Along time ago, about three or more months, I went kayaking with my family at Watson Lake. While we were there, Patrick and I caught six tadpoles. While we were catching tadpoles, I spotted a tadpole that had actually started growing legs. It was even bigger than the frog that we saw earlier. Patrick nearly caught it, but the tadpole escaped too quickly. We put the others in an old water bottle we found in the car so we could take them home. When we arrived at home base, we left them in their water bottle on the porch. We had decided not to move the tadpoles into something bigger until Patrick and I got home from Eagleridge the next day. Now you are to hear the more recent story of the "tadpoles."
The day after we went to Eagleridge, we spent our day studying tadpoles. We learned what they like to eat, how long it takes for them to turn into frogs, and other helpful things about tadpoles. We also tried to figure out what type of frog would come out of our tadpoles, but we couldn't find our type of tadpole. That's when we found out they were not tadpoles at all. Our dad had suggested they were this from the beginning, but we didn't believe him. After a little research we found the truth. These animals live in large groups. We saw some real tadpoles swimming around with them which was why we thought they were all tadpoles, but they weren't. We had caught a group of minnows!
Just this week we went to Flagstaff to see some fall color. We wanted to go to Hart Prairie, but it was closed so we just drove around in the mud pretending we had four-wheel drive. :) We had decided to bring the minnows with us so we could drop them off in one of Flagstaff's lakes. We wanted to put them in something similar to their environment. When we were done driving through the aspens, we started driving to Lake Mary. We turned of onto this dirt road thinking it led to Lake Mary. We drove on this street that wasn't even on the map for an hour to only get about two miles. During our nice drive, we thought we had passed Lake Mary and were on our way to Mormon Lake. Then we thought we had passed Mormon Lake when we got out of the dirt. We saw this horse while we were going one way off the forked road, but he kept telling us to go the other direction. In the end he was right.
We ended up at Lake Mary where we deposited our minnows. We weren't even sure if they were alive, but we didn't fret over it. We arrived home late on a school (Eagleridge) night. That was okay though because we learned a lot from this trip. This is one of the ways a homeschooler learns. By experiencing! I also learned never to catch my pets again.
This September must have been the most exciting yet tiring September in my life (I think.) We started going to a new homeschool group, the youngest member of the Murphy family (our best friends) slept over for the first time, I started a new instrument, and, well, I'll just let you hear the story yourself.
We'll start with VHE (Valley Home Educators.) This is the new homeschool group we have joined. When we went to the kick-off meeting, I met a bunch of people my age. A few of them I already knew. At the kick-off we had a potluck lunch. After a few hours of chatting, all the kids around the ages 10 and up (as long as they were kids) went outside for the TNT meeting. TNT stands for teens-n-tweens. Every year in November, they have a yard sale to help a charity. This year will be there fourth annual, or that's what I remember. The next week we went to the Sea Life Aquarium with the rest of the group. We saw many different fish and sea creatures. During the tour of the of the aquarium, we answered questions that were painted on the wall. Then we scratched out the answers on the cards they gave us to turn in and get a sticker. Some facts I learned from the trip were that lion fish are one of the most dangerous fish, that manta rays are most closely related to sharks, and much more. At the end of the tour, Brenna and I played in the tubes with Ailish. Then I went to Brenna's house for a sleep-over. On the second day of the sleepover (the day I was going home) Brenna was going over to one of her friend's house to help her do something. While she was gone I babysat Ailish. It was fun.
A few weeks later, Brenna, Ailish, and Devin came over to spend the night for five days. It was exciting since it was Ailish's first time sleeping anywhere, but home. During our un-sleepover, (Ailish chose not to sleep at night, every night, but the first one) we took Ailish and Brenna to my French horn lesson. I should probably put more detail into this picture. Back in the second, or maybe the first week in August, I went back to my two-day-a-week enrichment program, Eagleridge. As you know, (or should know) I play flute in our Monday band. Actually I used to play flute in band. This year we added a lot of flutes. We took up 1/3 of the band all put together. Mr. Hink, our band teacher, mentioned one of us playing French Horn. I told it to my mom and she said I probably should try it because she remembered when she was a girl, she played flute and she knew this girl who played French Horn and had always wanted to switch, but her mom said no. So I switched and I'm glad I did. It has been six weeks and both my band teacher and my French horn teacher said I'm doing great for a kid that started six weeks ago. I really enjoy it.
Just this Wednesday I went to Open House and Mr. Hink told my parents about how good I was. At Open House I performed a song with my fellow classmates, about 1/4 of them. We also did a hand clapping routine like the one from the Kleenex clapping commercial with 6th grade Wed., 6th grade Fri., and 5th grade Fri. It was great. I did the clapping almost perfectly. It has been busy, busy around here, but September was fun.
