What We’re Learning: Form 2A and 2B Part 2

 

Mouse is 10 this year and primarily doing 6th and 7th grade level work. She loves  anatomy, drawing,  and anything crafty or artistic. She still wants to be a orthopedic doctor and has gotten some first hand experience this year as she has had a couple of episodes of patella subluxation (the knee cap sliding out of its groove and back again). She still struggles with sustained attention particularly with her less loved subjects, so we are concentrating on building that habit of attention as well as completing the academic work for this year.
This year I decided to separate her from Buggle  as much as possible. They are close in age, but very different in temperament and interests and those differences began to make difficulties for them towards the end of last year. She is not as  ready to work independently in any area as Buggle so she “fell behind” him (that attention thing again). Separating them makes more work for me, as I have to do an additional set of individual lessons and checking ,but has been much better for their relationship as they have fewer opportunities to for one upmanship and silly rivalries.

I have matched her with Bull in some areas which makes her  the “big kid” and builds her confidence. She has even taken to helping him with his math from time to time if I am busy – which is quite an unexpected move given how hard she has worked to convince herself that she isn’t good at math and dislikes it (this is totally untrue but math requires sustained attention). Developmentally she is still in a a fact gathering place more than an analytical one; so keeping her in classes where she is fact gathering and just beginning to analyse with guidance is more appropriate.

Subjects:

Anatomy– Having exhausted all of the elementary and middle school level anatomy that I can find we’ve moved on to a  high school course this year.  Mapping The Body With Art from The Basement Workshop is a wonderful course that taps into Mouse’s love of drawing by having her draw her way through human physiology from the water molecule to the structures of the cell to the bones and organs.  It is online but self- scheduled so she works on it twice a week for about thirty minutes with great attention.

MEP Book 4 and 5– continuing with MEP as it works well and gives a solid foundation. We do two pages per day and she maintains a steady pace.

Latin- we are about halfway through Latin For Children B and I expect to begin C mid- spring.

Drawing- this year year we have a drawing specific class at co-op as well as a photography club that meets once a month and Mouse is thriving in these areas.

Creative Writing- at co-op

Handwork- at co-op plus 15 minutes at home daily. She recently took up crocheting and loves to design and make dresses with her sewing machine and whatever fabric I have around and am willing to part with!

Recorder/Music – I am teaching her recorder and she is also singing in the church choir and our co-op choir.

History- she would rather read novels and dislikes having to narrate what she has read but with persistence her ability to read things requiring attention and narrate them back is improving. We have begun keeping notebooks together in the afternoons and she finds that needing to have something to add to the notebook helps her read with an eye to what she wants to record.

Memory is a favorite and she is flying through the poetry I selected for this year. The list is available for download here: [download id=”5991″]

Catechism- is the Baltimore Catechism and is mostly self done. There are lessons to read and questions to answer which generate discussions from time to time.

English From the Roots Up- is not a favorite but I let her draw the meaning of one of the new words and I am seeing an improvement in spelling.

She is making good progress most days on the habits that make a good student and life long learner and I expect the mechanics of learning to be much easier by the end of the school year.

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