No matter how a crazy week may interfere with my posting plans, it is easy to come back to the blog as a place to review what worked and what didn't. I record this info as part of my weekly grading process. Historically, I've used the Week In Review side of my assignment sheet pages to do this. I appreciate having the review notes when I write the end of term comments in my report card template and especially when I am planning new activities.
Finally! Week 4 seems to be where we finally hit our stride this year. As I look over the assignment sheet, I don't see any work that I will need to reschedule into next week and there were no epic struggles with either the volume or difficulty of what I assigned. The only major hitch in the plan this week was that I apparently assigned some of the same science pages and worksheets this week that I did last week.
Work missed due to poor time management simply becomes work that must be done on the weekend. This afternoon, Emma is remembering how much she dislikes that rule. I'm sure that part of the distraction is that our early start date combined with delayed school openings in our area mean that her friends are still at home and available to distract her throughout the day with emails and messages in Google Hangouts. We use Google Classroom to manage the digital portions of her coursework so just confiscating electronics during school time is not an option. For now, I just stay nearby and redirect her when I realize that she's wandered into socializing instead of schoolwork.
Here's our subject by subject breakdown
Religion: Working through the Gospel of Luke with the guided journal and the book of artwork. Emma proclaims she "doesn't get" why she's looking at the art but she certainly can spend some time with it!
History: Rome, 285 - 392 AD/CE. Primary source document work to compare Diocletian with Constantine in their attempts to save the Roman Empire. All done quite well, though Emma dislikes the primary source work.
Science: I seem to have somehow bungled up in assigning science work and put the same pages in two different weeks. You'd think that getting a bit of a break would make Emma happy but I heard plenty about my error!
English: Finally hitting our stride on this composition! There will be a whole post about this later this week. (It was supposed to be Friday but we can all see how that worked out!)
Math: I tossed the whole mess up in the air and just moved us into the new book instead of trying to finish the one from last year. It's more concisely formatted and less longwinded, which I think made a big difference for Emma.
Latin: Still working on parts of speech and diagramming sentences to build a solid foundation for increasing the volume of translation work I expect of her this year. She finds this easy and mostly review, which is flummoxing me because last year she proclaimed she had no idea how to deal with diagramming a sentence. I suspect a walloping case of tweenness is to blame.
I've been slacking off on fine arts, beyond assigning a music theory lesson each week and having her do the songwork in Lyrical Life Science. We are starting to swing into renovation mode here so I'm contemplating a small unit on color theory and artistic ratios.