Week Three plus Classical Music through Cartoons

This was a good week.  We seem to be getting our rhythm down which helps.  We did the 3rd grade Oak Meadow story about the boy called Micah.  We worked on English through Galore Park's Junior English 1 book.  The book is designed for a younger grade, but as DS1 did not have very much instruction at school--we're using it.  It's still probably on-level for a typical 3rd or 4th grader in a US public school.  Our plan is to complete books 1 and 2 this year, and save book 3 for the first half of 5th grade.  I'd like to be in the "So You Really Want to Learn..." series by sixth grade.

Sonic is actually doing his work in cursive. I'm so excited.  The Calvert program/style seems to really fit him.  With printing, his writing was barely visible.  Now it actually looks nice!  Yippee!  I also think he enjoys the Waldorf-y aspects of writing in colored pencils and what not.  Form drawing too is a big favorite of his.

For science, we did some of the OM4 observing science in nature with our jewelry loops.  I bought this set on Amazon and am very happy with it.  It was less than $8.00.  I can't speak as to how it compares to the loops in the OM set, as my curriculum was used.  We also used them to examine some salt crystals as well as minerals in our Young Scientist Minerals experiment.   Sonic loved that. I then had him copy the tables into his science notebook.

We finally got our nine-note recorder method books, so will start recorder next week. I need to practice!   We're also exploring classical music through cartoons.  Cartoons were my first exposure to classical music--and I love it.  I also attended Interlochen's music camp which definitely fueled that--but it was cartoons that started the love.  "Kill the wabbit!"   So, we watched "Rhapsody Rabbit" which features Franz Litz's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.  I also have a love of operetta so can't wait to show him Sideshow Bob's H.M.S. Pinafore!

You can see (as of August 2013) the full version of "Rhapsody Rabbit" at http://vimeo.com/51469481