Captain Science’s cast is off as of Wednesday and we are moving and grooving again! Hooray for a return to something like a normal schedule.
Ancient Greek history continues smoothly. Captain Science used Eyewitness: Ancient Greece as his main text this week, and covered Troy, Athens, Sparta, and Greek Warfare. He wrote summaries about Athenian history and warfare, and was quite stoked to learn that flamethrowers were used in Ancient Greece. He now knows what agora, frieze, strategoi, hoplite, perioikoi, helots are. He finished Tales of Troy and a retelling of The Odyssey. We’ll start back with maps and time line next week, since he didn’t get his cast off until Wednesday and still has limited arm mobility.
The Captain started his first memorization project, the poem Prometheus Amid Hurricane and Earthquake by Aeschylus, though I admit we weren’t nearly as good about practicing that this week as I’d wanted us to be. He enjoys it, has learned the first four lines, and was inspired to write his own Greek poetry. He covered chapters 5.7-5.12 in Growing with Grammar. He also began Vocabulary from Classical Roots, Grade 4, completing lessons one and two. He also read the second book in the Percy Jackson series.
Math was rough this week. He struggled with the first bridge for Life of Fred: Fractions chapters 16-19, so we made him complete all five tries this week. By the fourth and fifth try, however, he got everything right, so today he completed chapter 20 with no trouble. We’re glad to have him rolling on that again. His biggest issue is just not wanting to write everything out. He can do most of it in his head, but if he makes a tiny mistake mentally, his answer will not only be wrong, but we have no way of knowing how he went wrong. It’s hard to make him show work for problems when the answer he gives is correct, but I’ve told him that until he shows mastery of the concepts, he has to always show his work. I know that’s the best course of action, but it’s a little hypocritical, as I always hated having to show my work when my answers were correct.
We haven’t actually done science yet, because it was Dance Mat typing program. The Captain loved it and did all the parts of Lesson 1. He’s going to do the lesson a second time to show mastery and print his certificate, but he’s having a good time learning to type correctly.
We were unable to start our Spencerian handwriting lessons when I realized that we didn’t have the theory book and I had no idea what to do with the copy books. Hopefully can remedy that soon, even if it means a return trip to Scary Jesus Book Store. His handwriting has suffered from three weeks of his arm being casted at a 90 degree angle.
The Tank also had some table lernins this week. He’s working on a Sesame Street numbers workbook. He counted, circled, wrote 1 and 2, and traced 1-6. He loves doing homeschool with us, so I’m considering not sending him back to preschool out of the home next year. I’m just happier having them here with me!
