Football - Game 2

The Tar Heels played the Cowboys today.  They beat this team too.  The final score was 13-0.  I'm so proud of my right guard.  He blocked when he needed to and assisted this team to another victory.  This is the first year JD has played football.  I'm proud that he has not said, "I want to quit" yet. Remember he's #53.

A special thanks to Papaw for driving all the way from Tennessee to see JD's game.  It meant a lot to him.

A nice day

We did our devotion and read the rest of Psalm 119. We also read Daniel 2 because the devotion led us to learn ways to get through stages of panic. Then we moved straight into math. The math lesson was about writing in “exponential form.” It’s too complicated to write about so I’ll just move onto the next lesson.

(Picture NOT drawn by JD)

We did not do a science lesson today because I was absolutely consumed with siting the prior days lesson with the website I used for skeleton system. I tried desperately to find the same website but was unable. So I gave up. Then, I went into my computer’s history and changed a few things so it would remember where I had been days prior. So once I find a website I liked I can easily find it again.

I went to my part-time cleaning job today and took JD with me. First, he read independently for 30 minutes. Then, I had him do his literature lesson in his workbook. The story this time was called Wolf, by Jack London. JD read two pages and then answered three pages of question. Once again, it reinforced comprehension, vocabulary, and idioms. It also helped him write in complete sentences and proper verb usage. I know it seems like he should already know how to write in complete sentences, but public school put us behind the power curve on this one. I think that‘s why I like this literature book so well.

A so-so day

We did our daily devotion that led us to the book of Micah. I mistakenly read Micah 2 instead of just Micah 5:2. Then, we read some more of Psalm 119. (The author still desperately wants to know and obey God’s laws.) We should finish Psalm 119 tomorrow. Since “Jeff-a-pedia” has so many versions of bibles in our living room we looked at a couple of them to read Psalm 119:105 which says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” to see if they read differently. Not too different. After our bible time I had JD read for 30 minutes. It looks like he’s nearly done with the next Odyssey book called High Flyer with a Flat Tire. If he keeps going like this I’ll need a book club card.

We started a Science block called Your Body Systems. Today we only focused on the skeletal system. We learned there are 206 bones in the body. There are 26 bones in each hand and foot. So 26 x 4 = 104. (Did you see that math sneak in there again?) So more than half of the body’s bones are in our hands and feet. We learned the five types of joints and the four types of bones. We also learned about cartilage and ligaments. Did you know that the bones in your body make up for 18% of your body weight? (So I haven’t really gained weight over the years, my bones must just still be growing! Smile)

We briefly studied about the United Kingdom today. We learned that England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland belong to the U.K. Ireland itself is a country on it’s own. We hit a rough patch with JD on this lesson. It was just after lunch and I had called him away from the TV. He was watching a show about a guy that swallows swords and jackhammers. So when I took him away from the TV I got a negative attitude through the social studies lesson. (Bummer…the U.K. was just getting interesting.) They have beautiful castles there.

Today for math JD and I sat through a lesson on writing exponents different ways. We learned how to write them: exponent notation (33), reading them (3 to the third power or 3 cubed), expanded form (3x3x3), and standard form (27). It was a fairly easy lesson. JD scored a 90% on the quiz.

JD finished up a literature study on a portion of a story called The Hero, by Stephen Crane. It was a literature piece about the civil war so I thought it might capture his attention for a while. He read two pages and went onto answer some questions about the story. The worksheets taught him comprehension, vocabulary, and idioms. It further taught him how to write using complete sentences. I made this the last lesson of the day so he would finish it up right away and be done for the day. It worked! (Kill his time, not mine!)

The NC museum of Natural Science

Today we went to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. We all wore our Faith Christian Academy t-shirts. On the back of JD’s shirt it says, “It’s ok to use big words, I’m home schooled.” (Smile) There were four floors to the museum. We loved every bit of it.

  

The first floor had information about Coastal NC and whale bones and such hanging above us. I loved how some of the displays had real fish in them. Most were statues on stages scenery. In the center were cases and cases of different wildlife that lives in NC.

The second floor exhibited NC mountains scenes with the specific animals and plants from that area as well as the Piedmont areas. They also had underground exhibits showing roots and minerals. Lyndell and I spent a lot of time looking at the different kinds of minerals and raw gems they had.

The third floor had dinosaurs, fossils, snakes, and a tropical room with brightly colored tree frogs in them. There was also a huge globe that showed world deserts and rainforests and such too.

The fourth floor had a living conservatory with butterflies in it as well as Arthropod (insects) exhibits. The last stop on our long journey was a Naturalist center where they had everything from taxidermy animals you could touch to uncut minerals.

We asked JD what his favorite things were and he said, “The bones (a skeleton to put together), the café, and leaving.” I asked him about the butterfly conservatory because he asked the guide a dozen well educated questions about those colorful creatures. He should have just asked for an application when he was done because now he knows as much as she did.

A compatible day

Today was the first school day JD did not try to goof off around his Grammy. We started kind of late because we were all exhausted from the busy weekend and visit with Daniel’s family.

