Good and easy day

Today was a good day. There were of course those times I had to refocus him, take away distractions, and warn him, but all in all it was a good and easy day.

Today is National Make a Difference (M.A.D.) day. I’m sure being a young person with no money, power, or prestige must be thinking, “How can I make a difference?” Remember the bible story about the young lad in the hills near the Sea of Galilee. He had a lunch of five loaves of bread and two fish that he gave to Jesus. That day the disciples learned that Jesus could use every person (no matter how young) and every contribution (no matter how small) to make a difference. What’s important here is us giving our resources, talents, time, and selves to Christ to use for God’s glory.

I knew that math lesson from yesterday would come back to haunt me. We ended up using the complicated “find the prime factorization” option for the fraction problems today. We had to find the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) for three fractions at a time. So: 5/12, 7/16, and 1/18 all have the LCD of 144. I used nearly two front and back pages to write out all the problems and answers. But now we fully understand this “complicated” option.

Today in social studies we concentrated on the history of South America. Specifically, the 16th to the 18th century. We learned about the 1600th century Spanish and Portuguese settlements and what drew them there to settle. They were things like: resources, farming, and slaves for the rich. We also learned that a Catholic that went around spreading God’s word was given special privileges and territories. The wars of the 1700’s crippled the Navy, settlements, and merchant shipping. The people were also fed up with being taxed to death and the Royal government ruling over the trading the colonists did. The 1800’s were filled with three major revolts. The last thing we learned about was the social inequalities between the Peninsular, Creole, Mestizo, and Mulatto people.

Today in science JD learned about chemical and physical changes. He recalled that substance has three different states of matter: solids, liquids, and gases. (Maybe he remembered from his birthday party last year.) He also learned two new vocabulary words: exothermic (produces heat) and endothermic (heat taken in.) The one thing about chemical changes to remember is they changes usually cannot be reversed. Then JD learned that chemicals can be grouped into two categories: acids and bases. If we had some litmus paper nearby we would have tested various acids and bases within our reach.

For language arts today I went over 23 different saying and phrases. I would say “popular” but well known might be better. Though I don’t know that I’ve ever used many of them. They were sayings like: all for one and one for all, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and one of my NEW favorites is hitch your wagon to a star. The book listed the saying and then gave them meaning behind the saying. Sometimes it even told us where it originated. So JD was glad there was no writing involved with language arts today, and I was glad he was happy.

I had intended to save reading for last since I had to run to the bank today. That way he could read the 15 minutes to the bank and another 15 minutes reading on the way back, but we forgot his book. It won’t be many more days and he’ll be finished with another book report.