4th Game vs the Broncos

Here's a good shot of "Blue defense" getting last minute
direction and pointers from the coaches. (And water too.)

The Tarheels faced the Broncos today, and the final score was 18-0.  (I really do feel bad for other teams who do not score during a game.  But I think I'm the only parent out there concerned about that.)

This was a tense game for the players, fans, and I'm sure the coaches. (Right?.. Defensive Coach Hyder?)   

With the score at 18-0 in the fourth quarter only half of the coaches agreed to leave "Blue defense" and "Blue offense" in the game for play time.  (JD is on both "blue" teams.)  Since this in JD's first year playing football I don't quibble over the amount of time he plays in each game.  (If he's not complaining, I won't complain.)  But with a score of 18-0, leave my child in so he can learn to play better.  This is exactly what the head coach and Jeff did!  (If momma's happy...everybody's happy.) I said to one coach, "Aw come on coach, leave 'em in so they can learn to play better."  But I think it bounced right off of him.  He was more interested in "pitching a shut out."  

I love this action picture.  JD was taught to take 'em down at the feet.  The poor Bronco player had nothing more to do but call out, "TIMBER!"

The bigger they are!!  The harder they fall!!  TIMBER!

I'm fired up!  You're fired up!

Unoffical half day

I forgot to set my alarm clock last night and I woke up at 9:40 am when Jeff called me.  (Happy Birthday Jeff!)  Then I quickly threw my clothes on to go to my dog sitting job.  I'm watching my friends 4 dogs and 4 cats for the weekend.  

When we finally came back from the pet sitting job we had our devotion called "National Fluffernutter Day." It’s a peanut butter, marshmallow cream, and chocolate topped sandwich. I love the shorter version of this sandwich with only the peanut butter and marshmallow cream. The devotion went on to say this was a strange combination for a sandwich. It transitioned into another strange combination - Faith and Works. Many people believe that you can work your way into heaven. That if they do enough good deeds that they will outweigh their bad deeds. This is not what my bible teaches. We will only get to heaven by grace through faith in Jesus. Christians today do not do good deeds IN ORDER TO BE SAVED; we do them as a RESULT of being saved.

I sound like a broken record when it comes to the math paragraphs. Today was another easy math day spent learning how to solve math problems through “problem solving.” It told us to add when the question suggests combining the numbers, subtract when the question suggests comparing the numbers, multiply when the question suggests grouping the numbers, or divide when the question suggests separating the numbers. JD scored a 100% on the quiz.

JD started a new Odyssey book today. It’s called “Light’s Out at Camp What-a-Nut. I love the way the author, Paul McCusker writes. The books are Christian based and easy enough to read. JD usually says they are hard to put down. His exact words during the last to book reports on the Odyssey books were, “A real page turner.”

It was a difficult day to try to get started. I was not really in the mood for school and neither was JD. I had ordered a movie for JD called “Troy.“ It’s about the Trojan/Greek war. Troy is a factual place which was located in what is now Turkey. JD learned about the reason for the 10-year war and the end result of the wooden Trojan horse. The Greeks snuck 30 men into a huge wooden horse that was a “gift” for the Trojans. The Trojans pulled the horse into their walled city. When nighttime came the 30 men snuck out of the horse and did away with the city of Troy. And that was our social studies lesson.

So that was our half day. Once again we did not do science or language arts. I felt so bad for JD earlier this week when public school had a half day and JD was still doing his lessons that I declared today a half day for Faith.

A pleasant day

It was a pleasant day.  The devotion today was titled “Jesus loves me this I know.” That reminds me of a sign that is in Joan’s Sunday School room. It says, “Jesus knows me this I love.” That is so true, but I need to stop depending on that fact that he “knows” me and work toward that childlike faith that I used to have and the “hunger” to be sinless like Jesus.



The math lesson was pretty easy again today. It was about finding the area of both a rectangle and triangle. To find the area of a rectangle you just multiply the base by the height. To find the area of a triangle you multiple the base by the height and divide it in half.

We watched the DVD “America: The Story of Us” for our social studies lesson. We’re both getting annoyed with South America and the number of Google searches we have to do to find the information we need. Today we learned about the Revolutionary War. I took 5 pages (2 front and back pages and one other page) of notes. I didn’t know all that stuff happened. I never liked history before but this DVD really interests me. I must be a visual spatial learner too. We learned about General George Washington’s first defeat and then his victory. We learned about the 400 ships and 32,000 soldiers that England sent over. We learned about Daniel Morgan, the sharp shooter commander, and his job of taking out the Indian scouts and British officers. We also learned about the small pox breakout and inoculation. We learned about Major General Baron Von Steuben who taught the rag tag group of rebels discipline, order, hygiene, and most importantly bayonet training. He also went on the write a manual that is still used today (very interesting). I think our favorite part was learning about the spies that were used by George Washington. There was a chain of people involved in sending invisible ink messages to Washington. Even a lady names Anna Smith Strong was involved. If she hung a certain petty coat out that meant the next message was there. Near then end of the six year war the Rebels stormed the British at Yorktown, VA. Two days later the British surrendered. We were left with 34 dead or wounded. The United States was the first to win a war of independence with Briton. Total there was a loss of 25,000 men for the cause.



