Weekly Wrap-Up - February 14, 2015

It's been, um, 3 weeks since my last "weekly" wrap-up. lol. Ah well.

This week was a bit of a crazy week.


Lots of time out of the house this week, which makes book work and other at-home work difficult. An outing Monday half the day, Wednesday almost the whole day, Thursday was an out day for me and my daughter. And then yesterday, neither teen was doing well physically, so it became a day off.

What did we do?

*My daughter caught up quickly with her social studies, which is good, because it had been stressing her being behind a bit. She's also been working on her art course on and off and doing some other projects. She's waiting for some art supplies she ordered online--they weren't available at Michaels and rather than spend time running around the city seeing is a more specialized store has it, she researched things online, found a good price from one source and voilà!

*My son has continued with math. Still working on... I think it's booklet 4 of The Key to Algebra series. I found out from my husband that the factoring our son is working on is done next year in the schools here. Ah well. ;) He's also been reading from Tattoos on the Heart (I think I wrote "from the Heart" in previous posts; woops) and one of the Guardians of the Galaxy comic collections and some guitar practice and a lesson and a brief look at Louis Riel. Oh, yes, I also had him go to My Food Guide for health and to create his own guide and print it off (something I put on his list of things to do while I was gone on Thursday). Something went wonky, though, so it printed off his choices of foods for each category but didn't print how many servings he's supposed to have. And no, no science. I don't know how much he is enjoying or appreciating Tattoos on the Heart; he did make a request for the book Black Hawk Down, which we'll be picking up from the library this weekend. I'll give him a break from Tattoos on the Heart, I think, so he can focus on Black Hawk Down. I never finished reading Lone Survivor, so I don't know how gruesome or heart-breaking it is compared to Left to Tell. I figure there's a lot of social studies being covered if he's reading these books--although it would be better if I would read them, too, and be able to discuss certain things with him or encourage him to look up things (okay, note to self: read Black Hawk Down, too), but I also know how horrifying certain parts of Left to Tell are and not sure he's prepared for it. But perhaps that's just sensitive Mama getting in the way. ;)

This coming week is a 4-day school week: we have Family Day here in Alberta on Monday. I'll hopefully get some science and the government lapbook in there this week! And perhaps some French? lol

Weekly Wrap-Up--January 24, 2015

We'll see if I can remember to write another post next week with the same subject line, but there is a part of me interested in starting this as a regular feature.

This week's Wrap-Up:

*New things: 

My 14-year old son has changed his mind about learning Lua and has started working on something called Unity (which he seems to think is still Lua, but my research would indicate otherwise). There is a great section to learn how to script in Unity with guided projects and tutorial. He's doing the Roll-a-Ball tutorial right now, having made it through the "Moving the Camera" video on Thursday. It's not as fun as he thought it would be, but I told him that the early stuff isn't necessarily fun--it's once you have enough knowledge to make your ow things, then it really gets fun. My job with this is to make sure he does it a few times a week.

*Old things:

Social studies for the 14-year old: We're continuing our studies in the Canadian government by starting a lapbook. That was yesterday's little bit of work in that area--picking a colour for the lapbook and then me trying to figure out the sections he'll have to put in it. Earlier in the week, I had found a link through the Government of Canada website with information on how the government works and another link that gave some of the history of the development of government in Canada.

Social studies for the 17-year old: She is working on her third unit, but for whatever reason, she didn't manage to finish it by last night. She has one assignment to do and a review quiz--she has to get it done today because she decided she was only going to take one week per unit and I had to make sure she got it done on the Saturday if she didn't finish earlier. There is also an assignment from earlier this week that I haven't sent in. (Her credit courses are all distance learning/online.)

Math (14-year old): He's still working on (pre)algebra. This week, is what the distributive property and introduction to factoring. He's just started doing things like "factor 5x^2y - 10xy -15xy^2". He hasn't asked this week why he has to do this kind of stuff, which is good. He did keep forgetting to close parentheses and I told him it was an important habit--that in programming, if you forget to close something, it can mess everything up. Perhaps that connection with something "interesting" and useful helped.

Science (14-year old): A look at the periodic table families and I can't remember what else. I've decided for now to just mainly base myself on the textbook.

Art (17-year old): She actually touched her art course this week. I need to sit with her and have us figure out what she has actually finished and get that stuff sent in. She won't have to do all of the assignments from scratch if she can submit early ones, do well on them and then other work she's done--like the Doctor Who painting and some other things she's done on her own or as part of an art class she's taking.

French (14-year old): I had him do a little grammar sheet and he also started writing a paragraph about why video games don't make kids violent, although he might have actually written that in English. I can't remember. Really, it's a recap of what somebody else said, which I'm fine with because it's like narration--I'm fine with him doing narration at this point if he's not capable of coming up with his own ideas!

I was trying to get my son to do more physical activity; not sure I accomplished that goal this week. I think I need to put together a chart that he fills in; it would be a way for him to talk to his dad about the things he's done during the week, too.

I am also still wondering where our copy of "The Hobbit" (the book) went. I haven't seen it since before we moved in October!

I'm going to throw this out as a challenge to you: What is your weekly wrap-up? If you post about it, come back here and share the link!