Unschooling Moments of the Week 1/14/11

Well the best news of the week is that Josh, my 15 year old, has completed Saxon's Algebra II textbook!  Hurrah!  He started out September of his 9th grade year with it but he was in such a slump motivation-wise.  He was busy growing, changing, eating, sleeping, daydreaming, etc.  He just didn't have the energy to learn Algebra II!  This was such a switch because in 8th grade he had asked for a more formal year and he had done a lot of stuff from Kolbe Academy.  And he seemed to enjoy it!  But not so in 9th grade.  He just wasn't up for doing much for school.  So we slogged along through the year but it was painful.  Added to this was the fact that he developed severe scoliosis and had to have major back surgery in February last year.  Then there was the long recuperation from that.  So he wound up plodding through math all summer with lots of stops and starts.  So it is with great relief, that I, his mama, see the end of Algebra II.  I thought he was going to be doing it until he was 18!

So just as he finished it up, he announced he really likes math and wants to study more!  Our plan, (I think) is to use Khan Academy to tighten up on getting all the geometry necessary for the SAT in.  Saxon weaves geometry in and out of its Algebra I and II texts.  But you really don't have a full credit's worth of Geometry without doing about the first 1/3 of Saxon's Advanced Math.   I think, though, we are going to go with some other math text for PreCalc and Trig.

It was a good but informal math week.  We enjoyed our new math game (Sean even played it twice with me on Wednesday!).  And we enjoyed reading about mathematicians and exploring math that way.


We have started back up on The Story of the Romans.  Josh is listening in now when I read it aloud.  He and I are preparing to take the National Latin Exam in March.  We need to bone up on our Roman history and culture!

The boys seems to be getting more into cartooning.  I keep finding things like this around the house:

I find these slightly disturbing!  From what deep depths of despair do these spring from, I'd like to know???

Becky continues to decorate the glass sliding door with her creations.  She is very into paper craft.

She's gotten into doing activities from this book (a hand me down from her older sister).  She wrote in invisible ink made from lemon juice (which doesn't photograph so well!) and also had fun writing secret messages like this one:

Do you see a theme to these messages?