From September 12-27, we were on a break. We left the country to attend a funeral, so it wasn't exactly fun and games around here. However, because of the nature of life, we covered basic geography, existential questions on the nature of life and death, and trees, grasshoppers, and what happens if you poop in your pants and mama doesn't have a spare pair. Generally, a very educational trip, though not in the formal sense.
Week 16, we were back with a vengeance. This ran from 9/28 to 10/2.
Reading: We worked with vowel blends this week, ow and ai specifically. Monkey grasped these very well, and very nearly right away, so it was actually ridiculously easy. We haven't gone back to silent e words yet, though I do intend to review that shortly.
Math: Monkey made it through three lessons this week, 42-44, with no particular difficulty. He seems to have a grasp of math that I just never did. I'm glad to see it, but I'm wondering when these lessons that are supposed to take two and three days... will. So far, they're not.
Science: Monkey and Skeeve have moved up to two experiments per week, and an occasional lab report. The report is more for my benefit than Monkey's, but it's there all the same. This week, they grew cress seeds and built a barometer. We're still observing the barometer, and we observed the seeds all week. Lots of fun had by all, and Monkey seems to be at minimum entertained by the experiments, which is good.
History: History seems to be an awful lot like pulling teeth. Monkey does NOT want to sit still to listen, but if he doesn't, he doesn't listen at all. I'm hoping this has something to do with his lack of interest in the subject matter, so it is something I can correct as we enter "pyramids" and "mummies" and such. Much more interesting than "these rivers" and "ooooh, floods!"
Logic: Once again, logic is Monkey's absolute strong suit. We have moved into relationships now, and if I let him, we would blow through the Lollipop Logic book in a whopping 4 weeks, as he would go through each section in one fell swoop. However, as I'm not in the mindset to be going through textbooks by the millions, I'm holding him to one lesson per week. His skills in relationships are rather impressive to me - he got 4/5 questions "correct" per what I thought the answer would be, and the 5th one... Well, that one was right, too, but for a different reason. He was given a picture of a birthday cake. Then told to pick which picture was related to it - a book, a party hat, or a pencil. He chose the book. I went with it, and at the end, asked him his reasoning. Turns out, he chose the book because it would be the one closest in size to the cake. I gave him full credit for that one (as in, "hey, that was really nicely reasoned, I hadn't thought of that" not "full marks"), and we hung it on the fridge.
French: This week, we introduced French. I think Monkey is having a failure of understanding (also parsed as "What we have here is failure to communicate.") as to what the purpose of this is. I ask him "Comment t'appelles-tu?" and he looks at me and says, "I'm FIRESTAR!" Which, in and of itself is an appropriate answer, as he'd not five minutes before run to the kitchen to "transform" into Firestar, but when I prompt him to use Je m'appelle with that, he tells me, "No, not Je m'appelle Firestar, just Firestar!" So, I'll have to work on that one.
In other news, we went to Circle R Ranch this week! We participated in their Farm Animals program, and had a wonderful time. Monkey got to ride a pony, pet two other ponies, take a hay ride (with REAL HAY and not straw!), pet a sheep, a goat and a pig... He had a great time. I just wish these outings were easier on both of us than they are. It's so hard to keep a psychomotor-ly overexcitable child engaged in this sort of setting without losing him entirely - which almost happened. He very nearly ran away on me, and because I get the "wow, helicopter much" looks while I'm out with him in open spaces, nobody would listen and GTFO my way when he did run off. After all, he should be just like all the other kids and stop where he's told. But he doesn't, and he nearly chased a farm cat into the woods, then took off into the parking lot. Maybe next week. o.o;;
Also coming up on the horizon, we've enrolled Monkey in a gym class for homeschoolers! It's indoors, which will make it so much easier to avoid the running away, and he will undoubtedly love it to bits. I'm really looking forward to it!
Monkey is also enrolled in twice-weekly preschool. He adores it, and he's getting more social interaction, so it's all good. They want me to put him in for a third day per week, but I don't know that this is a feasible option for us. We'll have to see how it goes. I don't like the idea of losing an educational day from our regular homeschool week, and I'm not sure we could afford it even if we weren't losing the day. Ah, well. We'll see how it goes, and run from there!
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