Schooling this week, an overview

Hmm.. what can I tell you about this week in our life?

We've developed more of a relationship with our international student.  We've learned he is a polite boy, who likes some of my cooking but not all of it.  :)   Pancakes are a hit!  Baked beans are not.   Fried ground beef means seconds and slow cook chicken.. not so much.  :)    Pasta yes, potatoes... well.. you get the idea.   :)  He will need to adapt to a certain extent as we like potatoes in this house and we eat plenty of chicken, but I'll be experimenting a bit I think with different ways to make it.     We haven't spent a WHOLE lot of time with him as he's made some friends and like all teenagers likes to be out and about with them.    We continue to work on our ability to communicate well with him.  It's a work in progress.  He knows some English but not heaps and heaps of it.

We've done some art with geography and Egyptian art. 

Let's see what else have we done.

We've done math everyday, one day using "Barron's Painless Junior Math" and other days using computer programs such as UberSmart, CTC Math and Standard Deviants.   Standard Deviants is a review that we are working on it has a variety of math, science and other courses.  We signed up for the Grade Four Math program but my son at this point prefers the other programs available to us.   A review is coming!  :)

We are Doing a variety of things for Language Arts.   We do some with Essential Skills Advantage.  I like this program but think variety is a good thing.  To that end we are daily doing one pages out of Reading Skills (pictured left).   We are also pulling outLogic of English once or twice a week.  

We finished off "A country of our own"  This is a book in the Dear Canada series.   The lad enjoyed it and wants to do more out of the series.  He likes the boys series more, but didn't find the girls series too difficult and it made him ask questions and learn more about the history of this fine land of ours.   The thing I like about his series is that they give a fictionalized story but at the end of the book they give you all the true facts.   The lad finds this part just fascinating.

After being sporadic in our study of Canada over the past year or so I thought spending more time would be a good thing.. so once or twice a week we're going through our books on Canada.  Good to learn about the land one lives in eh?  :)

This is Canada My Country from Norrthwoods Press by Danna Ward.

Today we had our co-op day with our homeschool group.   It was a good morning and then a good visit afterwards with friends. 

And that's a good overview of our week I think.  We did many things this week such as finish the pond, go for the odd walk, make an extra trip to town to help our international student find a coat and new shoes etc.   It was a good week overall.  I really have no complaints (not that complaints are good to dwell on).     Currently my son's week is complete as a friend is over for an overnight visit.   Life is SO much better with friends, don't you agree?   :)