What I've been doing in school

I've been doing a lot of history. I'm learning about the hundreds. We're learning about Vikings, who thought it was going to be the end of the world by 1,000 A.D. We've learned about Charlemagne and Alfred the Great.

Here's a story about Alfred the Great. One time he went to a shepherd man's house and he asked to have dinner there because he saw his wife was cooking. And so he asked her if he could have dinner there and she said yes, if you watch the food while I go get vegetables from the garden. And he didn't watch the food while she was gone so she shooed him out when she didn't realize this was a king she was doing this to.

And in science we've been learning about atoms. We played a trick on my Daddy and Grandpa. We put together water molecules. We made them out of these plastic circles — red is oxygen, white is hydrogen. And so we put together one oxygen and two hydrogens and made a lot of those and put those in a glass and told them to drink it. And I thought it was kind of funny. They really didn't get it, it seemed like, but they laughed pretend.

We've been doing language lessons and we've been learning pronouns. We've been copying poems.

And in math we're learning double-digit numbers.

With reading we've been doing a Pizza Hut thing called Book It, and my goal was to read 40 chapters every month. I'm doing really good. I'm five into week 4 for October.

Science Jim

I did my first online class. It was called Astonishing Atoms. I learned what was smaller than an atom. I learned that if you took the energy out of a golf ball it would probably power the whole earth. I really don't know what I learned; I learned a lot, but pretty much I learned what an atom is.

Atoms are like little building blocks. All the building blocks that you were made out of could have been from the sun, from a tree, from a jumprope — could've been from a woodchuck.

There's matter and energy in the universe. As Einstein said, matter and energy is the same thing. [She's referring to E=mc2.]

Note from Mom: Addy did well with her first online class experience, which supplemented what we were learning about atoms with our NOEO Chemistry I curriculum. She had a couple great questions for the teacher that told me she was really understanding it. I registered for the class through CurrClick.com and it was well taught by Science Jim.

2008-09 Curriculum

Archiving this so I can put next year's curricula in the sidebar.

History and geography: Sonlight Core 1, “Introduction to World History, Part 1” literature-rich study of beginning of time through fall of Roman Empire with timeline and map/globe work

Reading: Sonlight Grade 2 Readers book list and guide

Phonics: Explode the Code levels 4–6, plus Starfall.com online activities

Spelling: Spelling Power, K–8 spelling program where child is placed at their own best level and practices only words they don’t already spell correctly

Grammar: First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, first half

Writing: Writing Strands 1

Handwriting: Handwriting witout Tears cursive using own lessons generated with StartWrite 5.0 software

Math: finishing Singapore Primary Mathematics 1A, then move on to 1B, also 2A if we get that far

Science: Sonlight Science 1; focuses on planets, stars, human body, electricity, water and soil; hands-on experiments in water, light, magnets and mirrors; Usborne books make up core of program

Art: Picture study with American Girl Imagine: The Girl in the Painting then Come Look with Me: Enjoying Landscape Art with Children; drawing lessons through Drawing With Children

Music: Bernstein’s Favorite Children's Classics study of orchestra through “Peter and the Wolf,” “The Carnival of the Animals” and “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”

Foreign Language: American Sign Language through Signing Illustrated

Physical Education: being a kid, plus participation in President’s Challenge Program

Sunday School: “Growing in Christ” from Concordia, the Missouri Synod publishing arm (but Mom is the teacher, so we’ll ensure ELCA slant)

Maybe playing with both kinds of keyboard: musical and she wants to learn to type fast

Also learning through life: lots of reading, real-life writing, practical life activities, crafts, nature walks, field trips, taking care of Buns and the kitties, being Dori’s big sister, participating in community life with Mom and Dad, etc.

2008–09 Extracurricular activities
4-H Club, monthly meetings
Little League tee ball, June
AYSO soccer, August–October
Homeschool gym days, twice a month
Cross Kids, monthly: group for 1st–6th graders at church
Vacation Bible School, Summer Sizzlers classes, soccer camp, Summer Reading Program, Nature Center programs, field trips and other things that come up

My bunny and me

I showed my bunny at the fair. This is a picture of me and my bunny named Buns a couple days after she got shown. The reason I am holding her in this picture is because she had to stay at the fair for a few nights and days because it was kind of hard to bring her home right away because Daddy had to go and take Grandma and Grandpa S. back to their home because they came with me to see me show my rabbit. So I had to take her home.

It was fun showing Buns at the fair. The judge told me she's a little fat and that's also what the rabbit breeder told me the same thing.

Earth Day bags

I drew on these paper bags for Earth Day. Each bag I had to think of something in nature to draw on it. It was fun because I like drawing and I like nature. It was a great mixture.


