AHL: Week 2

This week was a little easier. Less writing - which was good. She is doing well keeping up on the Taking the Old Testament Challenge readings and answers. We talked about at least noting what chapters the readings were from so I can tell which lesson she worked on. Some of the questions are tough, but it looks like she is at least making an attempt to answer. 

Rabbit said The New Answers Book repeats itself a lot. And some of the stuff she didn't really care about. For example, on the chapter about Noah's Ark, she really didn't care about the studies showing how stable the Ark was on the water. I think she wanted them to get to the point a little faster.

The Exploring World History readings and In Their Words readings have been fine. She seems to be comprehending what they are saying. Again, she is seeing a lot of repeat from the three different readings - between the Bible, The New Answers Book, and Exploring World History. But, she is getting things done.

This week also introduced the Unwrapping the Pharaohs. She wasn't thrilled with the details of mummification. 

This week I didn't have as much time to meet with her daily, so we ended up doing a weekly meeting. After that, I've decided that it would be best if she lightly checks off each thing each day in the lesson plans. She had missed a reading because she didn't. 

My challenge has been to keep up with The Old Testament Challenge readings. I'm caught up, but now I have to keep up with Rabbit.

We have done a couple of math lessons, and we've almost finished Apologia Physical Science. All that is left is the last two tests. Need to get those together so she can finish that before our next summer trip.

AHL: Week 1

Rabbit successfully completed Week 1 of AHL! 

She did a pretty decent job on her essay. Her thesis was "Ballet should be considered a sport." I gave her an A-. I had a friend help me evaluate her essay, and that was very helpful. For her next essay, she needs to work on making the attention getter stronger - perhaps quoting someone. It will be good to focus on one area at a time.

She has found The New Answers Book a tough read. She is getting it done, but it has taken her an hour to read some of the chapters.

The Exploring World History is going okay. Though, sometimes she is not sure she agrees with the answer key on their answers. She says she is not sure if she is not getting what the author is saying, or if she just has a different opinion or answer. 

We've met mostly daily to go over her answers and discuss things this week.

Ancient History and Literature (AHL): Week 1 Day 1

Well, Rabbit is a bit ambitious. We are enrolled in a homeschool co-op this fall for her Biology labs, so that is going to take about 2 hours out of our day once a week. Rabbit is starting the AHL part of her year now, trying to get about 30 days out of the way so she won't have to do AHL on those days.

The first day was pretty good. We went through the lesson plans and just worked through them together. It was shorter than 3 hours, so we filled in a lot of reading. Plus, she's been doing Logic this summer, too.

I did copy all the timeline pieces from the AHL packet onto Avery 8 x 11.5 label paper, and Rabbit has already started coloring some of them. I think it will look really nice doing it this way. It even has me thinking of making an accordion fold timeline for each of the boys to keep in their history notebook, and then copying the Creation to the Greeks timeline pieces onto the label paper so they can each have their own timeline. I would still put one on the wall using the pieces we colored and laminated from the first time through.

Oh, I forgot to mention, Rabbit is in All About Spelling Level 7. I am very excited about the content of it. It covers Latin and Greek roots (which we will also be covering in Creation to the Greeks this fall), and words that we have pulled in from Italian and Spanish. Plus, it has a system for the kids to keep adding words they need to work on as they go.

We didn't get to math, or Physical Science (we have the last module to finish), but I also started the boys on our summer-school light program. I think it may take the whole summer to figure how to juggle two programs, but that's fine. That is one of the reasons we do summer-school light.

ECC 2nd Edition: Done!

Well, I feel bad... I'm never good about keeping up the blog. We did finish, and I'd say it was a very successful year. And, we actually finished the curriculum on our last day of official school. That's the first time that happened!

Here are some random thoughts.

Rabbit did awesome on the final test. She knew every country we studied and a few extra. She also labeled oceans, some lakes, some rivers, and a few mountain ranges. The boys didn't do as well as she did. I would say they knew about half of the countries. That's pretty good, considering they only knew 3 or so countries at the beginning of the year.

Things I would do differently:

1. More crafts. I would definitely have done more. It was a tough year for me trying to figure out how to juggle Rabbit doing the 8th grade supplement and getting the boys done. But, I should have figured out how to work it out.
2. Read more book basket books as read alouds. Maybe just at bedtime or something, but I really think that would have enhanced it and made it more enjoyable for the boys.
3. Be more strict on starting at 8:30a.m. All too often it was 9:00 or later and made our days drag out.
4. Insist that Pooh do his math down here so I could make sure he was making progress. 
5. Have the boys do a country report, too, even as 4th graders. Maybe just a display board and a few sentences on each topic, but I should have had them do something.
6. Take more pictures of what we did.

I think Rabbit did a really good job on her country report on Andorra. She didn't make a display board, but she did a presentation of it at our homeschool group's last presentation day. 

I am a little sad. This is the last time we'll do Exploring Countries and Cultures. I actually sold my curriculum to a friend. Oh well, onward!