Sunday, September 12, 2010

Last Week at Aquinas Academy

Well, our "official" start to the new academic year got off to a slow and messy start.  Instead of starting with the next grade level's material, I decided to back up a few lessons in math and use those repeated lessons as a review.  Once we're finished with the books from the previous year we'll order new ones.  So Birdman is finishing up with Saxon's Algebra 1/2, Velvet is working in the last part of Saxon 5/4, and in an effort to find math to challenge Lightning McQueen a bit I'm putting him in Saxon 6/5 (he had Seton's Math 4 last year and found it b-o-r-i-n-g).  I like the 'spiral' method of Saxon a lot.

We'll be doing journals this year, again.  I hope to also be able to keep up with reading lists, and we'll try the library in a couple of weeks to see if my three ya-hoos can manage to actually do what you go to the library to do - look for and check out books.

This fall's civics and social studies will be working on political campaigning; stuffing envelopes, handing out yard signs and other campaign lit, working the phones, all that kind of good stuff.  I've got several field trips in mind too; I think I mentioned them in a previous post.

Science?  Well, we've got plenty of animals around here, what with Velvet's riding lessons (which also counts for PE), Lightning McQueen's chickens, Eli the dog and Chuck the parakeet.  Velvet is going to be in her first horse show on October 2, about which she is very excited (I think; she is very low-key about it really).  Just walk/trot/cross rails, but you've got to start somewhere, right?

I'm going to try to do regular academic-year progress posts this year.  This way I'll have a more permanent record of what we did and when - paper seems to disappear around here.

I also need to schedule 'school pictures'.

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