Y7 Year in Review (2018-2019)

General Remarks

Gregory became the second teenager in our family in the course of this school year, and has grown 2 inches since December.  His love for building and creating has continued and developed, especially as he has gained more skill and access to a wider variety of power tools.  He helped buy a gas powered string trimmer this spring and has taken over keeping the weeds down on our property as well as being a huge help to his grandpa in trimming along our private road that we share.  He's interested in construction and this summer he is learning how to frame walls, hang drywall, and install trim.

Subject Areas

Bible/Faith

3x/wk, 20 min - Old Testament Studies:  1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings

I do this subject with Gregory, Nathan, and Justin and read the Bible text aloud.  Everyone narrates, and we do appropriate map work and lists of kings and prophets afterwards.

5x/wk, 10 min - New Testament Studies:  Gregory reads from the Gospels on his own.

1x/wk - Devotional Reading:  Created for Work, A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture, Faith and Reason

Language Arts

Gregory's writing has progressed well this year.  I've moved him to four written narrations a week which caused some consternation at the beginning of the year, but he rose to the challenge and now it isn't a big deal.  The narrations have gotten longer and fuller, and while spelling is still definitely an issue, his sentence structure is generally good.

Gregory and Nathan do dictation together 4x/wk, and Gregory does copywork daily for about 10 minutes.  I've changed how I am doing dictation thanks to Celeste Cruz's dictation immersion at CM West :: Retreat in Old San Juan and that has greatly increased the rate of improvement.

Gregory finished the Analytical Grammar Jr. Mechanics book this year (he started it last year) and I thought it helped him quite a bit in his use of punctuation.  I don't think it is necessary to do this sort of book for every student, but it was useful for him.

Mathematics

Gregory has started Algebra this year, but I've been easing him into it.  1x/wk he has been working with Hands-On Equations, 1x/wk working in Lessons in Experimental and Practical Geometry, 1x/wk doing game-based arithmetic practice. and 2x/wk with Jacob's Algebra.  Hands-On Equations was really helpful for Gregory, because at first the whole idea of an equation was absolutely mystifying.  The novel approach of this kit was just what he needed to make it accessible and to get him going in Algebra.

In general, I like the multi-stream approach to mathematics, but sometimes I feel like our we're a little too scattered.  But he's making progress and generally understanding well, and that's what is really important.

Literature

Gregory read the Aeneid, Tale of Two Cities, a selection of 19th Century American short stories, The Red Badge of Courage, and Silas Marner this year along with his parents and his 17 year old sister.  We had weekly discussions about the readings and also watched the Roman Roads lecture series about the Aeneid.

The Aeneid was stretched out over most of the year since the videos counted as the week's reading, and the other selections were read in turn, about one per term, with the short stories and Red Badge of Courage sharing a term.  The short stories we read were The Birthmark, Young Goodman Brown, The Cask of the Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Gift of the Magi, and The Necklace.

Having the family discussions around the book and reading it together added a lot of enjoyment and interest for everyone, and we plan to continue this in future years.  We found that dinnertime worked well for these discussions, and it had an added bonus of helping the younger children to practice their ability to sit quietly and listen even when they weren't involved in the conversation.

Gregory also read the 19th century sections of A Short History of England and America's Literature, which I like so much better than H.E. Marshall's History of English Literature.  I thought Tappan's book was more respectful of the student while still offering a similar sort of content.  And it has the added bonus of including Americans, rather than just English authors.

History

This year we were studying the 19th Century in European and American History, and Ancient Rome in our Ancients stream.

In all these areas I did not assign additional biographies or other historical books, as Gregory is an avid reader and history is one of his favorite genres.  I knew he would read history before anything else, so made it a point to give him other books in his evening reading stack so that he would have a little more breadth.

American History
Gregory read from The Oxford History of the American People by Samuel Morison for most of the year, although at one point I switched him back to the history spine he had read last year because Morison is just so long.  I was starting to wonder if we would even get to the Civil War at the rate we were going and wanted to jump ahead a bit so that we could read about the Civil War in Term 2.  Gregory missed the book though, and offered to read it more often than originally scheduled so that he could switch back to Morison.  He started reading 1 section 4x/week and with our jump ahead this was a good pace.  I plan to continue to use Morison because it is just that good, but I still am not quite sure how to handle it.  Not assign some sections?  But then how do I decide??  Just read more?  Tempting, but I don't like shifting the balance of the curriculum and the day like that.

