what we're using

Heh. I mean curricular materials, of course.

Here we go.

Mathematics

The Storyteller has been doing an average of four pages in Math Mammoth 2A each day. We're playing catchup. He was ahead in math when he entered school. This is mostly material he knows, in fact, but I want to be sure he has a very solid grounding manipulating amounts in his head.

(This past week he devoured the Murderous Math book on probability. We play board games that feature dice.)


Science

So far he's been assembling a solar system model. We lost the instructions that came with the kit, so he's been forced to do all the research himself to determine the proper distances, sizes and colors.

Next, we'll probably take our nature journals to the museum and sketch up the NYS birds exhibit. Or the NYS prehistory exhibit. The others kids' school is right near the museum, so we're down there everyday anyway. I'll need to find some books to read about birds. Or prehistory. No, wait, I don't! I have The Handbook of Nature Study. Anna Comstock, will you be my wife?


Literature

I am reading aloud the Leon Garfield (of Shakespeare Stories) retelling of Antony and Cleopatra.


History

After we finish the Shakespeare, I will read aloud either Augustus Caesar's World by Genevieve Foster or The Ancient Roman World by Ronald Mellor and Marni McGee. I find that the Oxford, rather than giving a simple explanation, simplifies the subject, but the Foster is not as thorough and of course has no photos or source quotes. The Foster is clearly a conservative Christian text, while the Oxford is very much biased towards the left. Pagans be warned, the religion section of the Oxford is infuriating evolutionary theology crap, and Foster indulges in some preaching about the appropriateness of the year zero. I just don't know yet.


Latin

Everyday I read aloud in Latin a little bit from Lingua Latina. I pick out grammar concepts to explain, and I give him some translation exercises and some dialogue exercises that I mostly make up on the fly.

Before you think I'm super Latin literate, let me explain that I've got a library of Latin curricula on hand. Most afternoons this week I have had three or four books or binders spread around us as we've done this.


Greek

We're using the same willy nilly approach we've taken to Latin, only with a lot more writing. He's making Greek notebook entries daily, some copywork, some translation.

Independently, he's adopted Bertrand Russell's "Greek Exercises," a diary kept using Greek letters but English vocabulary.


Sketching

The boy is once again plugging away through The Drawing Textbook. It's great, but I'd rather find something that directly requires him to sketch from life. Any suggestions?


Memorization

He's working on a Carl Sandburg poem that he picked out from Living Memory. Independently, he's decided to memorize something from Calvin and Hobbes. I figure to allow him to pick out his own memory work from Living Memory.


Hebrew

He's still in "the blue book," Reishith Binah, from National Jewish Outreach Program. He reads a page a day.


Music

He's so much better at piano lately than he ever has been before. He's in the second Pianimals book now. (The site behind the link plays music.)



Composition

He's doing narrations and copywork from literature. Next week I'll add some from Latin. I am not sure he needs to do anything else just now, though I've thought about asking him to summarize a paragraph in a sentence.



Homeschooling one child is much faster than homeschooling four. It's no problem for us to get all our work done and then some everyday. It's also pleasant to do seatwork all day long. The Storyteller was always the child most eager to do formal lessons. Maybe that's why he and I are both finding it pleasant to do seatwork all day? Maybe we missed each other. Maybe the unpleasant part was keeping everyone on task without being able to keep my attention on everyone's lesson.

The week went smoothly. We got a lot done. If it keeps up like this, I will be one happy mama. If it gets worse, I will be a happy mama. If I dread the seatwork part of my day, I will be a happy mama.