2009 - Week 4 - This Week in Homeschooling

This week my children began a babysitting job for a sister in our ward who had a very preemie baby (1 lb. 10ozs.) I am happy for the experience my children are receiving, but greatly saddened by the situation of this dear friend and her family.

Kid's School:

• Devotionals - Gospel Principles lessons 10-11 (spent 3 days on lesson 11)
  
• Classes/Clubs Attended - Principles of Leadership
  
• SAT Prep vocabulary & spelling words - Review last week's words - New Words - dilate, doleful, conciliatory, insolvent, fawn
  
• Grammar & Writing - Journal Entries on each book read - The Winston Grammar Program: Basic Level - Word Roots Level A A1 & A2
  
• Science - The Human Body Unit - Nervous System - Useborne Science Encyclopedia pg. 364-367, How the Body Works pg. 115-121, Human Anatomy Coloring Book p. 24 (College level book - we do not memorize the terminology, but the detailed pictures are really good).
  
• P.E. - Daily dog walks. We were supposed to attend a hike at the Arboretum, but we had car trouble. :-(
  
• Math
• Marly: Math-U-See - Epsilon - Chapters 5-8
  
• Chris: Math-U-See - Delta - Chapter 14, Review for Unit 2 Test, online math drills (see below)
  
• Individual Reading
• Marly: The Story of the World: Vol.2 2-17, Princess Academy, The Seventh Tower, Book of a Thousand Days, Johnathan Livingston Seagull
  
• Chris: The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child: Vol. 1, 1-35 thru 1-37, finished Dragon Rider, started The Silver Chair.
  

Mom's School:

• Reading list - How to Be Totally Miserable: A Self-Hinder Book by John Bytheway, The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (quite an eyeopener - I recommend this book as a MUST READ!)
• Projects - (1)Drupal theming - see batchelorfamily.org where I converted the theme from this blog to my Drupal website. I know I'm the only excited about it, but that's OK. :-) (2) Prepared our taxes!
  

Free Online Math Drills!
I hate wasting paper on printing math drills. Math-U-See has free online math drills for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The website allows the student to drill on specific facts (multiply by 7's) or select a mixture of practice questions. I do not keep grades for drills, only for tests because we focus on mastery, so for me this works out perfectly. It has a timed factor that I love, it tells the student how fast they accomplished the drill, but it does not have a countdown visible to the student. I like this because some students have difficulty with "test anxiety".