Weekly Wrap-Up: The One With Proper Maps

Ahhh, what a week!  A peaceful, educational week without me having to deal with tons of errors and tears.  Obviously we started back with Sonlight this week.  <insert content sigh here>

Here’s our run down

Bible

I had ordered Sonlight’s bible program so we started that this week.  I’ve always been pleased with Sonlight’s bible selection and this one was no exception.  We are using Remembering Gd’s Awesome Acts, which is a study on Genesis and Exodus.  It touts i self as a “Create-a-Notebook Bible and History Series” and that’s a fairly accurate description.  And you actually read the Bible. Everyday.

In the six weeks that we were using Winter Promise they didn’t schedule one Bible reading.  Really.  I’m  not making that up.  That’s why we were also using the Bible Study Guide for All Ages. 

 

The first lesson had an awesome activity to show how our lives, if we approach history from God’s viewpoint, color and affect the world.

 

  The study also incorporates other curriculum areas such as history, geography, art, writing, etc.  Love that.  And the notebooking pages are really nice.

 

Math

Math was a bit of a thorn in our sides this week.  She was learning about equivalent fractions and decided to freak out when she didn’t catch on right away.  Her main problems: freaking out and not reading the directions.  Had she bothered to read the directions or listen to me as I explained things, the freak outs would not have been necessary.  It’s a miracle we both survived. 

Science

We started our unit on muscles this week. 

We had some fun testing our reflexes when we talked about our nerves controlling our muscles.

We also did a little experiment to show how quickly muscles can get fatigued, particularly muscles that you might not use as often.  She had to hold out her arm for 5 minutes.  It might have been easier had she been a ballerina. LOL

Language Arts

As you might recall, we haven’t started our LA spines yet because we’re waiting for Advanced Language Lessons and Writing With Skill to be released.  They were originally scheduled to be released in the fall so I was checking to see the status, seeing as it’s now fall.  I wasn’t happy with what I discovered.  The release dates have been pushed back to Janurary.  Wahhhhhhhhhh!!!

Why????  I don’t know.  The slight upside is that they are offering up PDF manuscripts of both. For free.  They’re not the final draft but pretty close.  The down side is that I don’t really care to read much on the computer screen, plus I’ll have to print all the worksheets. 

I’m going to give them both a whirl as I was able to load the books onto my iPad and I like reading off that over the computer.  As for the possible rough draft errors, I doubt that they’ll be as extensive as the junk Winter Promise made me pay for.

And I’m extra excited that the Writing With Skill requires a lot less parental involvement.  Nice…

Social Studies

This week we started our replacement for Winter Promise, Sonlight’s Core F,  Eastern Hemisphere.   It focuses on Australia, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.  90% of the world’s unevangelized people live in those areas.  I’m sure you can see where this core is going.  Oh yeah, it goes there day one. 

Just reading the into to 100 Gateway Cities touched both my daughter and I.  Add to that the story of missionaries, John and Helen Dekker, and we were invested already.

Part of WP’s study was the plight of the children around the world.  I was interested in that a lot but it turned out to be a few books filled with dry statistics.  We never got invested.  I’m glad we found what was missing because I feel that thinking outside of herself is important to my daughter’s education.

Along with this portion of the study is the Eastern Hemisphere Explorer (EHE) which is the more factual and geographical part of the study.  Sonlight describes it best…

Tour 14 Eastern Hemisphere countries in-depth through maps, a timeline, though-provoking questions and creative projects. Especially valuable as a springboard to help students become great researchers. Students will use the World Book Encyclopedia to answer many of the questions, but will also develop research skills through use of outside sources. Your student will need your help, initially, to engage in this level of research.

And I’ve just got to mention that the maps are accurate.  Woo-hoo!!!!!  And it comes with an answer key. Oh yeah!

 

We’re currently studying the Pacific Islands and she’s enjoying  EHE so far.  Her creative project, which they refer to as a Choose Your Own Adventure, is to make a colorful map of an island resort.  We’ll be sure to share that with you all when we’re finished.

Other Stuff

Piano is going splendidly.  The private lessons are really helping her progress a lot faster.  She’s learned 3 new hand positions this week and is loving the challenge.

Her art class is also going well.  They’re working on some big project that I haven’t seen yet but she’s enjoying the class.

It’s finally stopped raining long enough for the soccer fields to dry and my laundry load has gotten a lot easier.  Yay me!!

Visual Latin is still the bomb.  We’re on lesson 5 and I’m about ready to write my review. 

I still have not heard back from Winter Promise regarding the refund or the errors in the mapping program that he promised to get back to me about.  I wasn’t really expecting him to, but one would hope that they’d at least be concerned about the errors.   Maybe next week. <insert my eyeroll here>

Check out the other Wrap-Ups over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.