April 19, 2015

Doing school two days a week (Monday/Wednesday) at the community college has turned out to be a good thing.  I'm still not thrilled about it, but it has helped us stay more focused and accomplish more.  We find a spot where there is decent Wi-Fi reception and camp out in a cafeteria style booth for the next 4+ hours.  It is hard on my old body to sit that long, so I take trips to the bathroom to keep the knees in working order.

13yo is still taking swimming lessons two afternoons a week  (Tuesday/Thursday).  We are going to do one more session then take the summer off.  I didn't have a goal in mind when we started in September.  She is in the level 6 class at the moment.  As much as we would both like to be finished, I think she needs to make it to at least level 7.

Current Events - We slacked off for awhile.  Picked up CNN Student News recently.

Latin (Lively Latin I) - Finished lesson 13 (ablative of place where and the 1st Punic War).  Working on lesson 14 (imperfect and future tenses of sum, esse, fui, futurum (to be) and the 2nd Punic War/Hannibal).  It will take a couple more weeks to finish lesson 14.

Math - R&S Math 7  1-19.  So far it has mainly been review of the four basic operations using larger numbers.  We are doing a math lesson M-Sat with hopes of getting through most of Math 7 before autumn.  We'll see.

English Grammar - R&S English 6 109/132.  Skipping the poetry lessons.  We are definitely in new territory - adjectives and adverbs.   This is the part of the book where we usually petered out, so we don't have a strong base to help us with the new material.  We've been learning about prepositional phrases and clauses which act as modifiers, and we've been learning how to differentiate between adjectives and adverbs.  About 20 lessons remaining.

Spelling - using Logic of English high frequency word list level 4.  I call out ten words each day to see what she already knows.  She has picked up spelling naturally.

Science - Insects
9 - Orthoptera and Dictyoptera II (grasshoppers and crickets)
10 - Hemiptera I (water measurer and water boatman)
11 - Hemiptera II (spittle bug/frog hopper, aphid, and cicada)
12 - Unit II Review

Geography
Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland

American History - Trying to sync A History of US and MP's The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & the Great Republic.  We backed up and reread "Indians vs. Colonists," "Massacre in Virginia, Poverty in England," "The Mayflower: Saints and Strangers," and "Pilgrims, Indians and Puritans" in A History of US volume 2.

The Story of the Thirteen Colonies & the Great Republic
9 - French and Spanish Quarrels
10 - Around the World (Drake)
11 - Sir Walter Raleigh
12 - The Jamestown Men
13 - The House of Burgesses
14 - Henry Hudson
15 - The Mayflower
16 - Plymouth Rock

World History - We've been combining encyclopedias and Dorothy Mill's The Book of the Ancient World (Memoria Press)
8 - The Land of Mesopotamia
9 - The Story of Assyria
10 - Cuneiform Writing; The Story of Babylonia
11 - Life in Ancient Babylon

Classical Studies - Still combining Famous Men of Rome with history in Lively Latin I.  Currently studying the 2nd Punic war.
Famous Men of Greece -  Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus, Lycurgus, Draco and Solon, Pisistratus

Christian Studies II
19 - Josiah; Fall of Jerusalem; Jeremiah
20 - Jerusalem Destroyed; Songs of the Captives; Daniel
21 - Statue of Gold; Writing on the Wall