A nice day

Today was an overall good day. There were bids for less sentences and less reading but the rest was good.
The devotion was about Lewis and Clark’s expedition. They set out on a journey without a map, without directions, and without knowing their final destination. All they knew was they had a mission and their supplies. It transitioned into Abraham facing the same type of journey. He only knew God told him to leave his homeland and go to a new land that God would show him. We may be asked to go to unknown places and we need to respond like Abraham did. He trusted and obeyed.

Sadly today was the last day of the Purpose Driven Life reading. And it ended with some home work. I have already done most of this book/study three times now and this will be the first time I type out my Life Purpose Statement. (Not right now though. It will take some time or so I read.) The book offers questions to answer and they are…1) What will be the center of my life? 2) What will the character of my life? 3) What will be the contribution of my life? 4) What will be the communication of my life? 5)What will be the community of my life? Those are some serious questions and I will need time to write my responses. I don’t know what I’ll share with all of you now that the Purpose Driven Life reading is finished. I hope you all have read it at least once. If you have not I would highly recommend it. It’s a life changer…you know finding out why you’re here on the third rock from the sun…

I don’t know how JD keeps all these geometry names, labels, and terms straight, but he does. Today we did two more lessons. First, was naming parts of a solid figure. All these names…ugh. Names like: face, vertices, and edges. They wanted to know how many faces, edges, and vertices does a rectangle have. (Don‘t stress…I have the answers for you…6, 12, and 8. There, now at least you’ll be able to sleep tonight.) The second lesson was classifying prisms, cylinders, cones, pyramids, rectangles, and squares. There was sorting to do. JD had to be able to what each shape was and more questions about faces, edges, and vertices. I was so impressed with him. He had to take some of his time to teach me on a couple of them. (Whew. He’s beginning to grow impatient with my lack of knowledge. I even had to say, “Well don’t get mad at me. I’m just asking a question.” Yeah, this home school thing is REALLY working out fine.) JD easily scored 100% on both quizzes.

Today in social studies we looked at and learned about the east coast states. We learned the east coast is divided into three regions. They are: New England, mid-Atlantic, and southern states. We learned that they all have common characteristics like: weather, topography, industry, economy, and population. Then we did the state capitals flash cards again. Last time JD missed 36 capitals out of 50. That’s when I wrote 10 states and corresponding capitals on an index card and we occasionally study them. It paid off because JD now knows exactly half of the state capitals. For homework I gave him Alaska, Arkansas, and California to research. He will write down the following facts: state capital, nickname, flower, abbreviation, and date entered into the union. We did not do this last week. He has only completed 15 thus far.

I thought I would make the email/snail mail lesson fun and different for JD. We provide small monetary support to a child named Happy. He lives in Africa. This monthly support enables Happy and his family to eat and have a better life. I had JD type an email to Happy. I offered brief topics of discussion like: weather, school, family, and religion. I said ask him how the weather is there and then tell him how our weather is. I really didn’t think it would include an English lesson from JD to “inform” me that he asks the questions and waits to see if Happy wants to know his answer. (He was just trying to shorten the lesson.) I didn’t give in though. He typed a well written email to Happy. Happy doesn’t have email but I told JD I would ask if he did. (Ssh, it’s our secret.)

The language arts was pretty long but JD managed his way through “All the reading” and scored a 100% on the quiz. The lesson was a Think Aloud, level 2, part 3, based on a fictional story.

The science lesson was short today. It was only the chapter quiz on Recording Observations. JD scored a 90% on the quiz. He‘s also thankful that the lesson on recording observations is complete. He’s getting discouraged with science and the length of some of the experiments. (After all he is an instant results kind of kid.) It is now day 7 on the four slices of bread we set both on the counter and in the refrigerator. None of the four slices has yet to produce any mold yet. But don’t you know if that was the only four slices in the pack and I needed to make two sandwiches it WOULD be moldy. It’s just the way it works. The good thing about the bread is if your roof is tearing up we have a solid crusty piece of bread you can patch it up with. (Smile)
Today was a nice day here. I was able to get out and move my plants around. They seem to multiply every year so I just spread the wealth throughout my "garden." I love getting out and doing some weeding. (Crazy huh?) I find it very relaxing. I can really get into this relaxation mode.