johnny Appleseed's Coat' by Mabel Leigh Hunt, both from The Children's Hour, Vol. 11: Along Blazed Trails (©1953).

Language Arts

This week, M finished up Peppermints in the Parlor by Barbara Brooks Wallace (her free reading selection), a book that I loved at her age and was recently reminded of after browsing through one of Don Killgallon's books. She enjoyed the book so much that she promptly started on the sequel, The Peril of Peppermints. J read through two Naruto [manga] books that he picked up at the library.

For Literature, M read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll for four days this week (30 minutes per day); we're loosely using the MCT literature guide for discussion. On Friday, she also began reading from The Other Alice: The Story of Alice Liddell and Alice in Wonderland, a nonfiction book by Christina Björk and Inga-Karin Eriksson. (For older students or adults, I highly recommend Alice I Have Been: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin!)

Despite all of my big plans for J's reading this year, I ended up placing him in a literature class at a local community learning center. I  knew the class would be challenging, but I really had no idea it'd be so challenging (especially for someone who only enjoys reading manga). His book list this year include A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Pride and Prejudice, and Slaughterhouse Five. This week's assignment was to read two chapters per day of A Tale of Two Cities. He was not understanding the book at all, so I broke down and bought him the Cliff Notes. Now, he reads a chapter in the book, followed by the Cliff Notes summary and seems to be doing just fine. We'll see how it goes.

For Grammar, we only managed 10 pages of Grammar Town and four chapters of  Grammar-Land (plus the corresponding worksheets); there was no poetry this week.

This was our first week using Susan Wise Bauer's Writing with Skill for Composition and it went surprisingly well. M had a major meltdown on Day 2 (she's such a detail person, summarizing is really hard for her), but pulled it together for the rest of the week and even did a great job on Day 4 which was a longer "challenge" assignment.

Art

This week the kids attended their first drawing class at the community learning center where I've enrolled them part-time (for 2 classes apiece). They both enjoyed it very much and are looking forward to next week.

We did not start a new lesson in art this week, but rather continued with the project we missed last week: a One-Line Abstract Drawing in the style of Paul Klee (this was from Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn F. Kohl and Kim Solga). We reviewed some of Klee's work before jumping into the project and ended up spending two days on it.

This was our first week back to school and what a week it was. On Monday, we were enjoying the Labor Day holiday when a grease fire broke out in the kitchen of our new house and spread to the dining room. Below are just a few photos of the damage; both rooms are a disaster with blackened cabinets, blistered floors and walls, melted light fixtures, etc. Further, my husband suffered deep second degree burns on his right hand and arm, and second degree burns on his left arm and face. We were told repeatedly that we were very lucky the fire and injuries weren't so much worse, but still, not a great way to start the week (to say the very least!).




Sadly, we had just purchased a set of eight gorgeous [vintage] Danish modern chairs that matched our dining room table and both the table and four of the chairs were burned. However, this afternoon I received a custom-made oilcloth tablecloth that I ordered from Modern June last month (thinking to protect the table if we did schoolwork there), so at least the top of the table can be concealed until we have it refinished. It is very cheery, isn't it? (The polka dotted oilcloth is just a decorative wrap.)


Tuesday was supposed to have been our first day of school, but since I was at the burn center with my husband, school was postponed until Wednesday. Thank goodness for Homeschool Skedtrack because juggling assignments was much easier than it would have been with my old system! Nevertheless, it sucks starting the school year off-schedule!

For our first day, we revisited the schultüte (school cone) tradition of past years; here's M with hers:


We kept things pretty simple this week because I didn't want to jump into a full schedule right away (and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't quite prepared!). Despite this, we still averaged 6 hours of school per day, which has me very fearful for next week. This is roughly what we'll be covering this year (click on the image to enlarge):


It's scheduled to average 7-8 hours per day (9 hours a day on the two days per week that they'll have outside classes) and that seems like too much, yet this week we only managed a fraction of the work and it took 6 hours?! Yikes! One thing I'll be doing differently next week is borrowing this genius timer idea from Satori Smiles; I've already utilized her clipboard idea and love that it completely eliminates lost schedules!


Language Arts

Grammar was largely parts of speech review (nouns, pronouns and articles). We read the first twenty-four pages of Michael Clay Thompson's Grammar Town as well as four chapters from Grammar-Land by M.L. Nesbitt. The kids completed Grammar Land worksheets for the chapters read.