Skeletal and Muscular Systems



We had fun in science today. We labeled our skeleton and mummy. JD is so observant. He noticed our skeleton has two left feet. (That’s funny!…Can you imaging walking in a circle?)

We misplaced the new library books so JD did not read today. But we did start the verbal book report. JD is so good at comprehension, but he’s not doing well with giving me complete sentences when I ask: What is the plot, setting, and theme of the book? When I asked, “What is the plot?“ I got, “A boy and a raccoon.” When I asked, “Did you like the book?” His complete sentence was, “I did like the book.” (Ok, technically, that is correct.) But JD knows I desire more information like: WHY? So I need to figure out a creative way to have him give a detailed book report.

I had my part-time cleaning job today and the only thing we had to complete was the language arts lesson. JD did three workbook pages. Page 61 was writing complete sentences using future tense words, page 63 was writing complete sentences using subject-verb agreement, and page 65 was writing complete sentences using agreement be and have. (I write the page #’s for me, not for you sorry.) It’s a “recommendation” by the state to keep a daily journal of activities with page #’s.

A goof around day

Thank goodness today was not grouchy day again. But I still got frustrated because he was goofing off instead of focusing. That was the word of the morning. Instead of answering the questions in the computer he goofed off until I said, “You’re wasting my time.” But overall it was another good day.

They have named a day for one of my favorite hobbies. Did you know today is International Frugal Fun Day. I am not a impulse buyer. In the past (mostly as a child) I always maintained a strict budget for myself , tried to keep money on the side for emergencies, and took pride that I was a good steward over my money affairs. (That was BEFORE I met Jeff.) So being frugal isn’t a bad thing. As a matter of fact (Jeff) Merrian-Webster dictionary says frugal is: characterized by or reflecting economy in the use of resources (not CHEAP!) 

Math was about perimeters. That’s easy stuff for JD. For a square you add all the sides together…that’s the perimeter. For a polygon you add all the sides. For a rectangle you add the length and the width together and times that by 2 and voila you have the perimeter. JD scored a 100% on the quiz.

In science we did a review of the digestive, urinary, and sensory systems. We did ten workbook pages together. It sounds like a lot but we worked together. JD remembered so much more than I did. Most of the work was a picture of the systems and we had to label them. Then there was a review of what certain organs did for that system. (I NEVER want to be a nurse or doctor.) JD and I saw a plastic skeleton (Halloween) and a plastic twin that looks like a mummy. We plan to label them with the skeletal bones and the mummy will be muscular bones. (We have too much time on our hands right?) What better way to have a visual for JD.

I found a cool web page for the South America review during our social studies lesson. It’s located at www.sheppardsoftware.com/southamerica. We played four games to review the countries, capitals, landscape, and oceans/seas. It has three levels for each of those topics. We messed up a couple of times and redid a game or two to retrieve a passing score. The review was on both Central and South America. We’ve only studied South America, not Central America and some of those questions were on Central America. We scored an 85% on countries, 85% on capitals, 100% on landscape, and 83% on oceans/seas.

Language arts was a fairly short lesson today. I had him do two workbook pages. Page 57 was on present tense words like: fix to fixes. Page 59 on past tense words like: enjoy to enjoyed.

JD finished reading the small book called Rascal. We did not do the verbal book report on it today. We will do it tomorrow.

A somewhat grouchy day

Our devotion today was called World Smile Day. Our day started out with smiles, but when we finished with the 5 minute devotion JD thought it was time for a break. I had to quickly jump into my teacher/principle mode and call him back. He kicked of his shoes and sulked. This made for a FUN math lesson, I’ll tell you what! As a matter of fact today was kind of a grouchy day. Not for me but for JD.

Next, I had JD read his book for thirty minutes because the internet was acting up and we couldn’t get online right away. So he read in his room while I vacuumed the house. (It’s tough teaching and cleaning. I sneak it in whenever I have a free minute. That way when Jeff comes home it doesn’t look like a tornado went through it.

