Weekly Review

When I attended that Mary Hood/Relaxed Homeschooling conference last weekend, one of the practical things I heard about was the subject of recordkeeping. I have to admit, I have a pretty loosey-goosey style of recordkeeping, aided and abetted by the fact that the state of Texas requires no accountability from us. Specifically, I tend to start a little system of keeping track of things, and then fall off the apple-cart after a few weeks. But, I'm going to try my best to take her advice to do three things: 1) do a weekly review every Friday; 2) keep a running booklist; and 3) do yearly 2-page summary based on the weekly reviews. I thought I'd use the blog to keep my weekly reviews, not to either try to look supersuccessful or appear pathetically deficient, but just mostly for my own record of learning. Maybe it'll help someone, someday, if for no other reason than to see how ordinary we are. :-) Oh, and if this subject bores you, stick with me (or scroll down) because I'm leaving a gem at the bottom.

So, this week. Let's see, shall I try to break it down by subject? I'll try that and if it's not too artificial, we'll stick with that method.

Bible: In our Egermeier's Story Bible, we're covering some of the kings of Israel and discussing why idolatry is such an offense to God.

History/Literature: We read Johnny Appleseed together, and A Light at Tern Rock. Read three poems from this lovely book. Also read a bit from Beautiful Dreamer: The Story of Leonardo Da Vinci. Listened, for the umpteenth time, to a few chapters of Story of the World, Volume II. Played Professor Noggin's Card Game: Medieval Times. Ian read several library books on medieval knights and castles, and did some very nice pencil drawings of knights on horseback, plus a couple battle scenes.

Math: Ian did four pages from his Miquon Math book, which he tolerates pretty well due to its variety. He also did a logic puzzle and the second grade weekly word problems from edhelper.com (a GREAT resource). We also discussed saving money and gave them some real-life math practice by having them calculate how much we owed them for extra chores. ;-)

Writing: Uh, not so much this week. Ian did copy out his Bible memory verse. That's about it.

Science: We fed our silkworms with mulberry leaves and checked the garden for the pipevine swallowtail caterpillars that were all over the place two weeks ago. That led to a discussion of where they all could have gone (eaten by predators? spun chrysalises somewhere else?) We also read the book Forces Make Things Move and played around with the ideas of friction and gravity and how they make things start/stop/slow down. Eliza learned about bats in Monday Co-op (Ian missed it due to illness). Ian made up his own recipe, thinking through the need for yeast, etc., and baked it, all on his own. (Conclusion: "it tastes like eating rotten peanuts through your ears.") The new issue of Ranger Rick arrived and was perused.

Phonics: Eliza read one of her Bob Books to me, and we played that leapin' lily pad game I mentioned in "Evening Snapshot."

Music/Art: Listened to Hallelujah Handel! from Classical Kids. Looked at our daily art calendar and noticed some details together. Ian did his first scrapbook page, about Caroline, and included a bit of journaling (hey, there's some writing).

Other: Spanish class on Thursday, Monday co-op for Eliza, sports, probably some other stuff I'm forgetting ... and Friday Co-op Demo Day, including some great displays of the kids' work, some hilarious performances, and a go-cart race. See below for the highlight of the morning!