Weekly Report 2/8/10 - 2/12/10

Weekend

• Had a big blizzard. Lost power twice; first for 10 hours and then for 18. Got rather chilly! We read aloud a lot. R read last part of Percy Jackson series. I thought he was farther along than he actually was. He has read all but the last chapter. I also read a lot of Five Little Peppers. We played Pictionary Jr and Charades; played in the snow. We did a lot of sleeping as well! J did one lesson in Algebra. J and I also watched Earth Science lecture (after we'd gotten our power back!) about Intraplate volcanoes. Yellowstone is set to blow soon and will decimate North America! I told R and he was so funny. He said: "But I bought a house in North America! Why didn't someone tell me about this!" Hopefully it won't happen for a few thousand years. . . . .Monday

• Read aloud Bible History - The Division of the Kingdom into Judah and Israel.
• WWE for B and S
• B did 5 subtraction problems with borrowing
• I asked S if he wanted to do Life of Fred but he chose to do Saxon w/ me! We did Investigation 3 on fractions and percents.
• Latin - more vocabulary review. How do I keep this from being so tedious????
• Greek - did some fun decoding.
• B and S are very into playing pick up sticks today
• J did 1 test and one lesson in Algebra.
• W got up early and worked away at music.
• R stayed home and worked some from home but then he and W intrepidly went out into the snow to get propane, get the snow blower fixed and get some provisions. Supposedly we are getting 5+ inches of snow starting tomorrow to add to the 24 we've already got!
• Everything is canceled for today. So no piano for S, no guitar for W and no teaching RE for me. Hurray!
• J, W and I did Latin homework; translating 32 sentences and then doing a practice NLE. Still need to study for quiz.
• B and S played a lot animating and drawing; S's friend came over and they all played together.
• W did not go to his 7:30 mass and Bible study for the second Monday in a row. He's bummed.

Tuesday

• Had major migraine in a.m. We didn't make it to Latin or Algebra because I didn't want W driving around on snowy roads. Didn't feel better until almost 2. Kids hung out, played, watched tv, etc.
• B did a page in her phonics, and 5 subtraction problems with borrowing. She got them all correct! She didn't do her cursive practice in her workbook because she wrote a very nice thank you note to our neighbor in cursive.
• S read a story in his Faith and Freedom reader (about a blizzard); he did a little bit of work in Life of Fred but found it frustrating because they expected him to know how to multiply big numbers (multi-digit) I guess in Saxon we haven't gotten past multiplying a big number by a single digit number. So I sat down and showed him using a problem from LoF: 24 x 3600. He's grumpy tho, say he didn't get enough sleep last night
• S also did some cursive practice in his workbook (quote: ask and you shall receive, etc) and he did a page in his CHC speller on 'ai', 'ay', 'oi', 'oy' words.
• Read lots of Five Little Peppers to B.
• J did lesson in Algebra. Glad R was home because J was having trouble focusing and R sat down and worked the lesson with him. Apparently it was trigonometry.
• W got up early and did lots of music practice. He wrote a piece for his audition piece. He called it the Severe Scoliosis Boogie!
  
• Finished Herodotus and The Road to History.
• Started reading Frontier Bishop
• R signed W up for the 5 week summer school at Berklee. I don't even want to think about W being gone for 5 weeks. What will I do with out him. I'll miss him like crazy. Funny, sweet, helpful. Yikes, I'm already sad.
• R started reading the 3rd Mysterious Benedict Society book aloud to B and S
• J and I read Book XV in Odyssey.
• Read more 5 Little Peppers to B

Wednesday

• Huge blizzard today! 8 inches on our front doorstep by 11 a.m! Wind is blowing violently! We'll probably lose power again.
  
• Read from old Catholic textbook called Before America about Ancient Greece. Looked at maps, talked about the Aegean Civilization.
  
• B and S did cursive practice
• J, S, B and I said a scriptural rosary at noon. We hadn't made it to Mass on Sun and I was feeling like we needed to get some dedicated prayer time in. B did really well reading scripture passages.
• J worked on Trisms on Han Dynasty for a bit but then the computer suddenly died. That is the main computer so J decided this meant he didn't have to do school anymore. He retired to the basement to play some game for the next several hours.
• B brought up two puzzles of the US to play with. One was a floor puzzle and one was an old wooden one with about 4 states missing. But we put them together and then she'd ask me about the different states and I'd tell her about them. S listened in when he was around.
  

• The blizzard was distracting everyone. R went out and tried out his new snowblower. B went out on our screenporch and began sweeping the snow (!!!!) that had blown in. S went out and played for hours in the snow!
• W went out and shoveled the front porch and walkway as well as the back patio.
• B, W, R and I watched Anne of Green Gables. The dvd played the whole miniseries as a movie so we wound up watching the whole thing off and on all afternoon/evening.
• R grilled hamburgers and hot dogs in the snow. I got pictures.
• J and I read half of Book XVI of Odyssey
  
• R read next ch of The Mysterious Benedict Society
• I read B next ch. of Five Little Peppers

Thursday

• Read next ch. of Frontier Bishop. French Revolution is about to begin!
• S and B both did copywork from WWE
• B did one subtraction problem with borrowing from two columns.
• S did Lesson 31 in Saxon - parallel lines, perpendicular lines plus review
• S and B played happily for a long time putting on a puppet show
• J worked on Han Dynasty questionnaire for History
• J wanted me to give him dictation, so I found a quote from St. Francis de Sales and dictated it to him.
• J finally wrote his rough draft descriptive paragraph about Tillie
• J and I watched next lecture in Earth Science - Earthquakes and Volcanoes and how they effect humanity!
• R took S and B to VT
• W slept late, putzed around and then went to store for me.
• Had a very nice Latin session with S. We reviewed vocabulary (he's getting better) then he proudly chanted conjugations and declensions. We did some sentence diagramming. He really wants to learn Italian.
• B and S have been typing up notes to me and then translating them into French for me to read. They can't believe I can read a little bit of French. They are easy to impress! My we are getting so multilingual!
  
• H called from Dallas a couple of times. She didn't get an A on a paper she wrote even tho she worked really hard on it. She went to her professor and apparently she had misinterpreted the topic of the paper. The prof said she had written an A paper but on the wrong topic! So she's got to go back and rewrite it. She's determined to get an A. She is really into Dante's Comedy right now. She's been fighting a cold for a while though and it has tired her out.
• J and I finished Book XVI in Odyssey. Answered study questions.

Friday

• Had major insomnia. Sigh...... so we really unschooled today.
• Read next chapter of Frontier Bishop to S and B while they painted our bluebird houses (finally; been meaning to do this for 2 weeks!)
• B and S listened some cds they haven't listened to in years while they drew pictures and played with puppets.
• J bought some new computer game he downloaded and has been playing.
  
• I decided to attack the boys room. It is again a sordid mess. We dug out all the junk under the beds and I brought down stuff that had accumulated up there. We decided to rearrange the room so that the beds are not right next to each other. J comes up to bed much later than S and always wakes him up by turning on the light to read. So we decided we'd make 1/2 the room J's and 1/2 the S's. Also, it could really use repainting. Though maybe that won't happen until the summer. Anyway, I'm hoping to go up there and work in short increments and maybe have the furniture moved around by the time J has to go to the hospital. We need to give away all those old Legos/Bionicles that haven't been played with in a couple years at least. Tho J refuses to give up his Bionicle books!
  
• J started reading The Screwtape Letters.
• W's Comm Coll was back on again today only starting at 10 a.m. So he went to his music comp class.
• W helped S with his music theory lesson
• I'm hoping I'll get more done over the weekend.