I thought I should give you an update on what has happened at our homeschool enrichment program, Eagleridge. On Wednesday, we officially started our third week back to Eagleridge and on Monday, we will officially end it.
We will start with my first class, music. In music we talked about body language. Over the past weeks we had been talking about communication. The first week we talked about slit drums, and the second week we talked about talking drums. One of the things we did was take a white sheet and put a light behind it so we could use body language to say something. It was fun, but the thing I was supposed to show was quick and tiny and to do it, I had to shuffle across the floor really fast on my knees, and I got a bad rug burn.
In my second class, P.E., my P.E. teacher worked us to death (not literally.) For our introduction, we played "Home Base." For our fitness, we did "Race Track Fitness." That's where we died. We had to run around the gym, and then come back to our cone to do push-ups or sit-ups or something like that. I went around the gym about 16 times and it's a big gym. Then we had to jump rope for the rest of the class. At the end, we got to play cage ball though.
In science we looked at samples of human skeleton muscle, cardiac muscle, smooth muscle, and blood on microscopes. Just before music extras, one of my friends asked me if I would take her to the bathroom. At our new campus, we have to take a buddy to the bathroom and the bathrooms are only unlocked between classes and at recess. We missed 10 minutes of class because something like 15 kids were in there. We missed getting singing solos, but since we wanted solos, too, the teacher made them duets.
After a lunch of mini corn dogs, applesauce, and chocolate milk, and recess, my class and I went to art class. In art we started working on our calligraphy poems. We got the poems from last week's composition work of diamontes. This week in composition we're working on cinquains. Here are a few I wrote:
Autumn
Colorful- Leaves
chills, crunching, rustling
Beautifully colorful around me
Fall
Eating
Delicious- Food
munching, chewing, crunching
Defeating my agonizing hunger
Devouring
Music
Graceful- Notes
playing, listening, affecting
Telling me a story
Songs
In computers we reviewed the tools in Word. Then I went home. Now my work is officially done.
Over the summer recently, I've been busy. Between studying comets, to watching the tide pools, to going back to our homeschool enrichment program, we haven't had much time for blogging. So now, I'm going to give you the complete overview of everything that has happened since my last post, er, sort of.
We're going to start by going in chronological order which means first you'll learn about our trip to the beach. Back in July, I went on a seven-day camping trip with my family, my friend Brenna, and her brother Devin. On the second day, we went to go play at the beach. We had learned most of what we knew about riptides from our first camp out at the beach last year. Actually, I had been to the beach before, but I only learned about riptides last year. I had learned that riptides are waves that go at an angle to pull you out to sea and the only way to escape it was to swim sideways. We learned on this camp out though that you can tell where riptides will happen by how dark and choppy the water is. On another day we went to go see the tide pools. Devin found a crab and caught it. We also saw a crab eating. It was funny because the crab was shoveling food into it's mouth. We also saw some sea anemone, mussels, and many other creatures. On the last day, one of my mom's old friends came over to our campsite for dinner. She video taped a video of us pretending to be caught in a tsunami. We do a different video every year of one of the dangers of the ocean to scare Devin and Brenna's parents. It's quite enjoyable.
On the 11th of August, I started going back to my homeschool enrichment program, Eagleridge. We have moved the school to a new campus, so it's going to take some getting used to. On the next day, August 12th, was the Perseid meteor shower. At nine pm at night we went into the front yard with our folding chairs to watch the shower. Earlier that day we had played a game of "five questions." "Five questions" is a game my mom came up with to help us learn. To play, she comes up with a subject and writes down five questions about it. Our part is to answer the questions. The subject this time was the Perseid meteor shower and our five questions were:
When is the Perseid meteor shower?
Will we be able to see the shower from here in Arizona?
What causes a meteor shower?
How often can we see the shower?
Why is it called Perseid?
We printed off some papers, read, and surfed the web to come up with these answers to the questions:
The Perseid meteor shower is on the night of August 12th.
Arizona is the best place to see the shower because we'll be hitting it head on.
A meteor shower is caused when Earth enters a cloud of debris left behind every time a comet nears the sun. The Perseid Shower is caused by the comet Swift-Tuttle.
The Perseid Shower occurs every mid-August.
The shower is called Perseid because the meteors seem to radiate out of the constellation, Perseus.
The few meteors we saw were fascinating. We didn't see many though because we couldn't see the constellation, Perseus. We couldn't see the Perseus constellation because there are too many street lights in our neighborhood. In fact, one time a person crashed into a street light by our house and part of the pole came crashing into our house, but that's a whole different story.
