15 November 2012

Our Week Ahead ~ Starting 12/11/2012

Our Proposed Week Ahead – 12/11/2012

We have had our heads down and our working hats on - with only 2 weeks left of our history schedule to complete - the children and I are so focused on finishing. Yet I know if we push too hard we’ll fizzle out, so next week we’ll be having a lite week; just bible, math, grammar, spelling, and reading.

It looks like we will be left with lessons in RnS grammar - and AAS - for both children to work through after Christmas. That’s doable and easy enough to come back to ….. an uncompleted history schedule, this time round, is just not one I’m wanting to reface in the New Year.

I’ll detail how things look for us, for this week:

Family Read Aloud:

Complete: The Family Nobody Wanted – we’ve had some very interesting discussion while reading this book.

One topic that keeps coming up that the children can’t get their head around; the mom keeps going ahead with the process to adopt more children when the husband states emphatically that he definitely does NOT want to adopt any more.

It’s interesting to read the fathers change of heart after they are about to adopt their last 3 children.

We’ve discussed the author detailing others out spoken feelings of racial prejudice , and the sibling rivalry/jealousy that arose while the family worked towards integrating more children into the existing family structure.

Dn gets to choose which family time read aloud he wants to start next, they are all from SL Core F (the old one ;) ):
Torches of Joy
Shadow Spinner
A Long Walk to Water

He chose Torches of Joy.... Update: Dn then skipped right over this book & went straight to Shadow Spinner instead.
Shadow Spinner is a wonderful story - we keep begging dad to "read on"!

Bobs Readers:
Seabees of World War II
In Search of the Source

Bobs is listening to a lighter, diverse, collection of audio books while he does his afternoon crafting/modelling: The Golden Goblet and some Lamplighter audios.
He listened to the Three Musketeers (unabridged) right through twice – a very good book he tells me - the rest of our household is ready to be done with that story ;)

Daisy enjoyed The Seventeeth Swap so much, "After you get about ½ way through the book", that Bobs is going to read it too.
Daisy’s Readers:
The Seventeenth Swap (Core 4)
The Lion , The Witch, and The Wardrobe (reread)
A pile of picture books!

Audio: Daisy is currently listening to the Mysterious Island, again.

World History:
The 1980’s in the USSR SOTW4.
Library research.

New Zealand History:
How Parliament Works in New Zealand : Parliament & elections in NZ pgs 20-23, pgs 24-25
Illustrated History of New Zealand : pgs 86-89 (people in NZ)

Math:
Daisy: Lessons in LOF & Making Math Meaningful, & drill review using Math-it.
Bobs: Lessons in LOF & Khan Academy

Bobs L/As:
WWS: We are working at a slower, thorough, pace in this book and I’m very happy with the level of writing Bobs is producing.
I might write a post, sometime, about our journey with this writing tool.

RnS: completing 2 lessons a day in RnS 5

Daisy L/As:
WWE – We took a sideways step last week from WWE and Daisy will complete the few pages we made to with Gone-Away Lake.

Then back to WWE3 and week 8, which is a perfect language arts tie in while she reads The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

RnS:  Daisy is easily working through 2 lessons a day in Rns 3.

AAS:  We’re back to working at steady of pace with AAS. I stopped using AAS on a regular daily basis for Daisy, ha! Not a good move. She started to slide back into old habits … and employed some of her self made rules such as if in doubt try ‘e’ :-)
Her spelling foothold and foundation has been laid in solidly, so just reviewing the rules and reworking with the tiles was all that was necessary and we’re away again. I love the benefits AAS produces but some days all those bits that Daisy just *needs* to keep progressing in spelling requires a few rounds of hot coffee!

Science:
We’ve discussed, prepared and planted out a small garden plot.
Our next lot of fertilised chicken eggs have arrived so we’ll be back to hand raising peeps... once these eggs hatch. This is a favourite nature study we keep coming back to time & time again – we learn so much with every next batch of chicks we hatch via the incubator.

We’ve continued on with human anatomy inside other books (as well as a wide range of other science topics)….. we just seem to lose interest with Apologia. I just leave the book out and available as sip reading, which seems to sit better with us.

We had a ( partial) solar eclipse here on Wednesday 14 Nov so regular seat work was shuffled out and Dn took charge of the morning.
After we’d viewed, and photographed, the ongoing eclipse we sat and watched a very interesting documentary we'd borrowed from the library : The Sun & The Moon.
(Dn took the above picture with my small family-snap-shot-taking camera, with the eclipse viewing glasses which a neighbour kindly gave us, popped over the lense.)

The above counts as a pretty good science-y sort of week in our home.

Art:
A lesson with Mark Kistler.

Typing:
Daily practice!!!!

Music. Week 4 of 4 weeks:
Composer:  Prokofiev Unit 15.  Watch Peter & the Wolf on youtube.

Hymn: Great is Thy Faithfulness

2 comments:

reader19 said...

I love the photo of the chick eggs--and that you can raise chicks. I did that when I was a kid; and wish we could do that with my Dd but we can't where we live....I hope you can take pictures so we can watch a little!!!
The solar eclipse photo is also very amazing!!! I've come back to your blog all week to re-view those 2 photo's.
The Family No One Wanted---I looked that up on Amazon and it looks great. Where did you hear of it? The reviews were very outstanding. I very much enjoy your blog!!!!!

Chelle said...

Thanks for your sweet toned comment!

I will post pictures of our chicks as we go along .... once they start hatching there may be a photo flood :-D.

(pop back as often as you like ... the welcome mat is always out!)

The Family Nobody Wanted ... origianally I found the book in a second hand book shop in my teens and though it sounded like an interesting read - it's one of my favourite teen hood reads ;-)
It's now a family favourite!