End of January

Tomorrow is the first day of February and I'm feeling the need to take stock for some reason--maybe because I haven't been keeping a very detailed record here of what we've been up to. To make it easy on myself, I'll go through the "subjects" and try to explain where we are.

Math

Jonathan is more than half-way through his chosen course of study (Saxon), and with three lessons per week (down from five) he's on track to be finished by the first of June. He doesn't love math, but when I suggest we can it, he's horrified by the idea. We're working on multiplication, which he picks up well (he's got a great memory for facts), temperature (F and C) standard and nonstandard measurement, geometry, written problems, graphing, and money, among other things. He does love the supplemental math books (Anno books and others that I pull from the library) and pours over them for pleasure. He's also getting alot of mileage out of those Cyberchase programs on PBS and the Jumpstart (and other computer) programs.

Benjamen, too, is more than half-way through his Saxon math, and with three lessons per week will be done in early May, I think. He seems to enjoy math more than his brother does, and is proud of his progress. He is doing single-digit addition and subtraction, calendar work, graphing, measuring, money, simple geometry, and math sentences, among other things. He loves the videos and videogames, as well.

Reading

Jonathan continues to devour literature. I haven't been keeping a list of his reading this year, but I would say that he's reading with the same interest and at the same pace as in the past. He's currently reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, and enjoying them thoroughly. Last year he was reading Encyclopedia Brown, so that primed him for the Holmes series, I think. He also reads his supplementary history and science books with pleasure, enjoying the stories and myths moreso than what he calls "fact books". He loves the Eyewitness books, though, so go figure. He does enjoy an interesting and well-written biography, but so few of them are well written.

Benjamen is a full-fledged reader, now. We're almost done (lesson 86, I think?) with 100 Easy Lessons (which we have been doing whenever we feel the urge), and I question whether we really need to finish, but he enjoys the stories and is very proud of himself after each lesson. We read something history- or science-related every day, in addition to other stories and a story or two before bed. We're working our way through the Little House books at night and are reading On the Banks of Plum Creek, at the moment. Their Papa reads them other books of their choice before bed, too.

Writing

Jonathan's only writing practice is in other lessons throughout the day. His knowledge of grammar and the mechanics of writing exceed my own in some ways, and I don't see any need for creating assignments for him when he grasps so much intuitively. He writes books and stories, writes dialogue for his comics, and writes in his blog. We practice cursive when he shows interest, and he can copy all of his letters beautifully, though he doesn't show very much interest in mastering them or using them, at the moment.

Benjamen has writing practice attached to his reading lessons, grammar lessons, spelling, and even his math. We don't do anything extra, other than the writing that comes up in our daily life (writing letters to Gramma, labeling drawings, writing notes to his brothers and parents, etc.). I think his handwriting is beautiful, and he's very proud of it, himself.

Grammar

Jonathan doesn't really need lessons in grammar. I think he could teach a grammar course at the high school level. He's finished grammar lessons many grades ahead of his age and reads my college grammar texts (The Deluxe Transitive Vampire is a favorite) for fun. Still, we do pointed lessons whenever he asks, and those are a favorite; I think because they are so easy for him, and he always says at the end of the lesson, "I'm really good at grammar." He seems to have intuited most of the rules from his daily reading, and amazes me with the depth and breadth of his knowledge. I'm trying to explain to him that correcting the grammar of our acquaintances is considered rude, but he doesn't quite get it. He thinks he's being helpful. The whole time my mother was here, he kept asking her why she referred to herself in the third person and why she used double negatives, etc. She took it well, but not many people do.

Benjamen and I do fun grammar most days. He picks up much of it, but some of it goes over his head. He's only just started reading in the last year or so, and much of what escapes him will come with more exposure to reading, I think. In some ways, I think the lessons are somewhat pointless, but he enjoys them and so we continue. The mostly consist of talking, reading stories together, discussing different concepts contained in the reading, writing out some sentences he makes up which illustrate the lesson or him copying a sentence I write, that kind of thing.