America is known for many things. We won the Revolutionary War, we defeated the Japanese in World War II, we conquered the Great Plains, plus more. We are also know for our ingenuity. I have to say, we have created quite a lot of stuff. From the atomic bomb to new battle strategies, we are a creative bunch.
In 1873, an Illinois farmer named Joseph Glidden created barbed wire on his kitchen table. Now sure I can make an owie fence, too, but the fact that an American made it is what really matters and besides, that's something I probably wouldn't think of making. Within ten years, a billion acres of the mid-west are parceled up by half a billion miles of barbed wire. That was a pretty ingenious idea. I can see where it was more helpful then to keep cows out of your yard, but it's still used today. They still use barbed wire to keep the cows in their pasture, but now it is also used on other places too, to keep the robbers away.
In 1879, Thomas Edison invents the electric light bulb. It would soon get a thousand patents. It's almost funny to think about how the light bulb has helped us. It is really helpful. Before the light bulb we had to go try and kill whales to get whale oil. He also created the first commercial power grid. In two years, he sets up 5,000 power plants. Five more years and he creates a further 127,000. The power plants are the ones giving the power to the light bulb so we have it to thank for the light bulb's light. It wouldn't be a light bulb without the light. Then it would just be a useless bulb.
In the 1940s, a single computer was the same size as a Greyhound bus with the same power as a modern PC. It needed as much power as a small town. Many people didn't believe the computer would go very far. Trust me, I don't think I can fit a school bus in my bedroom. In 1976, in a garage in northern California, two computer hobbyist, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, create the first practical, personal, computer (PC). In the 1980's there are just 300,000 PCs, but in the 1990s there are 67,000,000. I thought the 300,000 was a big number, well, compared to the people in the US that number is tiny.
America has created a lot of things. As I'm typing I am thinking of more. We would probably top on the list of "country that has invented the most stuff." I wouldn't be amazed if America had invented fireworks, too. Happy Fourth of July!
Last night, I watched the movie America: The Story of Us part one. Part one told us the story of the Revolutionary War. It told me many things I already knew and just as many that I didn't.
I never knew that one of the main reasons America won the Revolutionary War was because we gathered sharpshooters to hide in the bushes and trees and shoot the British as the hiked to a battlefield. The British were used to fighting on battle fields and they were surprised when a bullet came out of the bushes and killed one of their many Indian guides. The job of the sharpshooters was to kill all the Indian guides and the British leaders. The British needed the guides because they didn't know the area compared to the sharpshooters who knew it very well. The sharpshooters had killed all the guides and all the British leaders but one. The leader of the sharpshooters chose a man named Tim Murphy, an Irish man, to shoot the last British leader. He shot three bullets: the first missed, the second skinned his horse, and the third "hit home." The sharpshooters shot the British and about a half of them died under no leadership, that's double how many Americans died in the Battle of Lexington.
One of the reasons the Revolutionary War started was because mobs of angry prostitutes roamed the streets on May 5th, 1770. They gathered because they had lost their jobs and blamed the British gathered on King Street in Boston. The hundreds of protesters faced off against the eight armed red-coats who were told not to fire. Edward Garrick, a 17-year old wig maker's apprentice "lights the fuse." He is hit in the head with a red-coat's gun. This is how wars start. British Private Hugh Montgomery is hit with a club. Edward Garrick was the first to be shot. African-American Crispus Attucks dies instantly. When the smoke clears, four more are dead.
I would love to tell you more about the movie, but I don't want to ruin it for you. To watch it, go to the History Channel.
I love to write. At Eagleridge, in our composition class, we have been writing lots of stories. Here is one of them I wrote. It is called "In the Attic." One day I was reading the book Caddie Woodlawn when I got to a chapter where Caddie went into her attic and found some breeches and clogs. I wondered if there was anything in our attic and what it was. I decided to go find out.
Once I had the ladder set below the trap door in our bathroom, I was ready to climb it. I started climbing. Once I was at the top, I pushed open the trap door. It was big and heavy, but I was able to open it. I then climbed inside. It was very dusty inside and hard to breathe in, but I just covered my mouth and nose with my shirt and started walking forward. It was strangely quiet, but then I thought, "How loud should it be in an attic?" Finally I saw a few piles of boxes all pushed aside in a corner. I also saw some tables, chairs, and other types of furniture by the boxes. I went over to one box and peeked into it. Inside was some pretty, exotic fabric pieces. I went over to a table. On it was a deck of playing cards, an old 1950's black-and-white movie, a basket of old Christmas cards, a board game, and a small, pink diary with a bejeweled butterfly on it. Then I went over to a dresser. On it was a few toiletry bags, a hand-held mirror, and a pair of torn-up slippers. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a drawer slightly open and I opened it all the way. I took out the only item in the drawer: a box about big enough to hold a cat. I took the box with me as I went to go sit in an old, dusty armchair. I opened the box. Inside was a library book, a broken name badge, a library card, a bag of German money, and a picture of a teenage girl at a library. I wondered what all of these things were here for, so I left the attic to go ask my mother.
