Friday, 4 February, 2011

Today was field trip/technology day. 

The day started out by me getting ready for our field trip to Hobby Lobby for a magnetic kit when suddenly my new computer showed up. 

A couple of days ago Jeff ordered me a Dell Inspiron Duo for our homeschool.  Since it was a tablet I thought I could get downloadable applications like a 3G cell phone.  (I was wrong.)  I spent about an hour turning it on, hooking up the Wi-Fi, and checking out the basics of this new toy. 

JD and I finally packed up and got the magnetic kit.  Next stop...the mall.  I spent my Christmas card to JC Penny's and Bath and Body Works.  By the time we got home from our shopping, Jeff called wanting to know where we were going to eat for Family Night.  We ate out, drove home, and explored the new computer. 

The worst part of the day was...I gave into the worldly ways and it pulled me away from my daily bible reading. 

The dreaded writing lesson

It was a good day until the dreaded writing lesson.

The devotion today was about Cola company slogans. The one for Pepsi is “Gotta have it!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the youth say, “I gotta have that or this…” That’s exactly what God meant by the ten commandment of “Do not covet.” God values contentment. God never wants and he wants us to be content with what he gives us. That way we can reflect what God is like.

The math lesson was fairly easy. It required me to write things down to keep them straight but JD breezed right through using only his mind. It was still about proportions and unit rates. It also has a missing value that we had to figure out. Most of it was fining what value was best. Like: 3 liters of grape juice for $4.29 or 2 liters of grape juice for $3.02. The 3 liter bottle was the best value by one penny. JD was amazed he scored a 100% on the quiz. (He always has us cross our fingers…100%’s get high fives!)

For science today we continued with magnetic terms. We learned about solenoid coils, hard and soft ferromagnetic material (I know right?), magnetic domains, and magnetic induction. We‘ve been reading about it but I think there‘s a field trip in order here. Off to Hobby Lobby for a magnetic kit. I just can’t get my mind around the uses for magnets.

We did not do social studies today.

I cleaned my client’s house today. I’m down to only one day a week now. JD read his book Hoot for the first thirty minutes. Then he moved onto the AWANA/language arts lesson. Today in the AWANA book it wanted JD to write a letter to a missionary. (Bet you can’t guess what his response was.) Unfortunately, challenge 4:3 was not completed today. We sat together earlier in the day and looked up an AWANA missionary from North Carolina. This young family of two were impressive. David started in Sparks and received a Citation award in 2003. The Citation Award is the highest achievement afforded by Awana. It is awarded only to high-school seniors and adults who have completed 10 of the third-through 12th-grade handbooks or studies, which involves memorizing approximately 625 verses and includes all associated studies and activities. So I thought this would be an incentive for JD to get to know someone else who excelled in memorizing verses. We drafted an idea letter at home with all the required fields as taught in T4L. It had the heading, salutation, body, closing, and signature area. He introduced himself, told David he was a home school student and also in AWANAs. Then he asked David, “Can you offer any advice for having “fun” in AWANAs?“ All JD had to do while I cleaned was to write completed sentences from our ideas. JD did not want to write the letter today and kept breaking his pencil led, tearing his paper erasing, and just stalling. I had him count the number of lines on his paper. There were 27. I said, “If you don’t want to write the letter today then you need to write 27 times, “I do not want to write this paper.” Do you know he was stubborn enough to do it? AND it only took him 20 minutes.

A quiet productive day

Today JD woke up on his own and asked if that made me happy. I said, “Yes, since I was in such pain last night I was hoping for an easy day.” I took one Midrin in the morning and told JD that if he was the cause for my headache coming back today he would be writing a page out of the bible. That kept him calm, quiet, and obedient all day. Though he had a hard time staying focused.

The devotion today gave tabloid headlines like "Alien space ship found in New Mexico" (it was a four seat plane from Mexico) and "baby born with a treasure map on its back" (it was a birthmark.) The devotion went on to say people believe this stuff and the writers embellish these types of stories to get someone to buy the magazine. God doesn’t like stretching the truth, telling white lies, or lying at all. Lying can be destructive, separates us from God and can erode our character and destroy our reputation.

The AWANA book today had JD recite all 66 books of the bible for challenge 4:1. He learned them in book one, refreshed in book two, and now again in book three. He’s got such a good memory. Actually, we both did pretty good until we hit the minor prophets. Then we started challenge 4:2 where he’s learning God is faithful. He memorized 1 Corinthians 1:9.

The math lesson today was more on proportions except this time there was a missing value and we had to figure out how to find that missing value on the other side. They showed us two ways to get the answer. JD didn’t really need any other way except to figure out what they did to make 5 get to 15 and he did the same to either the top or the bottom. He scored a 100% on the quiz.

JD pushed out another lesson in Greek and Latin root words and did the corresponding quiz. He scored an 83%. Then, he tackled two quizzes on suffixes. He scored a 75% on one quiz and a 100% on the other.

In science today JD and I learned about electromagnetism. That’s a huge word and amazingly I spelled it correct the first time. We learned about magnetic fields, electric currents, electric charges, electrons, and many other glossary words. We also learned about Benjamin Franklin’s role, Hans Christian Oersted’s role, and Andre-Marie Ampere’s role in electromagnetism discoveries. The unit of electrical current, the amp, is named after Ampere.

