Weekly Wrap-up ~ Delightful

Delight-directed learning. I am sure you have heard that term more than once. It's an idea that I love, and try to adopt in our schooling whenever possible.

We are ending our school year in a delight-directed fashion.

Doing grammar at the window, watching the mama bird feed her babies.

Dawson chose to study Knights for the month of May. I wasn't sure how to handle planning lessons for this unit, so I did the only thing I know how to do ... I checked out a ton of books from the library. While at a consignment shop a couple of weekends ago, I found a great paperback book called Knights by Julek Heller and Deirdre Headon. It is delightful, and it's Table of Contents gave me a guide to follow.

I chose 10 topics for Dawson to work on, one for each day. This week his daily topics have been: Initiation, The Vigil and Dubbing; The Sword, The Helmet, The Armour and King Arthur. He read the pages in Knights, and pertinent pages from two other books I checked out from the library, and then did a notebooking page each day on what he learned. (He also told me that he used the Knights book to build a castle on Skyrim. Video games can be educational!)

Our read-a-loud for this unit is Templar by P.C. Doherty. It started out a little slow and hard to read (all those names), but Wednesday's chapter picked up in a hurry, and now we are totally into it.

On Tuesday Dawson designed an inscription he would put on his sword. He used the symbol for "God Sent".

He also chose a dagger to construct using the pattern and instructions at Storm the Castle. This was my Favorite Resource this week. There are tons of things that can be constructed from this site, including items from Skyrim, Thor, Lord of the Rings, and Assassin's Creed (just to name a few). He will be making the Assassin's Creed Altair Dagger.

We also watched a couple of episodes of Full Metal Jousting from The History Channel (we are half-way through the series), and an episode of Auction Kings where a guy wanted to sell his grandfather's "Templar" sword and uniform (which ended up being a more recent set from the Masons. He only got $375 for them.)

We also have some documentary videos and the movie A Knight's Tale to watch, that we checked out from the library.

This has all certainly been fun, but there has been other more serious work to attend to as well. Dawson almost finished his Life of Fred Beginning Algebra assignments, his Critical Thinking book, and Grammar Key. He will finish all of these early next week. He took a break from Journey to the Center of the Earth to start reading Wonderstruck by Brian Selznik, because he's got to get it back to the library. He also dissected a clam and a starfish. Next week he will finish his Biology course by dissection a grasshopper and a snake.

Dawson can take his written driver's permit just as soon as he has studied the actual manual long enough that he feels he is ready. We have completed the book portion of his Driver's Ed class, he took the pre-tests and passed them, and is now ready to start driving once he passes his state written exam. He is currently watching the driving video lessons.

What is Brynne doing while all this is going on? Well, she is mostly GLUED to the computer working on our newest TOS Review product. I will be posting on that soon. Let's just say, "Go Math!"

I decided, pretty much at the last minute, for us to end our year with a unit study on Charlotte's Web since it's the 60th anniversary of it. I had to throw this unit together in a hurry, as well. Beginning May 14th, I will be posting 5 Days of Literature Unit Studies for the The Old Schoolhouse (along with loads of other Crew members doing 5 Days of ... posts). I used my own method for planning this literature unit.

We are reading/listening to a couple of chapters of the book every day. Then Brynne is narrating to me what happened in each chapter. (Can I just say that her narration abilities have improved SOOOO much since the beginning of the school year. I swear she's ready to go to college.)

I made a "Notebook" of sorts for our study, printing off the narration pages and tons of worksheets and lapbooking components on farms, pigs and spiders. She does a worksheet or lapbook item each day. We have never been big lapbook people. But, she seems to enjoy doing a component each day instead of all at once. We'll put it all together at the end.

Brynne has also been reading at least one book a day on the farm, pig, and spider topics.

We are reviewing a writing product for TOS, as well, and it fits in PERFECTLY with our farm animal unit. That review will be up in a little over a week. Stay tuned for it.

Brynne is only a few lessons away from completing her Easy Grammar, Handwriting and Copywork materials (we won't finish all of the books ... will pick back up with them next year ... but she will complete the lessons I had planned.) We have ceased using MEP for math for the remainder of the year because of the math product we are reviewing. We were at a good stopping point, and will pick right up there this next school year and blast forward.

Brynne will also more than complete her 100 book reading goal for the year. There is a Nintendo 3DS game she really wants, and some Lego Ninjago chapter books. I am certain she will be getting those as a reward for an excellent school year.

I. could. not. be. happier. about. how. our. school. year. has. gone.

Delighted is a total understatement. I actually tear up when I think about it. I am bursting with pride over my two students. Astounding!! Amazing!! Magnificent!!

Almost makes me sad that we will be done in 7 days .... Almost!

Linking up at Weekly Wrap-up @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers, Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners, and Favorite Resource this Week @ Learning ALL the Time.