Weekly Report #11

Literacy
With each new unit of the Basic Code, I have seperated the work out into two sections. In the first weeks, Joshua is taught to read and write new words, then in the later weeks he reviews these words while he completes his Penmanship Reader. Despite our illnesses over this last week, Joshua now has only one lesson to go in the first section of this third unit, [s]=/z/, introducing words such as is, his, as, has, was and, just for the heck of it, Israel. Next week, we will hopefully complete that lesson and then spend a few lessons copying our second Rule of Written English ("A capital letter marks the beginning of a sentence and the beginning of a name.") On Thursday next week, Jeff is taking Joshua and the girls to Granny's hobby farm in Albany for 8 days, so that will be the end of regular, daily lessons for this year. Occasionally over the Christmas season, I'll get Joshua to work on his third Penmanship Reader, so he doesn't forget what he has learnt. Then when the public school and Theological College students' year starts at the beginning of February, we'll be ready to tackle consonant and vowel digraphs.

Literature
We are still reading and enjoying Pollyanna by Eleanor H Porter. I am hopeful that we will complete it by the time the kids leave for Albany, because I don't want them to have to wait for the end and I also don't want to miss it myself!

Table Time
Jeff has been, rather masterfully, drawing the kids pictures "one step up from stick figures" (which is my forte) to colour this week. The kids have been making requests: Anna has asked for dolls, Abigail has requested houses, and Joshua has delighted in Jeff's invented dinosaurs, such as spotosaurus, spikemomosaurus, centipedosaurus and two-headed lionasaurus.Here we have a specimen of the little-known Girafmosaurus.