For our poetry study, we read a number of poems by Eugene Field (who was born on September 2, 1850). The kids also completed a fun research page (see below; click on image for full-size) on Fields from The Lookies. The Lookies was an annual bulletin for children published by Field Enterprises from 1949 through the 1970s. It was designed to be used with World Book Encyclopedias.

Next week, we'll be adding literature, handwriting and composition to our language arts schedule.

Science

The kids read sections 1.1 (units of measurement) and 1.2 (the scientific method) from Chapter 1 of CPO's Focus on Life Science and completed the corresponding "Skill and Practice" worksheets. They also read Millions to Measure by David M. Schwartz and did some research on Francisco Redi and spontaneous generation.

Geography

The kids completed one lesson from Maps, Charts and Graphs, Level D (we're not using the books in order) and their first  Geography and Culture task card from Creek Edge Press. They also completed several geography notebook pages from the World Maps CD by Homeschool in the Woods. This week's task card was about maps and globes and assignments included filling out a black line world map, drawing a world map and learning various geography terms. While I love the task cards, the kids were less enthused. M, in particular, found them too open-ended and thus rather frustrating.


Art

We only managed one day of art this week, and not a very exciting day at that. Typically, art and geography will be on alternate days with art occurring three times per week.

We read about how to look at art and the elements of art: line, shape, form, space, value, color, and texture. We then read Lesson 1 (Line) from Scott Foresman Art (6); the kids completed a sketchbook journal exercise, experimenting with various types of lines using various drawing tools. Next, we viewed and discussed a number of contour drawings by Matisse, then the kids created their own contour drawings. Because I would not let them look at their papers while drawing, this proved a frustrating exercise for them.

Studio 1: Contour Drawing:


History

As usual, history was our busiest subject this week. Here's what we did:

• Read about Thomas Jefferson, the Barbary Pirates, and Lewis and Clark in Chapter 9 of The American Republic (BJU) and completed the corresponding Student Activity Manual pages.
• Completed Lesson 1 from the Time Travelers Early 19th Century CD. Our projects were a foldout book on the Barbary Pirates, a 19th century songbook, and a timeline.
• Watched Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery on Netflix Instant.
• Began reading The Lewis and Clark Expedition by Carol A. Johmann (not the book I'd originally planned, but necessary given our condensed week)
• Completed five pages in the Lewis and Clark Discoveries on the Trail [activity book].
• Each child read a roughly 100-page biography of Thomas Jefferson and created a notebook entry summarizing his life. In the end, these weren't quite the summaries I had envisioned since they each wrote four pages!

Critical Thinking

The kids completed 4 pages from Building Thinking Skills.

Next week, I hope to be adding religion, math and foreign language(s) into our schedule, in addition to handwriting, literature and composition. Wish me luck!

This week our first week back from spring break so work was kept much lighter than usual as we all struggled to get back into the old familiar routine of school.

Religion

We did not do any work out of Faith and Life: Following Christ this week, and honestly, now I'm questioning my decision to begin using it so late in the year. Since I really love the curriculum, I may just save it for next year. The kids were quite busy this week with first communion preparation at church, athough that is still nearly a month away. I've been working like mad at decluttering the house (my goal for Lent), and so far, so good, though there's still an awful lot to do!

History

I kept history as simple as possible this week. The kids continued studying the American Revolution with BJU's American Republic and watched 3 episodes per day of Liberty's Kids. I think they've actually learned more from the DVD's than the textbook, but the textbook stresses them out pretty badly!

They were a bit behind in world history, so I had them read 28 pages per day from Horrible Histories: The Gorgeous Georgians and The Vile Victorians. This was essentially the entire book on the Georgians. In addition, they had reading from The Usborne History of Britain. This weekend we'll be watching a DVD that just arrived from Amazon UK: At Home with the Georgians, though I suspect this will appeal to me far more than it appeals to them! A review of the 3-part series can be found here: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3.

Math

Math was as uneventful as ever. M's working on geometry and J finished up his unit on fractions. They're both pretty much done with their books, so I think I'm going to have them do Khan Academy math for the remainder of the year, maybe.

Language Arts

In Voyages in English grammar, the kids studied singular and plural possessive nouns, nouns showing joint and separate possession, appositives and appositive phrases. We did quite a bit of extra work on these since they both found them difficult. In writing, they worked on dictionary skills.