"Let the sun rise" "I ♥ animals"

"Hey you up there, stay green!" "America is getting wild about nature"

Note from Mom: Our county ISD holds an annual Embracing Our Earth event. Students create designs on grocery bags to promote the event, and they're distributed at local grocery stores a couple weeks prior.

Dig It! The Secrets of Soil

This is a poster for the Conservation District Poster Contest. I made it like someone was really tiny and looking at all these stuff in the soil.

I found out that there's all kinds of bacteria in the soil. If there is this pollution, someone spills something into the soil, one of these bacterias will eat it up and that makes that bacteria stronger for the next spill.

Earthworms pull leaves into the soil, which helps plants grow.

The magnifying glasses that you see in the picture are showing all the tiny bacteria in the soil.

Vote for Addy's picture in farm photo contest!

When Addy isn't playing in the maple woods or the hay loft, her other favorite place is in the barn at my family's dairy farm with Uncle Duane. Duane snapped a beautiful photo of Addy with a red-and-white Holstein calf this winter.

If you can, please take a second and vote for Addy's photo to win the contest. The deadline is May 25. (Click on "Vote today!" Then Begin Survey. Hers is photo 5, child relaxing in straw with calf.)

 

 

http://www.countrylivingassociation.org/?page=FS4JKPhotoContest

 

Touching an alligator

I got to touch an alligator to try to make it go to sleep. The guy said if I touched it wrong I would get a puddle of consequences. I knew what he meant. It meant the alligator would pee on me. The guy really used a squirt gun to squirt some water out. My eyes got really big when when I thought it really peed, says Daddy.

Note from Mom: We attended a great Earth Day program in our community called Embracing Our Earth. One presentation was from Animal Encounters and covered the food chain in a tropical rainforest. It was very good. Before Mike brought out a small alligator (either the one in the picture above or one of its counterparts) he asked if anyone has ever wanted to wrestle an alligator. No one. He asked for a volunteer to try, and Addy was the only one to raise her hand. He brought out the gator and asked if she'd like to put her head in it's mouth. Of course, she said yes. Apparently he didn't know what kind of kid he was getting to volunteer. He actually had her pet the alligator on the belly while he held it on its back and that caused it to fall asleep. First he joked that if she did it wrong, she'd get the puddle of consequences and he used the squirt gun.

Multi-Cultural Night at Lakers

We watched some dancers do a really cool dance, and they had a part where the kids could come up and dance, too.

After that, we went into hear a man talk about modern Greece.

Note from Mom: Ironically, this picture showing the back of our little homeschoolers' heads is on the front page of the public school web site where this event was held. The school organized a community wide Multi-Cultural Night with a variety of speakers talking about a variety of cultures. It was a good event, too bad the attendance was light. We had a good time. We ate a meal prepared by the chef at the local good restaurant (yeah, there's just one) and he included foods from around the world. The kids weren't so keen on all the foods, but it was a nice idea. We spent our time watching the flamenco dancers, then seeing a man present his travelogue from Greece. It was a nice tie-in to our current lessons on ancient Greece. It was about as exciting as most travelogues are, but Addy was surprisingly interested. She's the one who wanted to stay later, but bedtime was approaching.

Super Valentine's card

A long time ago I had thought of this logo, but I really didn't get a chance to tell it to my Mom and Dad. I thought of it again by Valentine's Day. I told Mom about it. I told her instead of a diamond with an S in it, a heart with an S in it.

Mama put it on her computer on a program called Adobe Illustrator. She made it and then she knew what colors I wanted already somehow. It happened to be that we were having a Valentine exchange at Delta College. We are giving out these Valentine's cards at Delta College.

I thought of a saying for it, "Your heart is super!" Mama told me I should put our names at the bottom. I thought of putting "Super love from Addy and Dori."

News flash: Addy was an essay contest winner

Note from Mom:

Addy's "Why I Want to Become a Farmer" essay was chosen as one of 20 winners out of a pool of about 200 entries. She is so proud. She says that while she's happy to be a winner and glad she'll be receiving an MP3 player, most of all she's just glad that people will get to read her essay because she really does want to be a farmer. Of course this makes me want to squeeze her cute little cheeks even more.

Her essay was the first one printed in Michigan Farm News.

Columnist Melissa Hart wrote about Addy's essay in the Farmers' Advance. The column also ran in two other farm publications, Farmworld of Indiana and Farmshine of Pennsylvania.

Addy's weather pictures

These are my weather pictures. I drew them for a contest.



Note from Mom: Our local paper runs children's weather art along with the daily weather info. They invited local children to submit more drawings in these four categories.