Math was easy. It gave us algebraic problems like: x+25=50 and asked, “What does is the value of “x”?” We only had to do the opposite to figure out the value of “x” was 25. It is the same for addition, subtraction, and multiplication. When it came to division it got kind of tricky. Sometimes we had to divide and sometimes we had to multiply to find the missing value. In any case these two lessons were so easy I had JD move right to the tests. He scored a 100% on finding the missing value for addition and subtraction, but only scored an 80% on multiplication and division because he didn’t know the tricky part. I’m super proud of him for whizzing through those two lessons. (We’ve been tackling only one lesson a day so far…)

In social studies today we learned all about the people of South America. They are as diverse as North of America. There are mostly indigenous Indians and descendants of the Spaniards, Portuguese, and Africans, as well as the mix of those ethnologies. We learned that during the late 19th century millions of Italians, Germans, and Polish people moved in. Then, the non-Europeans started moving in. They included Syrians, Lebanese, Asians, and Japanese. The largest religious group is Roman Catholic and there are also Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. Each country within South America speaks it‘s own language, but officially Spanish is the language spoken in 9 of the 13 political entities. And there are a handful of Indians languages spoken as well.

We are still in the Human body study and will be for a week or two more. We continued our study of the sensory system, but more specifically the nose. We first looked up online (as we usually do, because I’m not a biology major…or any major for that part) the sensory system. We learned the labels for the eight different parts that make up this system. Then we learned a few interesting facts about the nose like: if your nose is at its best, you can tell the difference between 4000-10,000 smells! And children are more likely to have better senses of smell than their parents or grandparents. Getting older seems like a slow motion train wreck to me. We lose our memories, our smell, our memory, or bladder control, our memory…) Then, we did page 87 from the science workbook.

I wanted the language arts lesson to be quick and easy but it was not. JD and I worked together in a workbook. He provided the answers and I wrote them or I had him circle the correct answer. Today he learned about action verbs and direct objects. We only had four pages to do, but on the last page JD frustrated me by playing “word games” with me when we were trying to finish a story with direct objects to fill in the blanks. I finally had to pull away and take a break. I informed him that the story was asking him to use his imagination. It didn’t matter if it was fictional objects used or non-fiction. Then, I called our school day.

Football practice went well and JD is doing great. He’s still focused and trying. He seems to enjoy being there practicing and talking with his friends. The chill of the season has finally set in. I sit through most all of his practices and have seen him grow athletically and socially. Playing football this year was a good idea.

Busy but good day

The devotion today was called “Toot Your Flute.” It had to do with tooting your own horn. Sometimes it’s difficult to work so hard and not receive any recognition. But the devotion reminded us that in His own time God will honor us for our works. After all isn’t His honor all that really matters? (That’s a tough lesson for me to learn. I don’t give money to a stranger and expect a parade or anything, but I do thrive on words of affirmation.)

The math lesson was fairly easy today as well. It was just lengthy. It was a continuation from Friday’s lesson about patterns. Today we charted the information given. Lets say it’s 5, 10, 15, 20. (5 is the 1st term, 10 is the 2nd term, 15 is the 3rd term, and 20 is the 4th term.) Then it asked us what will it be on the 20th term? After charting the information the way they taught us we figured it out pretty quickly. The 20th term will be 100. (I know you’re probably scratching your heads…but this helped us a lot today. We wished we would have know this information last year!) 



Social studies was kind of painful again. I wished I had a 6th grade social studies book to teach from. (*note to self…order one!) I made a table of contents page for our six part South America folder. We will fill five tabs with various information. 1.) Facts and maps of South America 2.) The Natural Environment 3.) The People 4.) Patterns of Economic Development , and finally 5.) History. The hardest part of this is trying to locate maps or pictures for JD to look at. Just hearing words lectured to him does not interest him; pictures stick with him. Today we studies about vegetation and natural resources. We mapped each topic on the same map.

(Cheryl's Adobe house in S. Amer.) 

The more I learn about South America the more I want to take my military retirement check and move there. (You can find us in an Adobe house in Columbia. Then, I can have all the coffee I want! Wait a minute…Jeff the dream crusher just reminded me of the drug wars. Bummer)

We started learning about the “touch sense” today in Science. We didn’t get very far before I realized I had to get a shower and get ready for my cleaning job. We did learned about the epidermis and the dermis layers of skin. We learned nerve endings are responsible for telling the brain if something is hot or cold and potentially painful. (Interesting stuff.)



I had JD try to do his reading while I was at the cleaning thing. The boy of the house was home because of a half day. So reading was difficult for JD because JD’s friend kept showing him things. I finally had to tell the friend JD was almost done with his school day once reading and language arts were completed. This was hard for both of them to stay apart, but they did until JD finished his newly modified assignment of writing only a few complete sentences and answering some of the other questions about the story. JD is done with the second literature story called Wolf. I like the workbook, but it’s geared toward younger readers. I think we’ll try another type of workbook.