Week In Review 16/17: Week 34

We wrapped up our 4th week of our 4th term this past week. I’ve been slowly writing up our WIR posts for previous weeks, but I’ve been horribly slow uploading photos & thus never end up posting anything. Thanks to each of you who asked how we were doing & told us you missed our posts. We actually considered closing up the blog, & for those who may be on the FB page will have noticed we closed that down. However, for now we’ll keep posting here, however sporadically as that may be.

It’s hard to imagine that we have 6 more weeks of our 2016/2017 year left & that our eldest will be moving into 10th. Where we live 10th is the end of the road for high school & then children move on to college. We’re choosing to follow the US educational standards for high school for a variety of reasons, the biggest being his choice in university at this stage. 

In order to keep with tradition we’re still considering a Leaver’s Dinner for him. Mr S think it would be a fun thing to put together, Morgan on the other hand is not quite so sure he's been to a few & isn't into the idea of dressing up much less a red carpet walk. Ha! I think he might have high expectations of what Mr S can pull off!

Our numbers will probably sound incredibly wonky as Jayde wrapped up Unit 10 in his level of HOD & Morgan wrapped up Week 32 in his Core. Ahh, the craziness of life here, especially when one student changes curriculum in the middle of a year. It’s been a great change for him & we’ll share in a seperate post about HOD in greater detail.

We’re still working through IEW’s SWI-B, not quite as quickly as I’d intended, but they are enjoying themselves & able to do the work independently which is exactly what we were after! They’ve both been able to apply the principles they’ve gained, thus far, in other writing assignments which is, again, exactly what we wanted! So, no complaints there.

Book 2 of Fix-It is a little different from Book 1 & there were some hiccups, where we need to pause & really focus on a few of the newer concepts. I love that Fix-It works in regular No New Concept weeks {ie Review} to allow for that. I did have one frustrated child because he wanted to mark everything in the sentences which isn’t the object in this particular book, but over all they are doing really well & the main goal was to keep their grammar skills fresh & touch base on anything they hadn’t quite learned yet which is exactly what Fix It has allowed us to do.

Morgan wrapped up Book 9 in HUS, leaving him with only 1 book left to go before he’s done. He’s moved at a great clip through this Core & he’s fully enjoyed all of his time with it. I’m excited for him to wrap it up & slip into his HOD programme, & am hopeful the learning curve won’t be too great for him, but we’ll see how it goes.

Jayden has officially reached the Middle Ages in Resurrection to Reformation & he’s totally in love with the time period. Not a huge surprise at all. We wrapped up The Illustrated Book Of Knights last week & jumped right into The Morning Start Of The Reformation. His notebooking pages all follow the same pattern so it’s reasonably predictable for him to know what to expect each week. However, a couple of weeks ago he got really excited about Draw & Write Through History in which means some days he also has a sketch to add to his notebook. We also wrapped up Much Ado About Nothing in his Shakespeare this week. 

Morgan wrapped up Module 14 in his Physical Science book, only 2 more modules to go before he wraps that one up for good. I always think of it as such an accomplishment to get through those books as they aren’t exactly light now, are they. He’s still using VHSG to take the quizzes & practice quizzes. We’ve had a few minor issues with that, but VHSG has been grateful for the corrections he’s pointed out to them. His labs have become pretty intense too, we’ve had him practice doing them a few different ways with this book so that he’s prepared for whatever may be ahead for him.

Jayden is still working through the first science book with Res to Rev, Apologia Astronomy. I’m not a huge fan of Fullbrights books because we don’t agree with the YE philosophy & I’m not particularly keen on the heavy bush these books have. However, we have found it quite simple to skip those small portions & still enjoy the book. He only has a couple of chapters left before he moves on to the biographies & other earth science books included. He’s pretty excited that he’s nearly finished the book, not because he hasn't enjoyed it but because it’s just a big accomplishment.

Both boys are still moving along with math at a decent clip. Morgan works independently on his math & Mr S corrects if in the evening. Their math lessons on the weekend can last a short time or a long time depending on how incredibly nuts they go with things. Jayden still works with me on his math, for now, he’ll “level up” next book, or so the family pattern goes..

We dropped DuoLingo for French & returned to Rosetta Stone. It’s a bit of a boring story, but the reality is that DuoLingo went to a very video game based idea in which one couldn’t even finish a lesson due to running out of “life” or “coins” & was constantly giving us errors & asking for money ranging in price from $3 - $15 USD which was absurd. So we pulled our RS French back off the shelf, we’ve had issues with the speaking aspect of it before so I’m a little concerned about that aspect, but after getting use to the new method Morgan’s just kept charging along.

He’s been corresponding with a few native French speakers online to practice his skills & has done really well with it. Enough so that one asked if he was also French & was impressed to learn that Morgan was “just learning..” It really boosted his confidence, & why not!

We wrapped up our previous read aloud, Rush Revere & The American Revolution & haven’t picked anything else up to read yet. We have a few more books I'd like to read this {calendar} year, but we’ll see what happens. We also wrapped up our current poetry book, & likely won’t start a new one until September. I’m a bit of a twiddle about what to pick at this point, so we’ll see what unfolds.

Our local group has been on holidays for the past couple of weeks, so no social meet ups there or hockey either. We’ve enjoyed a couple of low key weeks in that aspect. These winter days can be cold & dark at times, so its’ nice to have a few low key ones to rug up & sty close to home with. We’re officially past the halfway mark with winter so we’re counting down to lighter mornings.

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Week In Review 16/17: Week 34