Sunday, June 13, 2010

What happened?!

I'm going to stop blogging about what we're doing because it seems to curse us for a course change!

Seriously, we are going to be doing Ancient Greece, but life has been getting in the way. It may have to wait until August or September.

One item down: belt rank test. My sons have taken their black belt test and now await their results, given next Saturday at Nationals. My daughter has taken her blue belt test and likewise awaits her results.

Second item for the summer: Eagle. One last stinking merit badge and 2 projects (1 per boy).

Third item: Map out the American Government class I'm teaching at co-op next year. Moving has never looked so good!

Overriding goal: Math. Math. And more math. Yeppers. That one's happening and has not been derailed. Math-u-see. Got it at e-Bay--all the way to Trig via the older VHS curriculum. We have VHS capability and I'm all about getting it cheap! It is going well even with the other interruptions.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

A look forward and another one back

Part I

I'm one step closer to our next unit which will be Ancient Greece. This time, we are using a lapbook study from In the Hands of a Child as the basic unit. I am curious to see how this goes. We will also learn a little bit of Modern Greek (as opposed to ancient.) If this unit captures my kids' imagination, we will use this approach more.

The only lapbook I have ever done is one on pirates which my son loved. We did a few of their Scout badges via the lapbooking route too. Because they take so much of my time to create them, I haven't pursued them as I probably should have so I'm willing to pay someone else to do the legwork for me.

When I ordered the unit, I purchased 3 premade kits but I'm hoping I can cancel that order. I'm too hands on to let someone do that much of the work for me especially when they include all the templates in the project pack! If I can't, I'll know better next time! Or not, if it doesn't work as well as I hope. They have a download option which I took for the project pack. I will be adding some assignments of course, and we will be doing some additional reading---The Illiad and The Odyssey come to mind---at least for my sons, but I fully expect this will go very well.

Part II (Follow-up to my last post)

The Notebooking study worked okay, although not as well as I had hoped. It's a little too sit-down and write for my kids to have fun with it. I think I'll probably work it into a lapbook study and it will go more smoothly and with fewer complaints.