We did not learn any new terms from Figuratively Speaking this week. For literature, M continued reading The Doll People by Ann M. Martin and J continued reading Monkey: Folk Novel of China (a book that he insisted on). M is enjoying her book, while J is not.

Art

This week finally included some art since I've been busy planning art for next year (it will happen!). When the kids were little, we used to do art every day. At that time, I worked in the industry and trying out new products and coming up with projects was a part of my job. Both M and J miss those days, and really, so do I. So, my goal is to incorporate more art into our lives from here on out (although this week, it seemed to take over). :-)

Over spring break, we watched two excellent documentaries: Herb and Dorothy and The Art of the Steal, both of which provoked some great discussions. One of the things we learned from Herb and Dorothy was that you don't have to be wealthy to collect art. I guess that should be obvious, but I'd honestly never thought about it before. This prompted J and I to spend some time on Etsy looking at original art, and as a result, we purchased a sketch from Berkshires artist Thor Wickstrom (one of his paintings will be next) and an abstract floral painting from California artist Linda Monfort:


The art arrived this week and was absolutely fabulous in person...the painting, in particular, just screams spring, doesn't it?! Also, M and I have become addicted to playing Master Pieces: The Curator's Game on my iPad - it's a terrific way to learn to appreciate the details in art, as well as memorize famous paintings and their creators.

This week's primary art project was a Giuseppe Arcimboldo-inspired collage, borrowed from Do Art!. When I first found the project I fell in love with it, but couldn't quite fit into my plans for next year, so I decided to do it right away. It helped that I had stacks of garden catalogs that I needed to do something with, since I didn't want to pack them when we move this summer. In the end, however, we mostly used the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Catalog which had big glorious pictures.

We reviewed all of Arcimboldo's allegorical portraits (links below), discussed our favorites and learned what an allegory is. As the kids began work on their projects, they occasionally stopped to browse through Arcimboldo's gallery again for inspiration, this time using Art Authority on my iPad. We used a half-sheet of white posterboard for the head, mounted on a half-sheet of black posterboard, so the finished portraits were BIG!

To make the assignment more difficult, I decided that they should use only fruits, vegetables or flowers for their faces, rather than painting on eyes and a mouth. By the time the challenge of composing a face was resolved (this took 3 days), they were pretty much done with the project. The clothing was rather thrown together and it shows!. Overall though, I think they turned out pretty good and they were (initially, at least) a lot of fun.

Links:

• Giuseppe Arcimboldo: The Complete Works
• Slideshow of Arcimboldo's Work at YouTube
• Allegory of the Seasons and the Elements (Composite Heads) at Web Gallery of Art
• Composite and Reversible Heads at Web Gallery of Art

On Friday, we also attempted these ink creatures, though they weren't such a success. The kids enjoyed blowing the ink around far more than they enjoyed having to create something from their ink shapes.

This was, quite simply, the week that was too much. We took last week off so that I could schedule all of our new curricula, and it seems that I went a wee bit overboard. Despite having been at this for two years now, I appear to be incapable of finding that perfect happy medium - just the right balance of work. This week the kids spent an average of 7-8 hours per day on school work (solidly working) and still didn't get everything done. Looking over everything we did this past week, I'm honestly not even sure what was so time consuming. This weekend I'll be revisiting my master schedule to see how it might be adjusted, though the very thought makes me cringe because I had everything arranged so precisely.

My current plan is that we'll continue school through the end of May, break for the month of June (so that we can move to Oregon!), and resume work in July. Hopefully that's doable. In the upcoming months I've got to get our house ready to sell, declutter like crazy, and of course, pack. My husband has already been living in Oregon for some time, so will not be around to help, lucky him! Needless to say, when I made our recent curricula changes to such teacher-intensive programs, I was not considering all of this!

Religion

This week, we begin using Faith and Life: Following Christ from Ignatius Press and I really love it! It is exactly what I'd hoped to pull together on my own, but never found time to do.

I deliberated on whether or not to buy the Teacher's Manual, but am so glad I did. It's a massive book (truly), but is incredibly helpful for scheduling purposes and includes valuable supplemental materials.

• We had one lesson per day and one activity page from Faith and Life: Following Christ.
• The kids memorized the following catechism questions: CCC 1692, CCC 2055, CCC 2072, CCC 1855, 2072, in addition to the Ten Commandments.

