Second Week of School

This week of school seemed a little more loose and I didn't keep records as well as I'm still working out the details. I have learned over time that planning page-by-page what I'd like to get done months ahead of time isn't a good fit for us. Instead, I focus on recording what we've accomplished. Still fine-tuning this, though.

This week I purchased a teacher's planning book. The column headers are marked with the days of the week, while the side bar (intended for individual subjects) have a section for each child plus one for "group" learning. I think this will work well (and I know that it's motivating for some of my children to get to tell me what they've accomplished each day and have me write it down) but we have an incomplete record for the first two weeks. 'Nuf said.

Group:

Latin - Getting Started in Latin

History - read about 100 pages of Our Island Story
watched related movies: Battlefield Britain: the Battle of Hastings (only the oldest two watched this), Secrets of Lost Empires: Medieval Siege (parental supervision suggested)

Math - big stair game (youngest five children) of multiplication tables (with some addition thrown in for Frank). Even Kate was able to do the multiplication tables as everyone knows the nines skip-counting song really well from the Math-U-See tape as that's a particular favorite.
-The Man Who Counted - worked through several chapters with Daddy over two evenings
-Ten Things Every Mathematician and Scientist Should Know... - worked through word problems from the first chapter with Daddy
-Side-project - Gus, Terri and Bernie helped Ria considerably in her house measurement and drafting project for an outside class. This took a lot of patience as there was a lot of trail and error!
-Roman Numerals - Gus, Terri and Bernie each did two worksheets on Roman numerals and Ria proved that they were still fresh in her head as well (by presenting me with a list of significant dates in history, written out in Roman numerals).

Literature - we did a read-aloud of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (in its entirety) with several other families. Only my oldest two sat through the entire thing, but the others enjoyed bits and pieces. We've gotten sidetracked from Evangeline, but I hope to get back to it soon.

Religion - Eucharistic Miracles and Saint of the Day.

Misc.: gym class, watched Sense and Sensibility, attended St. Therese Missionaries meeting (oldest two). Watched How the Towers Fell on 9/11.

Individual:

Ria -

Worked on art and architecture classes and studied Algebra and Latin and worked on her PSAT book. She prepared for (including fillling out a lit evaluation sheet) and attended a Junior/Senior lit class on The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton. Piano.

Gus -

Listened to several discs of A Tale of Two Cities. Worked on lots of his Map Skills book and some of Life of Fred decimals. Studied geography cards and worked on art.

Terri -

Math, Map Skills, Cursive, Religion and a little from the Spanish number book.

The younger three did mostly the group work, but also lots of artwork and workbook stuff. Frank particularly loved the new "My First Spanish Number Book."