Today for social studies we used T4L. We went into the tab called Rome since JD is always asking about Roman leaders and traditions. We stopped under Origins of Christianity. That was an extremely easy lesson for JD. It was all about Jesus and the 30 some odd years he lived. He scored a 100% on the quiz.

Today I only had JD read for 25 minutes because he listened the “first time.“ He’s still reading the book called Hoot today.

A good day

Ouch! Turn out the lights and whisper please.

Last night's post ..."I have a server migrain.  Will caught up laeter."

LOL that's funny!  I would have preferred someone saw my head off last night.  It was a tough day because I had a raging migraine. We managed to get through all of our lessons and thankfully JD was focused.

The devotion today had a scenario: You ascend a big mountain in a vast desert. God meets you there and gives you the ten commandments, in which one of them says, “You shall not steal.” You figure that a) God needs a better speech writer, b) God’s making this stuff up off the top of his head, c) God values trustworthiness. Many people know God said, “Do not steal” but they don’t know why. It wasn’t because he needed a “filler” to make ten commandments instead of nine. God wants us to be trustworthy because he values trustworthiness. He wants us to reflect his nature and character.

Today in JD’s AWANA book he completed challenge 3:5 and learned that God wants him to honor his parents (yeah) and his neighbors. It focused on the Ten Commandments. Then, he completed challenge 3:6 where he learned God is merciful. He had to memorize three bible verses.

The math lesson today was about ratios and proportions. They were not the fun kind that JD likes but we got through the lesson pretty quickly. He’s so good at ratios and proportions. Here I am scrambling to write it down and figure it out and JD has the answer (most times.) We found out ratios can be written three ways: as a fraction (½ ), with a colon (1:2), or with the word to in in (1 to 2.) From there is was just figuring out if the ratio was to go up down according to the lesson. Easy stuff really. JD scored a solid 100% on the quiz.

JD used T4L for language arts today. He did one practice lesson on prefixes and then took two short quizzes. He scored a 100% on one quiz and a 90% on the other. He loves those T4L lessons. Humor really helps him learn.

Today in science we explored the world of magnetism. We re-learned that opposites attract and like poles repel. This is also know as the Law of Magnetism. We learned that some MagLev trains use magnetic repulsion to keep them running smoothly. One weird thing we learned is ducks use the magnetic poles to navigate with. (Did you know that?)

Science led us to look at Google Earth for social studies. We found the geographical north pole in the middle of the ocean and the real north pole in Canada. The we fly to Ireland and Scotland to look around. We had a lot of fun exploring a castle in Edinburgh.

JD read “Hoot” today for his thirty minute timeframe.

After that I tried to nap away my migraine with medication.  But it didn't work.  So after dinner Jeff and I stayed in our bedroom with the lights off watching TV.  That helped some.  Maybe tomorrow will be better.

A good productive day

The devotion was titled “1+1=1.” (I was wondering where they would go with that.) It talked about a boy being bored in science class until there was a planned explosion of two chemicals. He was expecting another explosion with sodium and chlorine but it only made ordinary table salt when combined. Combining those two chemicals makes each much more useful to our everyday life. God intended marriage to be like sodium and chlorine mixed together as one. He brought together two different entities and united them in a relationship that makes them more useful than each one would be individually. Then the devotion listed the commandment “Thou shall not commit adultery.” JD’s question was, “How can a kid my age commit adultery?” I explained that later in life (like 30 years old - smile) he’ll be married and that’s what God is talking about.

I combined the AWANA book with social studies today. One of JD’s Challenges in the AWANA book was to bring two friends to AWANAs. Once he brought two friends then the AWANA leader would sign him off for that challenge. So since the population of AWANA kids at our church dropped from around 30 kids to only 6 this past Sunday I realized something had to be done. The bus ministry was suspended this year because of lack of both drivers/riders as well as kids to pickup. So JD and I went out today and taped up 70 invitations on the doors at an apartment complex that we used to run the busses to. So many kids were out wondering where we had been. We talked with many kids and parents who said when the bus came this Sunday that they would be on it.

The math lesson today was about problem solving. It was the last lesson under measurements. So with all the tools we had in our measurement tool box we easily got through this lesson. We figured out seed growth in “x” number of weeks, the number of hand shakes in a group, and the prices for a family to go out to eat. JD scored a 100% on the quiz. I guess JD remembered the “Ants in the Pants Day” because today he asked if he was “focused.” I said, “Yes, you are and I appreciate that. It makes my day so much easier.”

JD went into T4L for language arts today. He did two short lesson and two short quizzes on the subject of Idioms. Those are phrases like: fly on the wall, cat got your tongue, and spit it out. He scored a 100% on each of the short quizzes.

We are starting a lesson series on magnets for science. Today we learned about the discovery of Magnetite (a.k.a. lodestone), where is was found (Greece), when it was found (and rediscovered), and things it “powers”. We pulled out some magnets and played with them for a while. JD took the end of Chapter quiz and scored an 80%.

The last task of the day was reading his book Hoot for thirty minutes.