Wrapping Up Week 14 (2014-15)

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Deanna

As I look back at this week I realize that what we didn’t do is almost as significant to me as what we did do, so I’m reflecting a little on some of the adjustments I’m going to be making to our curriculum/schedule.

Bible

This week I tried to get back into Bible Road Trip: Year Three (we’re on Mark), but I found myself dragging my feet and had to take a look at what was going on. I decided that it’s just not a great fit for us right now. There is so much that I love about this curriculum, but I think we’ll get a lot more out of it in a few years. We’ve been been trying the Lower Grammar lessons, but they’re still just a bit too advanced for Ian, and I’d rather use the preschool/Kindergarten level as part of a multi-age family Bible program than a stand alone curriculum.

I have a couple ideas for what we’ll do for our morning Bible times, but things may be hit and miss for a while, especially with the holidays coming up. We’re still going through Old Story New by Marty Machowski as a family in the evenings (this week we were on Week 7, which talks about the wedding feast at Cana and Jesus turning water into wine), so I’m trying not to feel like I’m neglecting anyone’s spiritual education too much.

(We also set aside Prudence and the Millers when vacation, sickness, and baby woes disrupted our schedule. We’re pretty close to the end, so I want to get back to that as well.)

Math

We had a field trip on Monday, but I really didn’t want to get behind in math, so we plowed through lessons 51-55 (Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Year 2) and just didn’t do any sort of extras. Ian seems to be catching on a little more, though he still gets confused sometimes when we’re adding double digit numbers. I’m not worried, however. He’s really close to getting it, and I think MEP’s spiral approach will do exactly what it’s designed to do. In a few months, I’m confident he will have a solid, lasting understanding of everything we’re working on now.

Literature/Ambleside Online

We finally got completely caught up with our reading from Ambleside Online, Year 1. (Yay!) When we read in Our Island Story about Hengist and Horst cutting a leather thong so long it encircled a large piece of land, Ian enjoyed cutting a paper in a spiral and seeing how the thinner we made the strip, the longer it ended up being.

History Cycle

We didn’t do anything in our history cycle besides reading chapters 9-12 in Our Little Athenian Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.

Science

Ever since he was very small, Ian has had a fascination with all things related to the human body, so I’ve been looking forward to the science I scheduled for this term. This week we started The Human Body, our second of the three books in God’s Design for Life.

We read through lessons 1-3 and did a couple of the suggested activities for Ian’s notebook. For lesson 1 Ian drew a self-portrait as he looked at his face in the mirror. I love the details he noticed (like freckles, various parts of his eyes, and his uvula). We read Psalm 138:13-18, and I pray that as we study the body this term, he will gain a new understanding that he really is “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The activity for Lesson 2 involved creating a “Body Wheel” that describes the various systems of the body. Most of the terms don’t mean much to Ian yet, but we read through all the descriptions just to start building familiarity.

For lesson 3 on cells, I decided to skip the suggested worksheet. Instead Ian enjoyed examining several new slides on our microscope. We also watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Cells and went through pages 16-17 in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book. Ian really likes sticker books and carefully put all the stickers in the correct places after I had read the pages to him.

Extras

The highlight of our week was definitely our field trip to Legoland on Monday. In addition to having fun on the rides and admiring the amazing Lego brick creations throughout the park, both boys really enjoyed the class we attended (Simple Machines 1). They worked through a book building specific models and then had a chance to use what they learned to create their own “ride.” I was impressed by the class and really glad we took the time to attend in the midst of a day of fun.