Work Plans for the Week of November 4, 2013

MONDAY: We possibly over-extended ourselves today, since I assigned our usual amount of work even though we're not just volunteering, but sending Will to aerial silks and spending a late evening at the library, to boot. At least Monday is not normally too project-focused; neither Latin nor math (I'm really liking Communicating Mathematics with Pattern Blocks for building logic skills and mathematical thinking, so we'll be spending several Mondays with this book) nor reading (Syd's got a computer game to try for reading enrichment, and Will knows that she's welcome to read her book and write her book report over the course of a few days) nor music ("Star-Spangled Banner" for voice for one, and "It's Raining, It's Pouring" for recorder for the other) really *need* to take a long time, although you shouldn't underestimate the insanely long amount of time that my kids can drag work out into. Seriously, Syd's been doing her math for the entire time that I've been writing this post, and yes, she's technically working, but she's also drawing pictures and and eating Halloween candy and chatting her head off about everything under the sun--happy as a clam, she is, but happy as a clam spending over an hour on ten minutes of work.

TUESDAY: Math Mammoth is still going great, and I'm still really liking its content, mostly. My kids are way ahead on computational skills, but have spent less time with fractions and geometry (and the clock, which we are STILL working on mastery of, ugh!), so it's a good combination of zipping ahead with review and settling in with new content--keeps them interested, I think. The chemistry set, on the other hand, is less meaty with definitions and explanations than I'd prefer, so I'm having to spend more time than I'd anticipated in looking up terms and such to use as memory work. I'm particularly surprised that, although the girls are working with acids and bases, the set's manual hasn't actually brought up the terms "acid" or "base," instead using the demonstrations to illustrate only types of chemical reactions. I may have to plan my own lesson on acids and bases next week, just to get the vocabulary into play.

I've decided that this month our craft time will revolve around Thanksgiving crafts, and include some historical/geographical study of Thanksgiving, as well. Fortunately, we've got some cool materials from our visit to Plimoth Plantation a few years ago, and I managed to request most of the Thanksgiving-themed library materials that I wanted before the other parents got to them, so we'll have plenty of content along with our crafts.

For grammar, we're still working through a combination of the Words are CATegorical series and First Language Lessons, although every day that I work with that latter book, I cool on it even more. I think that this week I'm going to interlibrary loan the third volume of that series, and see if I just want to move both girls right into it or perhaps find something else altogether for grammar. My main requirement for a grammar curriculum is that it emphasize sentence diagramming, so good luck with that, right?

WEDNESDAY: Our field trip day was terrific last week, but we'll probably stay home this week. Syd has a friend or two that she might invite over, and they'll both have LEGO Club at the library.

THURSDAY: Someday Syd will get sick of raisin bread, I'm sure, and then we'll move on to a different recipe, but not this week! Will and I are interrupting the history part of our History of the Video Game study for a mini unit on physics, since most video games (and pinball!) rely on realistic physics.

Drawing With Children is also still going well. Will seems less frustrated with it lately, but I'm still trying to go VERY slowly to keep her feeling confident. The memory work for Drawing with Children this week is essentially a daily repetition of last week's lesson in using the shape families to draw simple realistic pictures, and for this week's lesson, instead of moving on, I'm going to have the children draw the shape families onto several of our building blocks to make "art dice," and then we'll play with them!

FRIDAY: I may have to move some of these subjects to different days next week--Friday is awfully project-based, which pretty much guarantees spillover into the weekend. Math, at least, is just another computer game--I dearly hope that they find it too easy for them, because I am OVER fussing about telling time!--and the mapwork lesson for SOTW is generally pretty cut-and-dry, but last week it was Sunday before both girls had really finished their scrapbook pages, and honestly, I think that Will *still* has to finish up last week's letter.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: A Lowe's Build-and-Grow clinic and chess club are our only scheduled activities, which will be a lovely change of pace after the multi-week craziness of Halloween festivities. We might manage a trip to the apple orchard, or the mountain biking park, or a state park to watch the leaves change...

...or we might not!