Game 3 (a face off with the Steelers)

The Tar Heels experienced their first loss today.  The Steelers beat them 12 -0.  But our boys never gave up.

Our #53 had a pretty big challenge today.  He was lined up with a "child" who was approximately 220 pounds. (JD is under the wooden play set.)  Pretty big competition today.)

My two Tar Heels together. 

When is winter break?

Today was the kind of day that I didn’t want to be at school, but we rustled up our courage and pressed on. We did the devotion called “This is Your Life.” If God were to surprise you with “This is your life” what important events would be highlighted? (Scary right?)

JD was in a weird mood today. He chose to read under the coffee table. He’s still reading the book called Rascal. The glasses happened to be right there too.  Sorry about the blurry picture.  I just wanted to share it with you. 

Harry Potter reading a book under our coffee table.

The math lesson was so frustrating today. If we didn’t NEED the computer I would have thrown it out the window. JD and I were tracking up until the presentation of new information without a full explanation. So much precious time was spent trying to decipher how to write the answer in algebraic form. The lesson was about patterns and trying to figure out what “rule” they used to get to the next number. Here’s an example: 0, 3, 8, 15, 24. Ok easy enough…JD and I said, “You take 3x3-1=8, then 8x2-1=15...you get the point right? Their answer was n to the second power-1. That one wasn’t too difficult but you get the point. (Ugh!)



What a beautiful child



We are still doing the science block on the body. Today we only studied the ear. Just to think of all those tiny pieces working together to enable us to hear. And some people think we evolved…. (I think some of us are missing a few pieces, but I won’t mention any names…JD.) JD had to label and memorize the shape of each of the 12 parts from the outer, middle, and inner ear. Then we worked on a crossword puzzle with those terms for both the ears and the eyes.

The social studies lesson was about the animals of South America. We don’t EVER want to meet an Amazonian anaconda or a piranha, but we do want to see a Capuchin monkey and a Chinchilla. We spent a lot of time copying and pasting. We also research facts about each one and the regions that they lived in.



Since I didn’t feel like being at school today I offered JD to pick what class he wanted to drop today. He picked language arts. But while we were doing our science lesson he said, “I should have dropped science today because of ALL of this writing.” (Aw…) 



Productive day

Have I mentioned I like the positive comments? They keep us going here at Faith Christian Academy. So if you’re feeling frogy, post a comment. (Some of you still need to sign up as “followers.” I’m not naming names or anything…Meme.)

JD had a small temperature last night and a slight temperature this morning so we still did all of our lessons just shortened version of them. We read through our devotion about the man made fabric of rayon. It’s used all over today, but the sturdiest fabrics are God made like cotton and wool.

After math JD read for thirty minutes. The one phrase I NEVER thought I would hear from JD is "I have nothing to read." He’s breezed through so many books that now I have to make another trip to our local library. I gave him a small book that I think we read last year. It’s a cute book called Little Rascal. It’s about a pet racoon and ALL the mischief he gets into with his boy.

The math lesson was a repeat vocabulary word from yesterday. It was distributive property and we fully understood it yesterday, but apparently there are others out there that need more practice. Not my JD! He breezed through the lesson and we tag teamed the quiz. He scored a 100%. Woo Hoo!)

In science today we learned a bit about our five senses. We only really got to two of them. They were sight and taste. We learned all the technical terms for the parts in our eyes and the reason why we will never swallow our tongues (even if we wanted to.) Then we went into the kitchen to taste sugar, salt, and lemon juice of the tip, center, and sides of our tongues to see which one responded to what taste. The experiment was inconclusive. The web site we we’re on also said, “Try eating an apple while sniffing a fresh cut onion.” We’re not sure what was suppose to happen because when we did it the apple tasted like apple and the onion smelled like onion. (Home school rocks because we can actually take the time out to do stuff like this.)

