Weekly Report

For those of you who like to follow along in our school endeavors, this post is for you.

We have completely revamped our schooling. We basically were doing mostly traditional book work type things. It was going okay, but the boys were just rolling along. Pokemon King began to get a little difficult. Dinodude was okay, but nobody was enjoying it. I really want them to enjoy it, so for the next 6 weeks, we've put aside the majority of our curriculum (except Math & English). We are now following a Charlotte Mason type schedule. We're using the guidelines from Ambleside Online. We've already completed a week and so far the boys are enjoying it. Here's what we do:

I took a regular die & made it so it has 6 different colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, & purple. Each color represents a form of narration:

red-drawing
orange-written
yellow-oral
green-art/craft
blue-skip narration
purple-student choice

So, after their reading selection, they roll the die. If they land on red, orange, green or yellow, then they pick a folded piece of paper from that category. They do whatever the paper says. Here are some examples:

red-draw a picture of a place in the reading & label it/draw a picture of a character from the reading
orange-write a letter from one character to another/write a multiple choice quiz of what you have just read
yellow-give a telling to mom about what you just read/be a TV reporter & give a report from a scene from your reading as if it is happening live
green-write & perform an original song that tells the story of your reading/make a poster advertising your reading so someone else will want to read it

Those are just a few examples. Here's what the boys did this week.

Pokemon King was sick Thursday, Friday and half of Wednesday, so we didn't complete everything he was supposed to do. But, here are a few things we did do...

This is part of his postcard from the Goblin from the reading "The Princess and the Goblin." (the other side wasn't scanning clear enough)
Here's his picture of Vasco de Gama. He wanted to draw it on the markerboard instead of on paper. He looks kind of like a rappin' Vasco de Gama, doesn't he?


This is his rendering of the first part of Marco Polo.



This is song about Paul Bunyan.


If you can't understand what he's saying, here are the words:
Chop, Chop, Chop the trees,
The tiny toothpick trees.
Hammer the stumps down with the maul. (that was our new word from the story!)
Smash 'em to the little ground.
Chop, Chop, Chop, Chop, Chop the ground with my ax.
Chop, Chop, Chop, Chop, Chop the tiny trees.

These are Dinodude's accomplishments. This one is from a story from "Parables of Nature." It talks about a caterpillar, a butterfly, and a lark.

This is from Aesop's Fable, The Tortoise and the Ducks. Here, he was supposed to make an ID for one of the characters. He chose Turtle and got a little creative with the info!

Here's his skit on Henry VIII.

And here's his puppet show on The Sword of Damocles.