Midweek checkup
Our first week of back to academics and Mama totally engaging with the boys and their school. Unfortunately over the last couple of years I have gotten into the habit of giving them assignments and then waiting for them to finish them. This has been increasingly frustrating as they weren't all that motivated to actually finish their assignments.

God has really been speaking to me about this. I had been seeking his path as to how to school the high school years with B. I spent last week during spring break, reading the Well Trained Mind. Wow, I felt God speaking to me about my role in their education and realized all the gaps I have left. I felt totally energized, inspired, and convicted. I feel that I have some direction for the next few years and am working at putting it into action.

I have some much needed supplies on my list of things to buy, but for now we are working with what we have.

This week
Math
R.: We have been just doing a simple workbook this year, but he has some glaring gaps, so today we started Saxon 6/5. This curriculum has been rather painful for us in the past, but that is what we have so that is what we are doing for now. I am on the search for another program though.
To ease the pain, I went through the entire lesson with him, we did most of the practice questions aloud and made sure he understood. Then he did just over half of the lesson practice with me sitting beside him and doing the last six questions independently. This worked perfectly. 15 minutes and we were done. Much less painful than him sitting for hours staring into space.
B did his seventh investigation, and again, I went over trouble spots with him and he did well. Once we both figured out what the reciprocal coefficient of x was.

Language arts/Latin:
I finally got around to starting the Latin Road to English grammar last weekend, so this week we have done the first 3 lessons. Today we got to practice the Lord's Prayer in Latin. The kids were totally geeked up about it.
In spelling, though we have been using Spelling Power, both boys had to study spelling lists today. R needed review and B was doing the postal abbreviations for the States and Provinces. Yeah, he had no idea about most of them. I always forget that they need to know the American stuff as well as the Canadian.

B is almost done level G in spelling and R is in the middle of level C, he has had a rough time with spelling until this year, but it seems to be getting better now.

Dictation is something I have decided to start again, what better way to become a great writer than to copy great writers?! B did a passage from King Solomon's Mines and R did one from On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Writing has been blogging so far this week, but we will soon be starting a formal composition curriculum. We are also doing a mini-report for Bible study this week. We are using the NIV Children's Bible Handbook and are working in the New Testament section.
The boys are both reading what they like and we are going through Mark in our daily Bible reading

Social Studies: We are working through Geography Province by Province by Donna Ward and will soon be starting Conquerers and Conquests by the same Author as well as dozens of supplementary books and historical fiction to go with it. This week we learned about Forestry as well as people and places in BC and will learn about the symbols and economy of AB. We map as well as plot figures and events on our timeline.

French: still plodding through Rosetta Stone, I would like to find a written French program as a supplement though.

Science: Hasn't happened yet this week, hopefully tomorrow afternoon we can continue with our program.

Preschool!
J(4) and I worked on some phonics exercises today, til he got bored and then he did some reading. With A (2.5) we played Discovery Toys match game and they played with alphabet blocks and cars for hours. We also read dozens of books.