Friday, November 13, 2009

Weekly Report 11/7/09-11/13/09

Unschoolish: S and B - Lots of cartooning and drawing; playing with sculpey; playing with pipe cleaners (Mom went to Michaels!); S and B designed games for a 'fair' in B's room. They had the cutest ideas for different games - one was they took an old science fair 3 sided poster board, cut out strips to make a jail cell window with bars and then offered to take pictures of you behind the bars!!! (They got that idea from our trip to Salem, MA); ball tosses, knocking stacks of plastic cups down. They made a fun house mirror by taping smaller mirrors and magnifying glasses to B's full length mirror. Lots of gymnastics and music playing/practice; S played games on One More Level having to do with music and geography; S and B wrote e-mails to friends/family. Watched lots of Wordgirl and Fetch. J read the book The Wormword Files; watched c-span with Rick during Health Care debate; played lots of computer game The Way which involves puzzles. He kept drawing examples of the puzzles and trying to explain them to S and Rick. W - lots of music practice, he was under the weather with a sore throat most of the week. W and J went to CLC Wed night and then got up to go to the 6:15 a.m Mass on Friday.

Schoolish: M-Th: S and B did cursive, math, and reading every day. S too math test and only got one wrong. S did Latin and spelling too. Read alouds - Finished Carry On, Mr Bowditch; great book! Cont with Archimedes and the Door of Science - learned about Simple Machines, parts of a lever, etc. Bible History - Saul and David. W, J and I went to Latin class on Tuesday. J did L. 22 in Alg and took a test which he got an 82.5 on. He needs to do another lesson today. He's moving at a snail's pace. He is totally wrapped up in The Way. Watched 2 Archeology lectures with W and J. J and I watched lecture on minerals in Earth Science. W and J also listened to the Iliad Book 9 and wrote out answers to study guide questions. W and J read through ch. 24 of History of the Ancient World. Socratic discussion on Friday a.m. Hopefully today (Fri p.m.) we'll read another book of The Iliad and J will do another Alg lesson.

Noteworthy stuff: J had drs appt Tues afternoon for mri for his spine. Need to go back to orthopedic doc next Tues to find out what to do for scoliosis. S and I had a date Thursday night. We ate at Silver Diner and then went to see his piano teacher give a concert. She played Pictures at An Exhibition by Mussorgsky. It was incredible! S was totally blown away! And most noteworthy of all! H turned 19 on Tuesday. Her first birthday away from home. She spent it writing a paper and studying for a test and then breaking up with her boyfriend. Birthdays just aren't the same when you are at college!

3 comments:

Daisy said...

I love how you broke the week down into unschooling and schoolish. Very cool. We need more unschoolish around here, I think.

WildIris said...

In your sidebar you list Touchstones. Can this be used with a single student? I like your philosophy on learning and inspiring learning.
Cheers!

Faith said...

Hi Wildiris!

Unfortunately Touchstones is really meant for a classroom. I am leading the elementary group with 6 kids and it is a bit awkward because the discussions are set up as if we have a big classroom of 30 kids. Each discussion plan has individual work, small discussion work and then whole discussion work. And much of the beginning stuff at my level definitely depends on a group. The whole thing is really geared to learning how to discussion deep ideas from many different perspectives in a civilized way using reason.

I am not sure how well this works with the 8 to 10 years I'm leading but they enjoy it even though they can't seem to stick to the topic at hand! I don't have any kids in the middle school level group. However, my high schoolers love it and are getting a lot out of it. So far they've read excerpts from Homer, Bacon, Herodotus, Aristotle, and some guy named Hardy who wrote on mathematics. They get into very lively discussions and come up with amazing insights (not just my kids but all the kids in the group!).

You could try to get some families together. We have a group of 7 families who meet on Friday mornings for it.