A productive day

I managed an entire classroom schedule today even before I went to my part-time cleaning job and cleaned.

The devotion went back to 1952 when the Peanuts comic strip introduced Lucy pulling the ball out from under Charlie Brown’s kick. Then it transitioned into our words being important and we should be good promise keepers. Promises back in Moses’ day were binding. And if we break our promises today just like back in Moses' time then it will mean broken relationships and broken trust.

I like it when JD and I feel like the math lessons are too easy. We just don’t like it when they’re easy but long. Today was adding fractions with unlike denominators. Easy peazy…we pushed through the lesson and the quiz with a 100%.

We finally finished up our study of South America in social studies. We learned that during 1850 to about 1960 the United States helped out South America in many ways. We helped them out with their “rights” and policies. Then around 1971 the population sky rocketed and the jobs were down. In the 80’s they had a recession. The last entry in the notes was for 1990. It read 40% of the population is poor. Sad…

For language arts today I had JD copy conversation starters for the dinner table. I’ve never seen him write so fast. It still took a bit longer than it needed to because self-distractions but it was clear to read. As a matter of fact when all seven of us sat down for our everybody-has-recovered-from-puking spaghetti feast, JD went and got his lesson and started it out. He picked one question and asked Daniel, “what superpower he wished he had.” Of course Daniel answered and he asked someone else a question from the paper. This went on until everyone had a chance to ask a question. It was fun so share our answers around the table.

For science today I allowed JD to watch a History Channel program where train number 7551 East crashed going down the San Gabriel Mountains. Apparently the brakes didn’t work because of the unknown weight of the train. The pipeline was inspected near the crash site and there were no cracks found. That overweight train did however cause a crack in the gas pipeline owned by the Cel Nev Corp. Later that pipeline burst and an unsuspecting neighborhood went up in flames. I brought JD back to the classroom to show him the forces of motion poster and we reviewed inclined planes and then friction.

Because I didn’t go to church on Sunday I had JD start reading this set of books Lyndell gave us. He started with book number four called Just Around the Corner. It contains stories from around the world. JD chose the story called Tomas is Lost and it contains the Mexican village of Benito Juarez.