Week in Review

Playing Musical cups

I have been so busy working on updating the Gospel Principles Study, I haven't done any other types of posts!

So here is what we were up to this last week - our first week of homeschool in 2012.

Devotion

We did the first week of the Gospel Principles Study, and it went quite well.  At the end of the week I had the children draw/narrate what they learned.  Even Foxtrot (who is only 3) did that - drawing a picture of Heavenly Father and Jesus, and giving the narration of "Heavenly Father made the Earth".  We intend to continue the Character/Good Habit Devotions from LearningHomeSchoolMentor.com one day a week. The devotion was shorter than the children are used to... but I think we will add in singing a primary song in German, and one in ASL.  We are also keeping up with all our memorized scriptures (and other things, like the scouting promises and laws) with our Memory Boxes.

Literature
We are continuing with "Just David".  As we were doing a "light" week, we didn't do any other literature, like Aesop's Fables.

History & Geography
We read one more chapter of "Children's Homer". This has been a challenging read for the kids, but they do seem to understand the main points of what is going on.  This is taking a LONG time though, and I'm worried we won't be done until the end of the year!  My kids can't wait to do more maps in geography - but it looks like it is a couple more weeks before another is planned.

Science
We started to read about Quantum Mechanics, and started an experiment to see that movement occurs even with things that look entirely still to the eye.  We also are enjoying the videos on the periodicvideo website.  Some are more entertaining than others.  Delta likes most of them... Echo doesn't like many.

Math
We have continued with RightStart.  Echo struggled a bit with the Time to the Minute (well 5 minutes) but seems to have it ok now.  She did the couple of money lessons in one day.  So both Delta and Echo are playing Corners.  Golf is still working at identifying the numbers 6-10.

Reading
Gold if on about lesson 30 in "Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and is doing quite well.

Spelling
We have started spelling using "Alphaphonics".  I am hoping this will help improve reading abilities too, as Delta doesn't seem to use phonics in his reading.

Other Languages
German - The other day I heard Delta walking around singing "Grun, Grun, Grun" - so we must be having some effect.  We are trying out the "Learnables" to see if it helps us out at all.  This week we listened to most of the first lesson.
ASL - At this time we are just enjoying "Signing Time" videos.  I plan to add in singing Primary Songs in ASL.  I did some looking for some good Fairy Tale videos on ASL, but the few I've found listed are out of print.

Other
Our violin lessons started up this week as well.  Delta is doing well learning Musette, and Echo is working on Allegretto.  Foxtrot is playing "Taka Taka Stop Stop" on open strings, and we have done some work with fingers.  Swim Lessons also started up again this week.  Delta is in "Swimmer" level, and Echo is in "Seals".  Foxtrot is in "Little Dippers" and is doing well.

I think that is about it.  I might have forgotten something (we are doing so many things)...  but that would be the main of it.