Spelling

Jonathan is several grades ahead of his age in spelling lessons and rarely has any trouble spelling the weekly list of words before he's studied them. If he spells them without problem on the first day (Monday) he does lessons or doesn't do them, as he wishes, throughout the week. If he has a problem spelling words on the first day before having looked them over, he works through an activity each day and is spelling them easily by week's end. I think this is the last spelling book I'll buy for him as they seem to be a waste of time and money. I much prefer keeping a running list of words he misspells in his daily writings and working from there.

Benjamen has taken his first stabs at spelling this year and while he, naturally, didn't know how to spell much of anything beyond cat and dog in August, he's really caught on quickly and can spell many of the spelling words on the first day without having looked them over. I'm impressed with how far he's come and how quickly. He seems to have an affiinity for spelling, like his brother.

Latin

We're getting into serious Latin territory with conjugations and declensions and translating sentences. Jonathan is doing well with it, and his interest comes and goes with the level of difficulty he's facing. He generally shrinks from a challenge only to come back to it in his own time. He knows so much, though, and his recall is amazing. I'm honored to help him in the little ways that I can.

Benjamen shows a little bit of interest in what we're doing, and I include him as he shows interest. I don't really know how much he has absorbed, but he seems to be maintaining the same low-level interest for the last many months. Mostly I think he likes the way it sounds to hear us going through our paradigms.

History

We're moving through late Renaissance/early Modern era history, at the moment. We're currently investigating the attack by the Ottoman Turks on Vienna (a battle which started on September 11th, by the way). We generally set aside time for history on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. On Mondays we read the story and find the regions on the world map. We talk about what we've read and color illustrations relating to the chapter. On Wednesdays we read supplementary books from the library and discuss them. On Fridays we do more reading and do activities relating to the reading. This week we made Turkish Delight, for example, and in researching it, found that it's one of the oldest confections in the world. We also researched the origin of the name and found that Turkish Delight is a pretty faithful translation of the its Turkish name, lokum, from rahat-al hulkum, which means a piece of contentment.


We all do history together, and I make adjustments for the little boys, reading stories to them, while Jonathan reads on his own, printing out coloring pages for them to do after we look at maps together, and putting more focus on the fun activities than the historic details.

Science

Jonathan has been plowing through his chemistry experiments. We've started our 2nd book of chemistry experiments, which include an experiment that demonstrates a concept, vocabulary words and their definitions, and an explanation of the principles at work. The experiments use everyday household items, are usually quick and easy, and they demonstrate pretty nifty concepts. He's enjoying it immensely and has been using supplemental experiment books to explore on his own. Yesterday I found him stacking sugar cubes on top of a puddle of food coloring in a little platter in the kitchen, watching the dye travel up the cubes as the bottom cube dissintegrated and the whole tower toppled.

Benjamen and I did a bit of zoology throughout this past year, and I got to watch his love of animals grow. We started with worms and moved all the way through to higher mammals. We would start with a science text, watch movies about the different critters, read supplemental books, and talk all about them. We're "supposed" to be doing anatomy since Christmas, but we've extended our zoological studies and will move on when his enthusiasm for all things mammalian wanes. I think our investigations may have been behind his determination to obtain another cat around Christmastime. He enlisted his brothers' help in saving up and combining their allowances until they had enough to purchase a kitten, and they also scooped the litter boxes for our own two cats every day for months to prove that they would care for a new cat properly. Her name is O'Reilly:




Music

Jonathan continues to study composers fromt he periods/countries that we investigate historically. He dabbles with our musical instruments but hasn't show enthusiasm for any instrument in particular.

Benajmen, on the other hand, loves every instrument he picks up and asked for a guitar for his last birthday. We've also started working through an Usborne piano course book together, and he looks forward to it more than anything else, I think.

Art

The boys direct their own artistic pursuits every day and I try to manage the paper consumption and storage as best I can. We have watercolors and colored pencils and markers and crayons, all out for their consumption and they move through them regularly. We also do some more formal lessons when they ask for them, and Jonathan is reading through biographies of major artists. We also rent movies from the library on the artists' lives and the boys enjoy them.

Social Studies

The only formal way that I approach social studies is to borrow books from the library a few weeks before every holiday and make a point of including them in reading time. We talk about holidays and other social customs in the course of living our lives, discuss the different people we meet, cover geography and other societies in the course of our history, and generally cover most of the aspects of social studies informally.