For social studies today we watched the America: The Story of Us DVD. I did not take notes today. It was a lot better because then JD and I could chit chat about the happenings. Today we relearned about the California Gold Rush, the steam boat, and the opening of the Erie Canal. I just get madder and madder when people price gouge. The people already at Gold Rush were jacking up the price of goods and meals there because they knew the prospectors would pay for it. (I would not make a good business woman. I’ll just stick to teaching.)

We did all of that before I had to rush off to my cleaning job. I had JD do his language arts workbook. He did the forth part of the story called Wolf. He did not require any assistance from me today to form those “difficult” complete sentences. I’m so proud that we’re finally moving ahead with this task.

As I type this blog there is an endless rush of Lego’s being push this way and that. (It’s been going on for over an hour. I love that sound. That means he’s being creative and will soon produce a one of a kind specimen. One day maybe he’ll bin the Lego’s by color. (LOL - yeah right!)

I like good days

Our devotion was about “Undeserved favors.” Bruce Springsteen gave a lady $100,000 once as a gift for her to ease her financial burden. God gave us a gift too. Eternal life if we accept his son as our Lord and Savior. I praise God always for his gift and couldn’t imagine my life without Jesus. I’m certainly not where I want to be (spiritually) but I’m also glad I’m not where I was before I accepted Jesus.

After our devotion JD read the rest of his Star Wars book that he started ealier this summer.  I did not do a verbal book report on this book because he stretched the book over a couple of months.  The details would be fuzzy. 

Math was all about the theory of multiplication. We relearned those oh so difficult terms like: identity, commutative property, associative property, distributive property, and finally inverse. It’s all very confusing but we’ve figured out how to keep all those dumb terms straight. It’s all memorizing the terms enough to pas the tests. I’m still wondering WHO uses this mess?

In our social studies lesson today we learned about the different water resources in South America. We started in on the climates too. There are fifteen major rivers in South America. We looked up six of the major lakes there too. They were difficult to find on the internet. I wonder exactly what information is needed for this South America study. Seems like we’re never going to get done with it.

When given the option of which body system to study next JD selected  "Excretory system."  I guess he though that sounded educated or something.  Turned out we studied about our PEE!  Because the other day wasn't weird enough with poop right?  We learned about the urea, kidneys, and bladder.  I guess the most interesting part for us was the function of the kidney and it's filter process.  What a busy body we have.  (God is good!)

For language arts today I tried to help JD map or web his story call Three Bullets to Live. He started this story a couple of days ago and all on his own. Of course it’s war story. He’s even got military time in it. Here’s what he’s got so far. (And he even typed in in old typewriter font. Mind you he started this without any of my assistance or as an assignment. Who knew he wanted to be a story teller?)

Three bullets to live. june/6/1944

2400hrs. We were on are drop ship 10 seconds to land, we’re on the coast of Germany. Bullets were flying past are heads, bombs were hitting the water shaking the boat. Then the unexpected, Boom. The boat blows up………

So when I webbed with him I tried my best to understand from who’s point of view is this story being told. JD said, “Me.” I said you are the author, but someone said, “We were on OUR drop ship…” (This took ten minutes for him to give in and name his character Private Andrew Jenkins.) I then asked what’s the plot? He went into GREAT detail about his story. (I listen for a few minutes, but after five minutes the character was just making land fall….) It’s very difficult to teach webbing or outline form to JD. He would rather just type the story than to do a “rough draft“ (whine). I guess to him that’s double the work.

In the mean time does anyone know where the Ark waiting line is? It's been raining here for two days...and we're expecting some more tomorrow. Apparently, the passenger side window of my truck down ALL DAY! (Squish)

Easy day

Today was not a short day but we had easy lessons.  This made for a good day.  Our devotion today was about "A Good Teacher named Confucius."  He taught through stories and questions. Those that followed him imitated his words and deeds. Jesus was also a teacher who taught using stories and questions.  Accepting Jesus’ teachings leads to eternal life. So imitate Jesus.

