This Week…Schoolwork, then Fever.

Working Around Illness in the Homeschool Room

Little Man’s New Desk Area.

This week it seems that we just can’t stay well in our Academy.  Out of nowhere on Wednesday Little Man came down with a bad cough and fever. Gratefully he got over it quickly, I am wondering if giving him Echinachea and Grape Seed had anything to do with just how quickly. It was almost 24 hours exactly. 


I’m thankful he did recover so fast because we began Lego Learning in our homeschool group today and I know he didn’t want to miss that. We had 2 1/2 days of good solid days of learning this week, plus, homeschool group.

Sorting a few million LEGO’s for homeschool group.

We also have moved our learning back into the classroom. Once I was able to get it cleaned up over the weekend, I just could not resist even though the temperature here in Ohio remains below 40 degrees. We have even had snow several days despite the first day of spring. 

Bible: 

He finished writing up chapter 6 in Genesis, and then worked through several chapters in Joshua using Bible Study Guide for all Ages. His focus was the cities of refuge, their purpose and the laws related to murder.

Spelling: 

Lesson 29 has been completed, I will do his test on Monday which will lead to lesson 30 the last lesson in 5th grade spelling. Yeah! We will not start a new level. I’m going to let it be done for the rest of the year so we can focus more on writing.

Math:

 He advanced to Circles, It doesn’t sound like an advancement but it’s geometry level circles. He’s loving it. I have found one flaw in Khan Academy and I am guess I am simply overlooking something. So far I can’t find a clear explanation for Little Man as to what Pi is all about. It is briefly discussed in giving the formula  a=πr² but it is only said that we usually shorten it to 3.14. I am assuming it has been discussed in a previous lesson that perhaps Little Man has been able to skip over, but I cannot even find that lesson. So I’m kind of stuck as to what to do next. I suppose, I will have to research the best way to teach Pi to a 9 year old math genius. I’m sure that once I do, he will not be satisfied with wanting to shorten the to 3.14 or even the next 7 in the series. Oh man, I am not looking forward to this. 

This Week on the Chalkboard

History: 

We continued our reading in the Iliad. We see that King Agamemnon has repented of his treatment of Achilles.  He has agreed before the noblemen to make restitution for taking the slave girl that was not to be his, in the hopes that Zeus would then refrain from totally destroying the Greeks while in war with Troy.

What is most interesting to me, and I only credit God’s providence, is that while we are studying this period of Greek mythological history we are also studying in his Bible Class at the congregation where we worship, the journeys of the Apostle Paul. He is seeing through Paul’s eyes the reality of idol worship amongst the people of the very nations that we are studying in history. I love that God has allowed the timing of this to be so that I can show him both sides of idol worship. He can see the myth’s from which the idolatry began as well as the redemptive love of Christ in the salvation of those who practiced the Greek idolatry.

Writing: 

I continued the process of firming up his grammar skills. I am still finding that he is proficient in these skills. I then had him work a little on identifying informative sentences and paragraphs, trying to help him understand the difference between topic sentences and detail sentences. I still struggle to find how his mind processes writing. See these types of grammar worksheets are easy because they require using the mind to identify products within a set of grammar rules. In other words, he’s able to use a set of rules to clearly identify whether a sentence or paragraph meets the rule guidelines or does not. What I’m not seeing, however, is when given a writing assignment the ability to use that set of rules to formulate his own set of sentences to meet the rules. 
I do believe my quest at convention in 2 weeks will be to find the best possible writing program to meet this need. 

Science:

 Studying the life of a bird, it’s growth pattern within the egg, how it hatches and then how it first receives nutrients. This week he completed his vocabulary crossword and did a cartoon of the life of a bird. I got quite the chuckle out of it.

Little Man learned how strong an egg is. We each, Little Man, Beloved and myself held an egg in the palm of our hand and squeezed as hard as we could. The egg remained in tact. I have to say that while I understood the strength of surface tension theory, I was surprised that Beloved did not crack the egg in this manner, because he did apply quite a lot of force. So I stand amazed at the awesomeness of God in creating something so delicate yet so strong at the same time. I always wondered how a hen didn’t crack an egg when sitting upon it, now I know.

Art:

Oh my son has talent. I try not to be too proud or too showy with his abilities, but he stunned me this week. His assignment was to draw a vase using the Greek style. I tried to explain what that meant, but he seemed in a hurry and I didn’t think he was listening, but off he went and worked quite a while at it. When he came back and showed me his work I was flabbergasted at how good it was. But, I will let you judge for yourself. 

Music:

His piano teacher was travelling this week, so he continued to practice Light and Blue. he learned this song in previous lessons, although this arrangement is slightly tougher, so he is BORED with it. He is either transcribing the key as he goes or skipping into a completely different song while playing. He plays by ear as well so sometimes he will hear music on a video game or cartoon and run in to the piano to work it out on the keys. Hurry back Ms. Lori, he needs something new!

Making Memories: 

Testing the interlocking brick technique

Little Man and His Partner’s Speed Build

We began our final quarter on Friday in our homeschool group. Lego Learning is the topic. I can’t believe how many topics can be covered by studying this simple toy. Todays lesson covered, cooperative play, team building, speech, history, physics/friction, masonry, force, distance and on top of all of that it was really cool! 

Our moment of blessing this week came when we opened our power bill. We discovered that it was about 85% less than the previous month’s. We have no idea how that was possible, except by the grace of God. We praise and thank Him for all that He continues to do for our family during this time in our lives.

 Renee Brown is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to 

amazon.com.