English History
Gregory read from Arnold-Forster's History of England this year, and I'm so glad this book is back in print.  I think it worked well for this school year, and it was a lot less pages than assigning Churchill's History of the English Speaking People. And with Morison being so many pages already...

Ancient History
I like the Dorothy Mills Ancient History books, and this is the third one Gregory has read.  I used about 2/3 of the chapters in The Book of the Ancient Romans, focusing on the history chapters. I did assign some of the day in the life and what things were like chapters too, but did not use all of them.

Citizenship

I was going to assign Whatever Happened to Penny Candy, but then didn't end up doing it.  I'm not sure why.  So Gregory's only Citizenship reading this year was Plutarch as part of our family studies.

Geography

For most of the year Gregory read from The New Europe, but Nellie B. Allen.  I think this book fell a little flat and didn't quite serve the purpose it was supposed to serve.  I think that I was not framing the lesson well, not drawing him to the maps enough to help him picture what he was studying.  We switched to a different text (a geography text from the 1920's) that I happened to pick up at the library used book sale, and I think that worked better for us.  Part of it was the writing style of the text, and part of it was the book had good map work questions included to help set the stage for a good geography lesson.

Mapping the World with Art - 1x/week I did a map drawing exercise from this book with Gregory and Nathan.  I really like how the author breaks down and explains how to draw the various parts of the world.

Gregory also read and mapped The Story of David Livingstone, Oregon Trail, and Around the World in 80 Days.

Natural History

This year instead of using a different Sabbath Mood Science Guide each term, which last year started to feel like too much, especially with all the experiments, I opted to pick one study guide and spread it over the whole year.  Gregory did the Chemistry guide, and I thought it went reasonably well.

I also gave Gregory two other natural history "slots" of 20 minutes a piece.  These were reading/narration slots, without experiments.

Term 1:  Secret of Everyday Things (continued from last year) and Phineas Gauge
Term 2:  Secret of Everyday Things (finished) and Eric Sloane's Weather Book
Term 3:  The Life of a Spider by Fabre and The Sea Around Us

We both liked this mixture of a science guide plus additional natural history reading in different topics much better than the one guide a term plus Secret of Everyday Things scheduling that we did last year.

Latin

We are slowly moving through Visual Latin and I probably need to get more involved because I'm finding a lot of errors in his work and his progress has pretty much ground to a stand-still.  I'm not sure if it is a lack of attention to detail, a need to do more memorizing, or a straight-up lack of understanding of what is being presented.

Spanish

This is the first year that I feel like we've actually made some solid, if slow, progress in Spanish!  It has been part of our curriculum for years, but it wasn't something that the boys enjoyed and no one was learning much.  We started using theulat.com and, finally, progress is happening!  We aren't spending as much time on it as we should, and there's still definitely some serious foot dragging happening here, but still... progress!!  I think what Steve Nesbitt has created in the ULAT is absolutely brilliant, and I am so impressed by his program.  We also learn folk songs and poetry in Spanish as part of our family studies.

Handicrafts

Gregory vastly prefers handicrafts that involve wood, particularly if it includes using knives or power tools.  But he has been learning to knit this year, and has completed several sewing projects too.  Gregory is also in the third year of the Paper Sloyd book and is hoping to start Wood Sloyd next year. (That is, if his mother can figure out how to make that happen...)

Music

Gregory is is continuing piano lessons with Hoffman Academy.  Progress has slowed this year, probably because I am not keeping very close tabs.  Gregory plays piano out of a sense of duty, because it is on his checklist, and is looking forward to the day when he can stop.  I told him that all students can either stop when they finish all the lessons on Hoffman Academy or reach the end of eighth grade.  He was relieved to hear he has only one more year to go.  I still really like Hoffman Academy though, and I don't think this is a reflection on Hoffman Academy.

Family Studies

I should probably mention that there are other subjects in a Mason education, but we study those together as a family.