The big news this week was an overhaul in Jimmy's memory work. The Classical Conversations' memory cards were fabulous, but they are designed to help reinforce CC lessons. I decided that our memory cards should be reinforcing our lessons. So I took a few hours to figure out what that meant. The cards from CC were a great starting point - I'm even using several as-is. We will have 7 subjects to memorize - History, Bible, Geography, Grammar, Math, Science, and US Presidents. The History group will reflect the lessons from our History textbook (The Story of the World v1 by Susan Wise Bauer). Bible will help us memorize the 10 commandments (split up more than they were in the CC cards) and 14 catechism questions. For Geography, we'll be memorizing the 13 original US colonies and then all of the US states by region. We'll add a little bit of map work to our lessons. Grammar cards will be all of the preposition cards from the CC set (memorizing the definition of preposition as well as all of the prepositions).. For Math, we'll memorize several conversions (like feet to miles) and several equations to calculate area (like the area of a triangle). I pulled out several of the CC science cards for our new memory stack, focusing mostly on classification of living things, rocks/volcanoes, and atmospheric science. Finally, we'll be memorizing the US Presidents, with some flash card lessons to explain who these people are. Now that we're matching the memory work to our actual lessons, Jimmy seems to be retaining more.
The big news in Math is testing. We have added speed drills & tests to Jimmy's lessons. Speed drills are 1 minute quizzes. Jimmy is struggling a little with the speed (he likes the time to figure out the answer with logic, like Mommy), but we talked about the need to memorize the easy stuff so he has time to puzzle out the harder stuff. He still gets frustrated, but we're moving in the right direction. I feel your pain, kid. He had the first official math test today - 100% on both written & oral tests! He was very proud of himself.
Caleb demanded phonics work to be added back in to his lessons, lol. So we'll be reviewing phonics flash cards on Jimmy's reading days. We did Bb, Dd, and Cc this week - and he remembered all of the sounds! Even Cc's duel sounds. So proud!
Jimmy finished the first set of spelling words this week. The toughest words from that list were "am" & "first" - they each required several attempts. Other words tackled this week were game & trust.
Both boys are getting more comfortable talking about the Psalms as we read them. Jimmy surprises me often with his depth of insight. One passage described God's wrath toward sinners. Jimmy not only realized that we all deserve that wrath, but he understood that Jesus took that punishment for us. "Whoa!" he said. Our favorite insight, however, was how "O Most High" sounds a lot like "Almost High". Silly boys!
This week was a little tough on me personally. We had previously planned to close on our new house yesterday. I had been hoping to set up our new school room. I don't know what God has planned for us, but I really hope we'll be moving soon. The commute is rough on Randy & the constant show-ready cleaning is rough on me & the boys. I have to get over this pity party & trust God. I'm cranky & the boys are getting cranky in sympathy. Please pray for us, dear readers.
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