We did our devotion and read some more in the Psalms 119. Then, we quickly moved onto math. JD and I sat through yesterday’s lesson. It was kind of confusing but when we wrote out the “scientific formula” it was a bit easier. Example 4.5 x 10 to the 3rd power = 4,500. Or 4.5 x 10 to the negative 3rd power = 0.0045. Lyndell and I both wondered what in the world we would ever use that for. Lyndell has a few more years of experience with math than I do and she made me feel comfortable and confident about my 6th grade math level. She told me in all her years, she never needed to know that stuff. JD and I breezed through the quiz this time and scored an 80% but in all actuality there really were two correct answers; we just picked the wrong one. (I can’t make this stuff up.)

Science today was a continued study of nutrition. Today we examined the nutrition labels on three different cracker brands and matched the ingredients to see which one was the healthier choice. Turns out Saltine crackers were the better choice, then the Food Lion brand crackers, and finally Ritz crackers. We did the same for Reece’s Puff’s, Crispy Rice (off brand of Rice Crispies) and Cheerio’s. Cheerios won, Crispy Rice came in second, and finally Reece’s Puff’s. We also sorted out if high or low numbers were good or bad for fat, sodium, carbohydrates, fiber, and vitamins. I knew them but some of them JD had a hard time with. Did you know you can pull the iron out of cereal with a house hold magnet. Find a flakey cereal with lots of iron. Scan a magnet over the top of the flakes. The black peppery stuff is IRON! (Though you might need that information in order to rest peacefully this evening.)

JD and I involved Grammy in our Social Studies lesson today. It was all about the British Isles. We examined different things about England, Scotland, and Ireland. We learned that gasoline costs .95 pence for a liter. To us that means $6.00 per gallon! We also learned Edinburgh, Scotland is 331 miles away from London, England. It takes approximately 5 hours to travel from Edinburgh to London via car. (That’s if the driver keeps to the speed limit of 70mph - Ah hum!) We also learned the island of Ireland is the second largest island in Europe and it is approximately the size of Indiana. It 174 miles wide and 302 miles long at their widest/longest points. We did all this in preparation for our European trip this spring.

We did not do an English lesson today. It was such a fun and compatible day that I didn’t want to ruin it. But don’t tell JD or he’ll be a sweet angel everyday to get out of English. The last thing I had him do was reading independently for 30 minutes.

It wasn’t long after that we headed off to football practice. According to Jeff JD really got in there a mixed it up a bit tonight. He’s also doing better at running the surrounding baseball fields. Yeah!

Another good day

Daniel, Sarah, Suri, and Isabella drove down yesterday from Tennessee. We visited with them for a couple of hours Sunday and put them up in a hotel for the night. (Sorry, the Hyder Zoo has “No Vacancy” this week.) Look there are 4 generations in this picture!

So I planned for a short school day today. We did our daily devotion which led to us reading the beginning parts of Psalm 119. We only got through the first 40 verses or so because we talked specifically about what the anonymous author was pleading of God.

The Social Studies lesson was fun today. Since there were three of us we played a game that I bought at the Everything’s a Dollar store. It reviewed the capital cities of the fifty states and some facts about what some states were known for. Jonathan came in first, Grammy second, and I came in last place. I called it, “getting a flat tire.”

JD did his math lesson independently today. It was a short lesson on The Powers of Ten. It was confusing for me but JD was really all over it. As a matter of fact I had to go back at 10:00pm this evening and redo the lesson for myself so I could understand it. I was in the shower when he did this one. Then, he moved right into the quiz and scored a 100%. I guess because he got through that lesson so quickly he thought he should move onto another math lesson. He did make it through the lesson but bombed the quiz with a 40%. I did not go back and redo this lesson. The Powers of Ten confused me enough for one day. We’ll tackle that lesson tomorrow.

Science was all about nutrition. We looked at the food pyramid and researched a carrot and found out all kinds of neat things about it. Did you know to plant your carrots as close to tomato plants as possible, because this will increase the tomato production. Also, if you leave the carrot root and all in the ground for two years, the flowers will attract predatory wasps that will take care of garden bugs. (Crazy I know…) We also learned the terms: calories, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats and what each one does for the body.

Language arts was designed to be short again. The only thing we did was recite the Parts of Speech poem and pulled out the cut up words to sort again. Were anxiously awaiting Daniel and his little family to visit again. When we got the call that they were visiting friends and would be for a while, I had JD read for was short time and that was the end of the day.

I’m not sure how much of this information Lyndell is actually absorbing, but she’s a great student! (I must admit…I thought that law written for “No student left behind” might get debated here at Faith Christian Academy…but she’s tracking right along with us.)

So, three car loads of mostly Hyder’s piled into Pizza Inn form dinner. We ate, laughed and talked our way through 1 ½ hours. Then we came home and visited for a little while longer. It was getting late and we put Daniel’s family up in a hotel again tonight. No sense driving home exhausted. It was such a nice surprise to see our grandbabies. I can’t wait for the next visit. Those girls are so pretty! There's Suri Noel (with Jeff) and Isabella Marley (with Reuben).