In addition, the kids attended two faith formation classes at our parish this week; they continue with preparation for First Holy Communion.

World History

Recently I purchased, and fell utterly in love with, The Usborne History of Britain (preview here). Primarily because of this book, I decided that we needed to add world history back into our schedule.

• On Monday, we read about Louis XIV, the Sun King of France, in The Story of the World, Vol. 3 and completed the mapwork in the activity book. We also enjoyed browsing through this Versailles photo set on Flickr.
• On Tuesday, we watched "The Man in the Iron Mask," set during the reign of King Louis XIV, and based on the legend of The Man in the Iron Mask. 
• On Wednesday, we read about George I of England in Tony Robinson's Kings and Queens and in The Usborne History of Britain.
• My plans for the remainder of the week fell apart because we ran out of time.

• From BJU American Republic, the kids read Chapter 5 (one section per day over four days) about the French and Indian War and completed the corresponding pages from the Student Activity Manual. This kept them very busy! This was our first week using American Republic as our spine and it had poor M in tears a number of times, though J seemed to enjoy it very much.
• The kids watched 3+ episodes of Liberty's Kids per day.

While I am quite satisfied with the writing instruction found in Voyages in English, I will be adding significantly to our writing program in the weeks ahead. However, this is a matter of personal choice, not because Voyages is lacking in any way.

Spelling:

• For spelling, we completed four lessons plus a review lesson from Dictation Day-by-Day: A Modern Speller by Kate Van Wagenen. Misspelled words were written ten times each.

• On Monday, we reviewed the definitions of connotation and denotation from Figuratively Speaking and read about "The Ways a Poem Suggests" (from An Introduction to Poetry by X.J. Kennedy -- an amazing resource, by the way). We read and discussed "There is no frigate like a book" by Emily Dickinson and then completed this lesson about connotation and denotation in poetry.
• On Tuesday, we learned about hyperbole in poetry. We listened to and discussed "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout" by Shel Silverstein from Where the Sidewalk Ends (25th Anniversary Edition Book and CD) (loosely following this lesson plan), and also identified and discussed hyperbole in "The Dirtiest Man in the World," by Silverstein. The kids were then asked to write a poem utilizing hyperbole. They had so much fun with this assignment and wrote some exceedingly clever lines, but unfortunately never managed to finish a complete poem.  
• On Thursday, our focus was hyperbole in prose, and in tall tales specifically. We read a part of Lies and Other Tall Tales by Zora Neale Hurston and Joyce Carol Thomas, followed by Thunder Rose by Jerdine Nolen (the kids completed this Tall Tale Checklist for Thunder Rose). I loosely followed the lesson plan in Teaching Literary Elements with Picture Books by Susan Van Zile and Mary Napoli.
• On Friday, we read and discussed the poem "Yarns of the People" by Carl Sandburg and continued work on the poems started on Tuesday.  

Math

• The kids continued daily work on fractions in their Singapore Math books.

Personal Notes

• Last week, in a quest to learn more about Wallis Simpson, I began reading The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life by Charles Higham. A massive biography, I finally finished the book this week. While it was obviously exceedingly well-researched, I got bogged down by the sheer amount of detail in the book, though I did learn a great deal from it.
• This week I also read the short, sweet and rather sad, Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary (Persephone Book No. 53) by Ruby Ferguson, a "fairy tale for grown-ups." I'm haven't time for a proper review now, but Dove Grey Reader wrote very nicely about the book here. I accidentally ordered two copies, so if anyone would like my extra copy (free), just let me know in the comments! I've got a few other Persephone extras that I'll be giving away in upcoming weeks, so stay tuned. ;-)

Since I haven't done a weekly report in forever, I decided that I should force myself to write something this week. Overall, I'm feeling unusually dissatisfied, and have been since winter break. In particular, language arts (which I've written more about below) and history are distressing me - and distracting me from most everything else. I think I'm only upset about history because I'm working on a plan for next year which is utterly unique and rather brilliant and I'm impatient to get started on it! It's really hard to focus on this year when it seems positively dull in comparison!

Religion

• We've been shamefully lax about religion this past month, though the kids are still attending religious classes twice weekly at church. I hope to piece together a plan this weekend to get us back on track!

