Game 7 vs the Raiders

Today the Tar Heels met with the Raiders again and ran all over them.  Our 1st scrimmage game of the year was against the Raiders (and we won then too!) 

The final score of today's game was 26-6.  The Tarheels won.  JD did great!

 In the top picture JD is behind the kid with the red shirt on.  We had to look for shoes or black arm pads to find him.  This particular picture was taken just before the pile of kids (and ball) were getting ready to move forward for some yards. I wished my camera was quicker so I could catch more sequence pictures.  Because the next thing I saw was JD and the others pushing the ball and pile of boys back and jd landed on top of the pile.  The Raiders were pushed back two yards. 

The bottom picture surprized me when I saw it.  JD broke free from the blockers and was well on his way to reaching the quarterback.  JD told me some kids was holding his arms and shirt to keep a hold of him.  This was one of those times. 

JD had a great game for the short amount of time he played.  I hope he'll get to play more now that one conference is under thier belts.  The next game is 6 Nov at 10 am. 

Three teams tied for first place in this particular conference.

No school today

We did not have a day of school today.  It was a family moving and driving day.  We all five (Sarah, Suri, and Isabella, me, and JD) arrived safey back in North Carolina around dinner time.  It was a good drive but a bit long.  There were many stops. 

It's so comforting to have our grandbabies back under or roof for a while.  All we can do is put this situation in God's hands.  I know my God will take care of all of us. 

A good productive day

The devotion today was about the Statue of Liberty (as a symbol of freedom.) The cross is now a symbol for freedom too. I am free from the penalty of eternal separation from God because Jesus paid the penalty on the cross. You would be amazed at all of the crosses you see all around when you drive. The next time you see a telephone pole remember Jesus’ cross. Where else can you see a cross?

The math lesson today was about divisibility rules for the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 10. I won’t list the rules because 1.) you don’t really care and 2.) because you won’t remember them all. JD has a grasp on the divisibility rules so that’s all that matters. I also received another clue into the mind of my child today. He told me how he pictures each number and what color he see them as. I’m still trying to understand if this was a past vision or a present thing. He told me he has been seeing numbers this was since age six. Anyway here they are:

1 (white) little kid that plays

2 (black) little kid that plays

3 (green) the girl in the 1 & 2 group

4 (yellow) dude that hangs out with 5, doesn’t like 6

5 (orange) dude that hangs out with 4, best friends with 6

6 (blue) best friends with 5

7 (red) bully to 6, 5, 4

8 (purple) big & buff woman

9 (pink) fancy woman

10 (grey) grandpa

Today in science we learned about matter. Matter is anything that has mass and takes up space. There are three groups of matter and they are: element, compound, and mixture. Examples of elements are oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon. There is only one ingredient in an element. The second group is compound. Most of the matter in our world is compound. That is two or more ingredients that are joined together and cannot be taken apart easily, like water and sugar. The third group is mixture. It too is made up of two or more ingredients that are mixed together and are easy to take apart, like cereal and milk or trail mix. All matter has observable properties. A property is a characteristic we use to identify something, like color, smell, or sound. So now you know what we know about matter. Does it matter at all to you?

I had JD read for thirty minutes while I was at my cleaning job. I used JD’s language arts time to have him color each number from 1-10. I was curious how he pictured each of them. I plan to have Jeff scan this picture on Monday.

We did not do a social studies lesson today.

JD and I left from my cleaning job to drive to Tennessee. As most of you know Sarah, Suri, and Isabella will be staying with our family for a few months. So this set up should make for very interesting days to come for all of us. Prayers during these next few months would be greatly appreciated.

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.

A great and fun day

Today was a great day. JD worked his tail off with all of the lessons. AND we had fun doing all of them. The devotion today was called The Buck Stops Here! That saying was made famous by President Truman. He was actually taking responsibility for his actions. Passing the buck came easy to Adam from the bible (…the woman gave it to me…) Whenever we do something wrong we tend to blame someone else or make excuses. Today’s devotion is clear…when we mess up, on purpose or accidentally, we need to admit our wrong and take responsibility for our actions.

Today we used our reading time to complete the book report for the book called Camp What-a-Nut. He finished this book back on 15 October. I just don’t think he comprehends what “the plot” means. I tried to explain in by saying, “you tell about the book without giving the ending.” Then, I tried saying, “give me a beginning sentence that explains the problem. Then, give me a sentence or two that explain how the problem plays out. Last, give me a sentence or two of how the problem was solved.” This explanation was understood in the steps revealed. We finished the report in about ½ hour because I typed while he talked. The report went a lot smoother than I anticipated and he remembered many of the details.

The next ten or so math lessons will all be dealing with fractions. Today we learned about the Least Common Multiple (LCM). The lesson gave us two ways to get to this conclusion but we preferred the first way. That is to list the multiple of the given numbers and find the LCM. So if it gave us: 2,4, and 6, we would list out the multiples.

