The Devil is in the Details

This was out first week back to full time school and our first week of what we call grade 2. So far so good with our selected curriculum for this year. I only made one change. After one lesson of Latin for Children A I knew it was going to be too hard for this year so we shelved it for now and I got Lively Latin. It has the right amount of work and history portions to keep her interested. So my title for this post comes from the fact that I just may be raising a smart a$$. I haven't decided if it is an age thing or if it is a personality thing but whatever it is, it is definitely annoying. When you give her instructions, ask her to do something or even ask her a question it seems that you have to make sure you ask for EXACTLY what you want and or expect from her or else she will inform you that, that wasn't what you asked. Therefore finding a loophole. For example,

Me: Roo bring your dishes from lunch time out of the living room and into the kitchen.

Roo: There are no dishes in there.

Me: Oh, did you already bring them in?

Roo: There are no dishes to bring in.

Me: What? You ate lunch so bring the dishes in.

Roo: Those aren't dishes, those are recyclable materials. 

Lunch came from a prepackaged container, there were in fact no dishes.

My husband has been trying to teach Roo how to ride a two wheeler. She seems to be more interested of when they take a break and she collects rocks and sticks. A few days ago she built a fire pit instead.

Our first week was four days due to Labour Day, so this is what we completed this week.

First day of school.

Memory Work -  We are still working through the same materials that we had in the box last year but are adding stuff from this year into it slowly. I added the planets this week for science.

Spelling (All About Spelling level 2) - She finished Level 2 lesson 5.

First Language Lessons 2 - We worked on lesson 101-103 which was a review from last year.

Writing with Ease 2 - Completed week 1 of writing, narrations, and dictation. This was her first time doing dictation. She didn't do too bad, it was more the spelling of some of the words that slowed her down.

Latin (Lively Latin) - This first week is kind of like an introduction. It has given us the history of Latin and some small exercises. All in all, it seems like a good fit for her age and she seems excited to do the lessons.

French (Nallenart L'Art de Lire1) - This level is a gentle introduction to reading French. The level basically focuses on the French vowels and shows you how they are used via simple stories. These stories also aid in reading French. 

Math ( Singapore 2A/2B) - We are still finishing 1B but it seems to be moving quickly. We had to put it aside for a bit last year and did Math Mammoth for a bit to work on problem areas. 

History (Story of the World Middles Ages) - Chapter one was about the Fall of Rome. We did map work  for it as well as placed out final timeline picture on the Ancients timeline (The Fall of Rome picture) before we now proceed to the middle ages. This is exciting for me because the Middle Ages is my favourite time period. I am looking forward to sharing this with Roo.

It's a crappy picture but that is the Ancients and Middle Ages timelines from Pandia Press. the other two levels will be added as we do those years.

Science (Elemental Science Earth and Astronomy) - This week was like an introduction to earth and space. We learned about the earth, space and the moon. Then we built a paper mache model of earth which is in fact still drying and probably needs a second layer of stuff put on it. The we will paint it. She wanted to do the whole solar system, I thought no way:)

Our model of Earth in process. All we had was coloured news print so I hope we can paint of it.

Geography (Expedition Earth)- We began with an introduction to the Continents and Oceans even though she knows them already. The I handed out the passports we will be using for our journey this year. Every other day she reviews her Canadian provinces and territories and every day she goes over the countries in Europe via Sheppard Software. She is also learning to map the world by heart via The Core method. I think she has mastered the Great Five Circles and next week we may begin the continent blobs. 

Art (Meet the Masters) - We only did the introduction lesson this week. 

Composer Study - None this week. 

What did Merle do? She has figured out how to clap though it still surprises her when she does it. She kind of gets the waving thing, and she has taken to pulling her dress over her head until you say "where's Merle" and then she whips it down and laughs.





I learned how to do several different types of braids this week. This is the waterfall, the picture makes her hair look like she has a million split ends, I just didn't brush it before the picture. Not bad for my first attempt.