hitting the books

We had more of a break at the end of our first quarter than we'd anticipated. That's what happens when the teacher gets sick, followed by first one child and then the other. 

We roll with it.

We also work extra hard when we get back to school.

It may not look like he's working extra hard, but this was at the end of a very long day. He's simply worn out.

 

What is Scott working so hard on? Well, let's see...

He's conquered long division and is now working on fractions...reducing them, making improper fractions proper and adding them. He says this makes his brain tired but I'm pretty sure he's up to the task.

He and Maya are both studying World History this year...basically they've got the same curriculum, only on different levels. They are both learning about ancient civilizations right now and he's in the process of reading a book called The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keattey Snyder.

Last quarter, Maya did a unit on fairy tales. She read a bunch of the original stories, most of them by the brothers Grimm, but a couple of them by Hans Christian Andersen, too. Then she read and watched movies of the same tales that had been modernized, (mostly by Disney). She chose her favorite, The Little Mermaid, and is in the process of writing a paper about all the different variations of this tale, plus many of the ways this story has been incorporated into the world. This is somewhat of a hefty paper and she hasn't felt great this week, but the end result will be awesome. 

A portion of Maya's World History curriculum is on the web. I go through all the lessons, organize worksheets and tests while her text is online. She, as well as Scott, also work on geography and map skills.

Notice the toilet paper here by Maya? She's the third one of us to catch the bug.

Scott is reading about the Sumerians. It takes a week or two to get back in the groove.

Maya is working on calculating interest, ratio and proportion, some algebra and some geometry. Math is not her favorite subject, but she knows more than she thinks she does and tested very well at the end of her seventh grade year.

Scott's favorite subject is still science...some of the experiments he concocts are downright frightening...and wonderful, and the three of us continue to work on German. We haven't done much of the voice recognition portion of our program lately, though. When you sound like a frog, the computer says you don't know what you're talking about. We are working on our written work, however. 

I'll end this post by including one more picture I took last week.

Fall is all around us...bright and beautiful. Perhaps after this last week we will all feel well enough to venture outside this coming weekend and see some more of it.

Until then, we'll just continue to hit the books....