Week 1, part 1

I tried to take lots of pictures this week, and here are the highlights, mostly of the workboxes since those are such a new and fun aspect of our homeschooling.

Here are some of the 11-year-old's workboxes this week:

We're making a switch from Sequential Spelling to Spelling Workout for O. I liked how SS has the kids check their own work, but it was very time-consuming. Spelling Workout has some independent activities after the pretest, and then the lesson culminates in an end-of-week spelling test. So far, this is DS's favorite subject along with Latin (which is a group activity, so it didn't make it in the workboxes).

Okay, maybe this was his favorite--he snatched it out of the workbox, read what was required and then requested to finish it when he was through with the boxes. Lawrence is a very prolific author--the series has at least sixteen books in by now. O is devouring Book II (The Secrets of Vesuvius) under the covers with a booklight right now, probably.

Handwriting is not a favorite, but I don't hear the moans and groans I have in years past. We alternate handwriting and copywork 3-4 times a week. We use the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting course.

Even though the poetry club is now defunct (sigh), O. still memorizes a poem a month, or thereabout.

Great, great book. Just right for logic stage Earth Science. Shaping the Earth by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent.

I had thought that Beginner's Japanese on his iPod would have been right up O's alley (he's been mentioning learning the language for a year or so), but he did not like the format of this program. So glad I decided to try via ILL before buying. Now I'm looking for a DVD language program for Japanese, or something with more visual components. Any ideas?

At the end of each day I have the older two write a list of what was in their boxes and what they liked most and least that day. So far O's least favorites have been math and his nature journal, with which he doesn't feel like he excels.

Tomorrow, week 1, part 2: the eight-year-old's boxes. I have only so much patience with Blogger's image uploader/formatter.