General Remarks
Nathan is the youngest of what we think of our older set of kids, and is not quite sure he wants the responsibility of being one of the older kids. But he definitely wants the privileges, so there's often a struggle between wanting the privileges but not wanting to step up to the responsibilities.
Nathan really values time alone, which is challenging when you are 3rd in a family of 6 kids. He also is required to share a room with 2 brothers, but at least he has a top bunk which gives him a little bit of personal space. Nathan has a deep caring streak, doting on his beloved guinea pigs and often attending with great kindness to his baby sister. He'd much rather be on "Charlotte Duty" than do any other sort of household work. He loves to read and play Legos and would happily do that day after day after day if allowed to do so. He's interested in cooking, but often the thought of clean-up is enough to keep him from doing it. He is our chief lizard catcher and is the one most interested in catching and observing the various critters who live around here.
Nathan's my child that I really wonder what his "bent leather" will end up being. I feel like there's a lot of different possibilities, but I also have a suspicion that whatever it is will end up being one of those things that is obvious in retrospect but surprising when it happens. In the meantime, we keep trying to initiate a large number of relationships with different ideas and things so as to prepare him for whatever kind of work is before him in the future.
Subject Areas
Bible/Faith
3x/wk, 20 min - Old Testament Studies: 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 KingsI 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: Nathan reads from the Gospels on his own.
1x/wk - Devotional Reading: The Curé of Ars, The First Christians, My Path to Heaven
Language Arts
Nathan has moved to three compositions a week, and I would generally type one of them for him. Getting Nathan to write is definitely a struggle, and compositions are the most dreaded part of his school week. He's made good progress this year though, as his compositions have gotten fuller and more detailed. But if he put as much effort into doing his compositions as he does into complaining about them, he'd be in a much better place with his writing.Gregory and Nathan do dictation together 4x/wk, and Nathan 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.
Nathan finished up the first level of Winston Grammar this year (which he started last year) and has definitely made progress. I think adding Latin this year (I'll talk about that further down) was beneficial for him, and has helped him to get a better grasp of the parts of speech. Next year Nathan will start the Analytical Grammar Jr. Mechanics book.
Mathematics
Nathan is working in the Strayer-Upton Practical Arithmetics Book 2. I work with him every day and we do not do every page. This year we've focused on fractions, while also keeping the long division and multiplication fresh in his mind. Because he saw Gregory working in it and thought it looked interesting, we work about 1x/wk with Hands-On Equations. I wasn't sure how he'd do with it, but he's taken to it very well and understand the concepts quickly. We also work 1x/wk in Lessons in Experimental and Practical Geometry, and another 1x/wk doing game-based arithmetic practice, generally with Gregory.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
Nathan read The Aeneid for Boys and Girls for the first half of this year, which had the added benefit of allowing him to join the family in our Aeneid discussions. He liked the fact that he was moving through the story more quickly than we were too.Nathan also read some of Kim this year, and I think he'll finish it over the summer.
I feel like Nathan's scheduling was a little light in literature and a little too heavy in historical fiction, but I think it was a good choice for this student for this year. Last summer just about all Nathan wanted to read was Redwall, so I thought assigning more historical fiction might spark interest in that direction. This has completely succeeded, and now his free reading is far more broad than it was a year ago. And it isn't just historical books, but other more literary childhood classics as well.
History
This year we were studying the 19th Century in European and American History, and Ancient Rome in our Ancients stream.American History
- This Country of Ours (which he said was one of his favorite school books of the year)
- Across Five Aprils
- Counting on Grace
English History
- Our Island Story
- Hero of Trafalgar
- Napoleon by Marshall
- Florence Nightingale's Nuns
- Into the Ice: The Story of Arctic Exploration
Ancient History
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| Drawing the clock at the Crocker Art Museum |
Citizenship
Nathan also joined us for Plutarch as part of our family studies.
Geography
- Our Country and Its People by Buckbee - I thought this went reasonably well, although I need to work more with the maps and in setting up the lesson.
- Book of Marvels, The Occident - another favorite (and really, who doesn't love Richard Halliburton? And isn't it wonderful to have this back in print?). Nathan read, narrated, and added locations to his map for this book.
- 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.
Natural History
Last year Nathan and Gregory their science together, but this year I split them as Gregory moved into Form 3. Each term had a general Natural History book, a book about Inventions, and then a theme for the term. There were 2 20 minute slots and 1 30 minute slot each week.Term 1: Great Inventors and Their Inventions, Storybook of Science (continued from last year) and Junior Science Book of Electricity with Snap Circuit challenges
Term 2: Great Inventors and Their Inventions, Storybook of Science (finished) and Rain, Hail, Sleet & Snow (I didn't use the study guide w/ experiments because I just didn't have time to do that with him that term. I thought the book was rather light, but it probably would have been better with the guide)
Term 3: Great Inventors and Their Inventions, The Life of a Spider by Fabre and From Shore to Ocean Floor (I got some great narrations from this book)
Latin
We used Getting Started with Latin and I really like this book. Nathan generally did too, which was great. We did it all orally, where I would read the sentence in Latin, Nathan would repeat it in Latin, then translate it into English. I really like the format of the book and the pacing. There was a lot of review in the book, but there was enough variation that it didn't feel like drudgery. And introducing just one new word each lesson made the vocabulary building feel painless.I'm so glad to have finally found a good way to ease students into Latin!
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