History

• The kids read A Colonial Town: Williamsburg by Bobbie Kalman.
• From Time Travelers: Colonial Life we read Lesson 14 about colonial village and city life and Lesson 21 about colonial crime and punishment.
• From Time Travelers: Colonial Life the kids completed a number of projects (including several from last week that never got finished). While I really love Time Travelers, the projects do take an awful lot of time. This forces us to spend week-upon-week studying the same period in history, which I think we're all sick of at this point.
• The kids read two chapters from Eating the Plates: A Pilgrim Book of Food and Manners by Lucille Recht Penner.
• Maddie finished reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare while Jaymon finished reading The Witchcraft of Salem Village by Shirley Jackson. On Friday we discussed the books.
• We watched the following DVDs: In Search of History: Salem Witch Trials and Three Sovereigns for Sarah.

Math and Science

• The kids read and narrated a chapter per day from Isaac Newton and Physics for Kids: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities. As usual, there wasn't enough time to actually complete any of the activities (nor was there, quite frankly, much interest). J has been doing his own science reading as well lately, studying the topics that interest him.
• The kids continued with daily lessons from their Singapore Math books. They're currently working on fractions and all is going blessedly well.

Language Arts

Since December, I've been feeling enormously discontented with several aspects of our entire language arts program. With D at public school again this year, and headed to an academically rigorous private high school next year, I've become increasingly aware of his weaknesses in language arts. There are deficiencies that I wish I had seen sooner, so that we could have worked on them during the brief time he was at home. This has made me especially mindful of M and J's education, since they remain home with me. What an enormous responsibility a child's education is! Silly as it may sound, I think the full weight of that has only just hit me.

In analyzing the potential "gaps" in their education, I found it helpful to first compile a list of goals. To do this, I consulted the state's curriculum content standards and the result was, quite frankly, overwhelming (here, for example, are the reading goals). Then, I decided to take a step back and listen to Susan Wise Bauer's excellent audio lectures (specifically those on writing and literary analysis). They're really such a joy to listen to, and very comforting, but at the same time, too simplistic I think.

So, I've been puzzling over all of this for awhile now and, while I still don't have a clear plan in place, I am getting closer. Nevertheless, I expect there will continue to be a slight amount of chaos until everything gets sorted out. With that in mind, here's what we did this week:

• Daily cursive copywork from the Bible and George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation, part of the Time Travelers: Colonial Life unit.
• In Voyages in English, the kids completed five lessons pertaining to limiting adjectives, demonstrative adjectives, possessive adjectives and the position of adjectives. Overall, I'm quite pleased with Voyages in English, but realized this week that while the books cover a lot of ground, there isn't nearly enough review (and thus, retention suffers). Beginning next week, I plan to resume daily or thrice-weekly review drills. We did this with Rod and Staff English and I found it fairly effective.
• For spelling we completed four lessons plus a review lesson from Dictation Day-by-Day by Kate Van Wagenen. Misspelled words were written ten times each. Though we haven't been using the book for long, I really like it.
• From Figuratively Speaking, the kids learned about denotation and connotation, with an emphasis on the shades of meaning a word can have. I stretched the lesson to last all week and supplemented with a few additional worksheets found online (here, here and here). 
• We took a week off from writing/composition work this week while I assess where we're at and where we need to be. Moving forward, I know that I will continue to use Methods and Material for Composition in Intermediate and Grammar Grades by Alhambra Deming. I'm also expecting Grammar for Middle School: A Sentence-Composing Approach by Don Killgallon to arrive today, and have a few other ideas that I'm working on.

Personal Notes

I feel as though I've been going in about a hundred different directions at once these days! I recently learned that the company I work for may be closing soon and am feeling quite conflicted about that. Since high school, I've never not worked, but at the same time, after working from home for seven years, I think I would find returning to a 9 to 5 office job very difficult! So, it's not likely that I will get another job if/when my present job ends. That would, of course, free up so much more time for me, which would be wonderful. At the same time, my income pays for all of our books and fun stuff. Needless to say, I've been spending every penny on books these days - in a panic for the future!

At present I'm trying to sort out all of our lesson issues (see above), pre-read M and J's books for next year to forumulate ideas (honestly, I think I've got at least two years of books so far!), read books on teaching reading and writing, and, in the time that's left, read for pleasure...Needless to say, I fall asleep every night with a book in hand and am, overall, utterly exhausted. I just finished Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden, which is quite simply the best novel I've read in a long time - I loved everything about it.