A good day

Today is not the official day this year to file your taxes. The date this year is 18 April, because Washington, D.C., will celebrate Emancipation Day on April 15, a day earlier than normal, since April 16 falls on a Saturday. In observance of the DC holiday, Tax Day will be moved forward one business day, this year landing it on Monday, April 18.

The devotion listed types of trees and types of fruit or nuts. It asked JD to match them up. Apples come from apple trees and walnuts come from walnut trees. No matter how hard it tries a cherry tree could never produce apples. That tree just doesn’t have what it takes to produce that kind of fruit. Making right choices is the same. Because we are sinners we don’t have what it take to produce the fruit of the Spirit without God’s assistance. The Spirit lives in everyone who has trusted Christ for salvation. It’s only by praying, reading our bibles, and loving God can we make right choices.

What a coincidence…the AWANA book and the devotion match up. Today we learned the last three characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit and they are: faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These all deal with our behavior. JD completed challenge 8:5 by memorizing 2 Peter 1:5-8. That was a HUGE string of verses, but he did it!

Today’s math lesson was about circles. We relearned the terms: diameter (across the middle of a circle), radius (from the center to an edge), chord (a line between two points), circumference (the area around the entire circle), and pi (the # “3.14”). The lesson was pretty easy for us or so I thought. There were only five questions on the quiz and I had to answer a phone call in the middle of it. I instructed JD not to turn in the quiz until I looked at it. I’m glad I did. JD multiplied and divided by “3” and not “pi - 3.14.” Once he understood that he did well. He changed three answers and scored a 100% on the quiz.

We’re still working on comprehension in language arts. JD went to T4L and did an interactive guided instruction. He read a passage and had to answer questions about the main idea and supporting details on a non-fiction story. This lesson was not scored.

For social studies today I had JD do another type of interactive map game on Europe. He went to http://www.ilike2learn.com/ilike2learn/europe.html and didn’t score as well as he has in the past. BUT they added countries (or different names) that we did not study. This was good to know just in case the assessment asks something similar.

For science today we went to Brain Pop and watched a video on soil. It was a cool little video that taught us about the zones of soil. They are: horizon A (top), B (subsoil - rocks mineral, and clay), and C (soil not yet broken down.) We also learned about humus (organic matter in soil), weathering, erosion, and leaching (or draining.)

JD did not read today.

We left after school to pick up the Pirate’s uniform’s. They got everything correct except one boy‘s shirt. I got a bit distracted by the beautiful weather so I went out back and planted grass where Tater and Levi (my part time tenant) tore it up. I totally forgot to make dinner. So I ran to KFC and picked up a bucket for the family. We rushed eating and headed out for our Baseball practice.