Daily Journal 8/30/10

This was supposed to be our first day of the Academic 2010-11 year. I awoke at 5:30 with a horrible migraine. It is now 12:39 and it is mostly gone but as usual I feel weak and spacey. I did manage to some lessons with Becky.

• We looked over her new books.
• I told her that at the end of this school year she would be reading chapter books and she'd be able to sit down and write a paragraph easily. She was impressed!
  
• On her own initiative she wrote out words she knew how to spell in a brand new composition book. I think the newness of the book inspired her. She managed to write: the, to, too, two, at. Then she wrote out the word 'morning' because she knows how to spell that too. The whole time she was doing this she was chatting up a storm about everything! I had to constantly get her back on task to do the very simplest thing.
• Then we did a page out of her new MCP Phonics C.
• Then I showed her the Writing with Ease book from last year. We started up at Lesson 8 where we left off last spring. However, she balked at doing copywork, so we put it off until tomorrow. I told her a little about Caddie Woodlawn though, which is where the lesson is taken from.
• I showed her the Kolbe Map Skills workbook and she was intrigued. So we did the first page which was a map of Washington DC and the monument and reflecting pool area. She knows that area! So that made it more interesting. I wrote out the fill in the blanks for her but she answered the questions. She then numbered the symbols in the chart and matched them to the different geographic points.
• We did the first lesson in Saxon 5/4 orally. Not the problems just the mental math and intro to concept. She was losing focus at this point.
• Took a 10 minute break then I read the next story from Bible History - Achab and Jezebel. What nasty people! Becky really was not engaged and didn't narrate well at all.
• Started with first lesson of McGuffey's Reader. I read first little paragraph and then she read para. 2. She wouldn't let me help her but sounded through everything and then had to reread read it for comprehension. She read 'both' as 'doth' and struggled with other words like 'learned' pronounced it lean-red'

Sean

• Will and he worked on memorizing and acting out the ferris wheel scene from The Third Man. We watched this movie over vacation and everybody was impressed by it.
• Sean worked on typing out a script he is working on
• Sean did the first lesson in Saxon 7/6
• Sean went to his friend's house to play.

Josh

• Josh finessed memorization of The Walrus and The Carpenter
• Worked more on his 'idea bucket' for writing
• Did Lesson 82 in Alg II (most of it)

There was a big break in the afternoon. Will kindly took Becky and Sean to their playdate and went grocery shopping for me.

In the evening all three boys worked on their drawing skills and digital arts and music. They were actually working up until 10 p.m.

Josh is reading Mockingjay. Sean was supposed to start a book. He chose The Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit. Don't know how much he actually read.