Weekly Report

I haven’t done “weekly” report since January!!

History – Our first week of doing SOTW3 together was GREAT! We really liked going learning about Captain Cook because 1. He explored locally. 2. We read about Australia and made another pavlova which was really good. 3. We got to read a lot of books. There we’re probably some other reasons but those are the most obvious. We’ll be finishing up on Captain Cook today and on Monday we’ll be doing the French Revolution, there are mixed feelings about this. We’re getting a bit tired of revolutions because we just spent two weeks on the American Revolution but we also know people who live in France and we’re asking them what they think about the revolution which will be interesting.

Science – Thoughts on science are whizzing through my brain faster than I can process them! Trivium Academy has been such a blessing because of their Science by Seasons plans which I’ve adapted for us and because there’s a lot of science planning going on there too. Right now we’re doing Green Hour (yes, we’re still doing them even though I haven’t been posting) and science projects for the upcoming science fair. By Monday I want everyone to have decided what they’re doing. We were doing chemistry and physics but they’ve been dropped except for informal reading which the kids do during free time.

Art and music appreciation – We’ve gotten back into them after a two month break. We studied Mozart and Rembrandt this week and will continue for a week or two. After that we’ll do Van Gogh and Beethoven, then Monet and Tchaikovsky (?) if we need to do some more I’ll think about that later. We’re really enjoying both our artist and musician, we do Rembrandt colouring pages while listening to Mozart. There was great disappointment over the fact that we couldn’t find any Mozart music in our violin/piano books.

Logic – We’ve stopped doing Fallacy Detective this year. I LOVE that book, love, love, LOVE it. But for now I feel that we would be more productive spending our time elsewhere. I have put our logic/critical thinking books and games in a prominent place so that if interested DC can take a look at them. When I’m not thinking about science I’m thinking logic. Next year Chelsea begins the “logic years” and I have every intention of her beginning a logic/critical thinking curriculum. David and Mariah will do Fallacy Detective and I know that Chelsea could too. She has a mathematical/logical brain and would be mentally ready for FD, but I’m not sure about emotionally. What really worries me is abortion, which seems to be a major topic FD. It would bring Chelsea to tears, it brings me to tears too but I’m not sure there is any way that she’d understand or want to understand. I’ve looked at other things, but FD still seems to be the best fit. I’m going to have to think and post about this.

I’m trying to organize all our books on Shelfari, now easy task when you have over 2,000! I haven’t done any in days, I think I’ll try for 25 a day and when I get more into it I’ll try for more. The hardest part is choosing where to start, I settled on first grade biology and I’m still there. :D I also have to buy our science books and there seem to be so few on biologists, ancient scientists and hibernation. I’m sure that as I buy and catalogue some more I’ll find even more topics that I can’t find books on. *Sigh*