2 - 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16
4 - 4, 8, 12, 16
6 - 6, 12, 18

By listing them below each other it’s easy to see the LCM is 12. The second option dealt with the prime factor numbers and multiplying them to get some other number and (blah, blah, blah) That’s why we preferred the listing way better.

The Mad Scientist



Science today was both fun and engaging for both of us. But, I know more about the periodic table elements than I really ever cared to. I can tell you what every number on each element label means. JD and I made a helium model, a beryllium model, a lithium model, and a boron model with Fruit Loops and glue. I will forever be scarred by such numbers as the atomic number, the atomic mass number, and number of electrons in one of the four sub-shells. I feel like running in a hallway somewhere and putting my head between my legs like I did in elementary school in preparation for the Soviet Union attacking the US with an atomic bomb. (Help! I don't have a hallway...) Then I had JD write out the labels for the four models. When he worked independently it was a slow process. When I spelled the names and spoke the numbers we breezed through the assignment.

We spent so much enjoyable time on the science lesson today that we did not do a social studies lesson today. I love that we have that flexibility with our schedule.

I Googled 6th grade writing assignments to see what some teachers are teaching for language arts and found a fun lesson about an the stages of writing an “Autumn” poem. First we learned about the different lines of the rhyming patterns. Then he listed ten words that came to mind when he thought of Autumn. (I did the writing since I knew that would hamper his creative ability.) Then we pulled up a rhyming dictionary on-line. (Yep, they actually have a rhyming dictionary.) We rhymed all those “reminder” words. Then, I wrote the rough draft of JD’s poem. This is the final poem that HE typed out. (I only helped him with writing the last line and prompted him with questions for more descriptive words.)

Autumn leaves

Crisp leaves falling from the trees
can sometimes be seen as hard.
It always makes you sneeze
as it lands in the big brown yard.

A man rakes it up in to a humongous pile.
A young boy happily jumps on top.
The old man watched with a bright smile.
This kind of boyish fun should never have to stop.

Trivia for the day…Do you know the two colors that do not have rhyming words? (Don’t Google the rhyming dictionary either.) Answer: Purple and orange.

Another good day

The devotion today talked about the microwave oven. I can’t believe it was invented in 1955. Why did it take so long to come out? I remember it coming out in the 80’s and it was expensive too. Anyway, the devotion talked about our need for speed. The microwave verses the oven…the microwave will win if you’re in a hurry. Or the internet…dial-up or high speed cable? Definitely high speed internet. We want everything now. The devotion transitioned into the saying “Patience is a virtue.” (It’s actually from the bible in Galatians 5:22-23.) God knew we would need to learn to wait for prayers to be answered, help for trouble, relief from pain, and waiting for his kingdom to come. So the next time you’re waiting for you microwave to finish…think patience.

Today’s math lesson was pretty easy. It was dealing with the basics of fractions. Today we re-learned about the numerator and the denominator. We also re-learned about improper fractions, mixed numbers, and fractions on a line. It went so quickly that JD gave a hoot and a hand clap when it ended.

The other day I was searching for videos on the reproductive system when I stumbled onto a website named www.brainpop.com. I signed up for the one week trial period to see if I liked the site. Apparently, JD used this website while in public school. We did like it and used up our free week. So I signed us up for one year plan at $9.00 a month. It is loaded with all kinds of kid friendly yet informative animated videos on: science, social studies, english, math, arts and music, health, and engineering and technology. We ended up using this site today in science. We learned all about atoms and molecules. Then I had him complete a few pages in his science workbook. He labeled the parts of atoms (page 258), wrote the chemical compound of pictured molecules (page 259), and found elements on the periodic chart (page 260). We took a quiz on Brain Pop and scored a 80%.

Today in social studies I had JD take notes on the Post-Columbian explorations to South America and the explorations of the interior continent. There were lots of names that we’ll never remember. I made the main effort of this lesson learning how to take notes. This is a disturbingly difficult process for me to teach. I read a sentence and have him pick out what’s important. This is the slow part for him to think it through and give me his best guess. I taught him how to put the information in his own words verses writing it word for word. So he kind of understood that dates, names, and basic information is what’s important.

I had JD read his book, Behind the Locked Door, for the first thirty minutes of my cleaning job. He took a short break and the moved onto language arts.

I know JD stalls when I ask him to write a story. It tends to be written at a 2nd or 3rd grade level at best. So I was working with him today in language arts to add sense words to sentences. For example what senses come to mind when I say “The first day of Spring.” He had to use his five senses to describe spring. He used smells like flowers, sounds like birds, smells like grass. I had him complete page 95 in his workbook while I cleaned for my part-time job. Then I had him add descriptive words to plain sentences. He could either make a happy story or a scary story about two friends taking a walk in the woods and finding a cave. He chose to make his story happy. Then I had him complete page 97 to finish the story.