After the devotion he asked if he could read next.  I said, "Yes."  He said he finshed the book High Flyer with a Flat Tire so we did a verbal book report on it.  This still needs more work because he's missing major details from the books he reads. I read this short book before lunch and asked him more questions to beef up his book report.  I hope this helps him realize cause and effect.  He started a new book today.  He loves Star Wars books.  

Next we did math. I told Jeff yesterday after math I wanted to put a noose around my neck. Today was much easier for JD and I. The lesson had all kinds of problems for us to solve, but today they gave us the value for all the variables. (It as easy to figure out the answer as it is taking candy from a baby. (I’ve never tried to actually take candy from a baby, but the lesson when really fast today.)

The social studies lesson was on the DVD America: The Story of Us. Today we learned about the events that led up to the Boston Massacre as well as the details of the Massacre. We learned about John Hancock and Paul Revere. I took one full page (front/back) of notes on: the Boston Tea Party, the proclamation line, and the 1st Continental Congress. This congress included people like: John Adams, Patrick Henry, and George Washington. We also learned all about the date of 19 April, 1775, and it’s major events between the British and the Rebel Malitia in Lexington, Concord, and Boston. We learned this is where Paul Revere said, “The British are coming!” No one knows who shot the first shot, but we do know it was the shot heard around the world.

Our science lesson today was all about the digestive system. It all starts with the mouth with the saliva starting the breakdown. It goes through the esophagus and drops into the stomach. The acid in there breaks the food down further. (Are you listening? There will be a test later.) After the food leaves the stomach it goes into the small intestines. We learned that the small intestines absorb the nutrients and act as the gate keeper letting small amounts of food into the body through the walls. After the small intestines finishes the food goes through the large intestines. The large intestines steal the water from the food and then…you guessed it…makes feces. (This is about the time JD looked at me and said, “Don’t they know this lesson is for kids?”) I explained it’s all natural. Then when I told him it has to leave the body where does it go? He knew anus from a prior lesson, but I introduces rectum too. This gained giggles and major blushing. I may have to wait until he's in the tenth grade to teach him the productive system.  Oh course it might still be funny then too.

The last lesson of the day was language arts.  I had him read the third part of the story called "Wolf" and answer the questions.  He's getting a lot better with his complete sentences, but still tries to take short cuts.  He'll ask,  "Can I write they instead of Maggie and John?"  (I guess you can guess my answer.) 

Another good one

Today we did our devotion on World Tourism Day. This is multiple times recently we have been reminded not to get too attached to living on earth; after all it‘s just temporary. The next lesson was math. Specifically “Algebraic Expression.” We did just fine when they told us the variable and value. It was when they told us a word problem and asked us to write an expression we did not do well. We learned that there is no equal sign in an expression. We also learned that the term product means multiply and quotient means divide.

Is this guy for real? Yup!

The science lesson was on the muscular system. I never found that stink’n website I used last week. Today I sited all the sites I hit. We learned there are over 600 muscles in the human body. We also learned there are three types of muscles. Here’s some facts for you. Did you know 40% of your body weight is muscles? (That explains my weigh…now I know my bones are growing as well as my muscles…yeah right.) We have 30 facial muscles. The eye muscles are the busiest in the body; blinking 100,000 a day. Really? The largest muscle is the gludious maximus while the strongest is the tongue. When I was doing a review today while driving I asked JD which muscle was the strongest and he stuck his tongue and flipped it back and forth while making a loud sound. That made me laugh out loud, since every other response was verbal.

JD and I had a few errands to run today. First, we went to the post office to mail out Jeff’s bible to be rebound. Then, we went to Auto Zone for new wiper blades. (It’s been raining all day and I desperately needed new blades.) Our last stop was the bank to deposits checks, coins, and cash into our “European Fund.” I also went to my part-time cleaning job.

I had JD do his literature workbook. He’s still reading the Wolf story. I had him do a few workbook pages before playing with his new 12 year old friend who lives there.  He did not do a social studies lesson today. After dinner I had him read for thirty minutes.