Wrapping Up Week 24 (2014-15)

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Deanna

Last week we finished our 2nd term (of three) for school this year, which felt really good! Along with that came a milestone I’ve been eagerly awaiting. Ian is a good reader, but he’s never really gotten into it. He loves books if he’s being read to, but he just couldn’t be convinced that they were equally enjoyable to read himself. Then this week when we were at the library, he grabbed a Geronimo Stilton book as we were walking out, and for the rest of the day, he had his nose glued to that book. At home, in the car, in bed… I think he spent about 4 hours total, finishing up that night as Daddy went in to turn out his lights when we went to bed. That’s how I spent most of my childhood, and I’ve seen my nieces develop a similar love and wondered if Ian would ever get there. So this mama was celebrating at the sight!

Bible/Circle Time

Our morning Bible videos have become something all the kids look forward to, and I love how familiar they’re becoming with the stories of Jesus. Ian continued to create pages to go along with the two chapters we read from Little Pilgrim’s Progress each day.

Math

We made some major in changes in math this week! Last week I shared about how I was thinking of letting Ian take a break from Mathematics Enhancement Programme once we finished Year 2 so Elijah could catch up and I could teach them together. After praying about it more, however, I felt that we shouldn’t even wait to finish out this year. It’s not that things seem too hard, but I felt like we should just stop where we were.

Instead, Ian is doing all of his work on the computer using various programs we have subscriptions to thanks to reviews I’ve done in the last year. We still have a little time left on CTC Math, and I’m using that as his main lesson source since it systematically works through the curriculum without any distracting game options. Ian really enjoys it and has been completing multiple lessons each day all on his own initiative. I’m hoping we can finish the 1st grade curriculum before our subscription expires in March.

$CTC Math$

A couple days I had him do some activities on Mathletics, but since he really enjoys all the “extras” on that site I prefer to save it for a reward. (He earns time on Mathletics by scoring well on his xtramath.org flashcard work.) He’s also been enjoying a trial of GPALOVEMATH. We’re about to start officially reviewing this program, so it will probably become his primary math curriculum in the weeks to come.

Ian is LOVING this change. He’s thrilled to have time to work on the computer, and it’s no longer a struggle to get through math each day. I do want to go back to MEP eventually (at least that’s my plan at this point), but I’m hoping that this break will help Ian finish building a really solid math foundation.

Literature

Ian is continuing to love the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. This week we read the chapter about the first letter, and he was cracking up at all the confusion. He’s also really improving at narrating things back to me, particularly the Aesop’s fables. I’m glad he’s enjoying the literature selections from Ambleside Online, Year 1 so much.

History Cycle

We finished Our Little Roman Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles. It wasn’t my favorite book in the series, but maybe it was just because the Roman culture didn’t seem quite so distinct as that of Athens and Sparta. We continued learning about Rome by reading about Roman builders and gladiators in Story of the World, Vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer, and we read the chapters about Julius Caesar and Augustus in A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer.

Then for fun, we started reading See You Later, Gladiator (from the Time Warp Trio series) by Jon Scieszka. It’s a great one for Ian and I to take turns reading to each other.

Science

With the end of the term, we finished our second book in God’s Design for Life, getting through the last few lessons The Human Body. There were several great videos we watched about the immune system:

Ian was an expert by the time we finished all of that! We also watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Genes, which both boys found fascinating. Elijah was rather indignant that he’d never heard about genes before. (He loves going through See Inside Your Body, and he couldn’t believe it didn’t include a section on genetics.)

As a little extra, we’ve been watching some caterpillars go through metamorphosis, and this was a big week. On Monday most had already entered the chrysalis stage, though we had one late bloomer who was still crawling around. By Friday we had several butterflies! We’ve been wanting to get caterpillars for years so we could watch this whole process up close, so we were excited to get a butterfly habitat from Grandma for Christmas!