Our First Week

I'm quite happy with our first week of school. My emphasis was on group read-aloud stuff starting first thing in the day (it seems, at the moment at least, that when I start with the "essentials" people are cranky and less cooperative AND by the time we get to read-alouds we're all frazzled).

We've been starting each day with the beautiful Litany that Alice put together in the July isue of mater et magistra magazine. Beautiful!

Here's what we worked on together this week:

Our Island Story by H.E. Marshall - This is a fascinating but hefty children's history of England. It's long (650 pages) but a fairly quick ready and the kids are liking it. We're about 150 pages in already. There's quite a bit of violence (I did a little editing) and some traces of bias (Protestant in flavor) that I expect to grow as we hit the Reformation Era.

Last night we watched a Netflix film that was appropriate connected with our readings. Ancient Mysteries: Lost Castles of England (A&E) covered wooden castles (Motte and Bailey Castles) built around the time of the Norman Invasion. (I would recommend a parental preview as there were some brief hints of a gruesome piece of English history - though it's pretty understated here).

Eucharistic Miracles by Joan Carroll Cruz I read this aloud to Ria years ago (and she loved it) so it's nice to be getting back to it with most of the kids. We read three or four stories from it this week.

String, Straightedge and Shadow: The Story of Geometry by Julia Diggins I read about half of this to Ria and Gus a few years back and we decided to start it over again.

The Man Who Counted The kids REALLY love this book which seems to be working best as an evening read-aloud with John writing down and working through the problems with everyone.

Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Our looking southward because of the hurricane news caused me to pull out this poem, which went over really well a few years ago as a read-aloud.

The 10 Things All Future Mathematicians and Scientists Must Know (But are Rarely Taught) by Edward Zaccaro This is a fun book with some great stories and ideas for thinking about it. I really like it even though there are a few little things I don't like. We finished most of Chapter 1 (out of ten chapters) this week.

Bookwork:

Map Skills: It seems that every few years we go through a streak of working steadily on the Continental Press Map Skills series. They've been neglected for a few years now and Gus, Terri and Bernie each had fairly easy levels that they had worked partway through. Now they've been cruising through them during the read-alouds and I ordered the next few levels for each of them from Catholic Heritage Curricula (I should mention that I placed a CHC order last Tuesday with normal shipping and it arrived on Thursday!).

Math: Ria's still working on Jacob's Algebra (we made a switch partway through, so she's not quite where she'd like to be). With the younger ones, I'm empasizing the group Math stuff, but they're filling in with some simple workbooks at the moment. Gus, who finished Life of Fred Fractions over the summer, will be starting the Decimal book soon.

Language Arts: Gus, Terri, Bernie, Kate and Frank all have some CHC workbooks in areas such as spelling, grammar and handwriting (varies according to age level).

Religion: The Faith and Life Series (along with the usual supplements - Saint stories, Friendly Defenders, DVDs like the Footprints of God series, etc.) is still working well for us. Ria and Gus are doing our catechism study which starts next week and will focus on Bible Study and understanding the Reformation. I expect to assign Ria some side-reading too as she doesn't have a formal textbook this year.

Lit: Lots of read-alouds and audio books. The teen lit group will be doing Shakespeare this year. Another group they belong to read a book and watch a related movie each month. This month's book is A Tale of Two Cities. Just these two groups tend to keep us pretty hopping in the lit department.

Latin: Ria's working on Henle. She's motivated to the take the level III National Latin Exam this year as well as participating in the state Latin Convention. I'm working on Getting Started in Latin with everyone as a group (super, super easy so far and extremely short lessons), but will get Gus started on Henle a little later in the year.

The Stair Game: My kids' all-time favorite school activity is the stair game (not always fun for the adults - it's tough keeping up questions on six different levels with wiggly kids that you're hoping won't FALL down the stairs!). I have a binder filled with those laminated subject study guides you can find in stores this time of year. We practice basic facts of all sorts and they tend to pick up tidbits from each other. I just ordered this book thinking it would be a convenient outlet for the sorts of tidbits we cover in our game.

Science: Ria and Gus are still finishing up a Geology series from the Teaching Company (that we started half-way through last year) before we jump into Physics. Unfortunately they didn't get to it at all this week. We are also planning on getting back to the 100 Species challenge which we started working on in the late summer (the purpose of which is to learn to identify 100 different plant species in your neighborhood).

Various kiddos are taking outside-the-home classes for gym, art, drafting, music and drama. In addition, Ria just started her first job. Should be an exciting year!