Long but fun day

Today was a long but fun day. The math and social studies lessons were long but we managed to find some fun in math today.

The devotion today talked about Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes making deductions in order to solve a mystery. Then, the devotion transitioned into kids being able to see what parents value by the rules they set. For example if I teach my child to say please and thank you it means I value manners; “clean your room please” means I value cleanliness; problem. The same thing is true of God’s commands and what they reveal about His character.

Today in the AWANA book JD had to recall four reasons how we can know the bible is true and recite four bible verses to back it up. Next, we looked up 7 bible verse to see which person listed had the listed occupation. JD learned that the bible is true because 40+ chosen people were selected to record God’s words and yet the information all fits together. JD commented that those people ought to be really busy. Then, JD memorized Luke 1:1-2, 4. (A very long selection.) I told JD of my research on the Bible Bee and he doesn’t seem to think he would want to do it. I went on to tell him that his natural ability to recall bible verses is amazing. (I’ll keep working on him.)

Today in math we had to draw pictures and use logic to figure out complex word problems. We definitely had to work together on this lesson. JD read the clues and I made the picture or charts. The lesson took a lot longer than expected but we had fun doing it so I didn’t mind the minutes falling off the clock. We obviously were not paying attention during the quiz because we only scored a 70%. We read two questions incorrectly and suffered the consequences. (Oh well.)

Another fun lesson was science. I never imagined I’d ever say that! It started with the quiz we forgot to do one seed plants from yesterday. He scored a 90%. Then, choose to learn about photosynthesis. It was a fairly short lesson packed with lots of information about where our energy in green food comes from. The lesson told JD about the “food factory” process where the plant takes in and puts out chemicals. We learned that plants make glucose, starches, fats, and proteins. Luckily for all of us, plants food factories dump their “waste products” into the environment. So when you breathe in air you’re actually inhaling a plant’s waste materials. This garnered gagging and coughing sounds from my pupil. Apparently we didn’t absorb all the information in this particular lesson because together we only scored a 60% on the chapter quiz. We went back and reviewed what we missed or simply had to guess at.

The social studies lesson was also a fun lesson. We went more in depth about our future trip to Ireland and Scotland. Over the weekend I took the travel magazines and dissected them for only Ireland and Scotland tour bus information. Today we worked on Ireland. We printed a map and I started naming cities. It was JD’s job to mark the city and draw a line from Dublin to the location and mark the distance between the two. We looked at images of the things the bus tour would take us to. Ireland is famous for many things but what we found out today is Belfast is where the Titanic was built. Kilkenny is the Medieval city. Waterford Crystal company is based in Waterford. We stopped our research near Cork. We found out that the “famous” Blarney stone was set in 1446. So that makes it 565 years old. It is kissed by 300,000 people annually. As much as I hate math I did the math on this. That means it’s possible that 169,500,000 people may have kissed that stone. Also, it’s possible the stone had a biblical background. After a search on it there are conflicting legends. One legend reports that it is the very stone Moses stuck for water. Another legend says it’s the stone used as a pillow by Jacob. The next legend says it’s the stone Jonathan hit behind when David’s father Saul was after him. In any case…I have to kiss the stone no matter how long the line is. (I’ll just have to scrub my lips with sandpaper after I do.)

JD and I continued his colony story today in language arts. Today I prompted him with more questions. I asked things like: why he wants a new colony of people, why 2,000 people want to leave America to follow him, how his government will be different from America, and what each of the three islands will be used for.

I left JD to read for thirty minutes on his own. I asked if I needed to remind him to read and he said, “No.” I did remind him twice since school ended and in between the two animated movies he’s watched but he did not read today. I’ll just have him read for 1 hour tomorrow.