Once I had safely gotten down the ladder, I put it back in the garage and went back inside to show my mom this stuff. I found her checking her e-mail on the computer. When I showed her the items, she was surprised to see them. I asked her whose they were and why they were in the attic. "Oh, these are just some of the things they gave me while working at a German library," she said. "You got a broken name badge for working at a German library?" I said, astonished. My mom laughed. "No, no," she said, " That was the name badge I used while working at a library in Germany." " They gave you a library book also?" I asked. She nodded, "A library card also," she added. "This is the money they paid you with," I guessed. She nodded. "Is that you in this picture?" I asked. "Yes," she said, "that picture was taken by one of my friends in Germany, by the way, where did you find this stuff?" I blushed. "In the attic," I said. She laughed. "Go return it to the attic and don't go up there again without my permission," she said. I smiled and ran to go get the ladder.
While writing this story, I kept asking my mom questions some of which were not included in the story. It is true that my mom worked in a German library back when she lived in Germany when she was a teenager. She told me that she never wore a name badge though. Oops! I wouldn't be able to find that stuff in our attic though because ours is an "unfinished" attic meaning it doesn't have a floor. I hope you enjoyed my non-fiction/fiction story "In the Attic." What's in your attic?
It's almost the end of Earth month! Oh no! Help celebrate while you can. Here's three things you can do to help the environment:
One: clean up right. Most light bulbs contain mercury. Because of that fact, we must properly clean up our light bulbs. If we don't, the mercury will get in the air and the water. Lots of fish have mercury in them, in fact, fish, out of all animals, have the most amount of mercury in their bodies. Mercury gets in their water and their food from toxic waste. The larger the fish, the more mercury the fish contains in its body. This is because a larger fish eats more than a smaller fish so it takes in more mercury. At our Earth Day celebration, I learned how to properly clean up a broken CFL light bulb you must:
1) Keep people and pets away from the breakage area - do not step on the area when leaving.
2) Open windows and leave the area for 15 minutes before returning to begin cleanup.
3) Wear rubber gloves and dust mask - put in glass container when finished.
4) Carefully remove large pieces and place them in glass container.
5) Using duct tape pick up all the remaining fine particles and put in glass container.
6) Wipe the area with a damp micro fiber cloth, then put the cloth in glass container but, do not rinse the cloth between uses.
7) Put all waste and cleanup materials in the glass container, seal and label it Toxic Waste Broken Light.
8) Wash your hands and face carefully with soap.
9) Remove glass container from the home.
10) Continue ventilating the room for several hours.
11) Take the glass container with the waste material to a facility that accepts toxic waste.
12) Check http://earth911.com/ for a toxic waste facility near you.
13) If you have throw rugs, remove them and bring them to the toxic waste facility.
14) If the break happened on carpeting, cut the area of carpet were the breakage occurred particularly if the area is requested by infants, small children, pregnant woman, the elderly, pets, or people with compromised immune systems Never:
Use a vacuum even one with a HEPA filter.
Use a broom.
Pour mercury down a drain in your yard or sewer.
Wash clothing or other items that have come in direct contact with mercury.
Walk around your house or yard if your shoes might be contaminated with mercury.
Two: think before you throw. Our front yard has been totally trashed by litter. We live on the end of our street and people throw everything on our yard. One time we found a bike behind one of our really big bushes. The sad part was at that time we had a rabbit living in another one of our bushes. About a month later he left. All this litter is killing our plants and animals. Throwing our trash away is no better. It's just being put in landfills which also hurt the environment. The best we can do is recycle so we can reuse what we already have. I have a poster on my closet door showing endangered animals of Arizona. There are 18 types of fish, 17 types of plants, six types of birds, six types of mammals, and one type of reptile on this poster. That's 48 types of almost extinct animals! I would think before I throw.
Three: no more oil(!) Recently, there was a large oil spill near the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, it's losing a few thousand gallons a day! Oil spills kill lots of animals and coat their fur in oil. The oil spills are more dangerous than you probably think. The oil pollutes the water that fish breathe, and it kills the fish. Once all the fish are dead, then the animals that eat the fish die. Then all the animals that eat those animals die out and so on until there's nothing else on this planet. It's definitely worse than you think. No more oil!
That's just some of the things you can do to help the planet. There's also one other thing you can do to help the planet without doing labor at all. Start a writing campaign or a series of shows on YouTube or another website that you can show to the public to help the environment. One last thing: remember, every day is Earth Day.
Think back to your family history. A long time ago, did one of your ancestors live in a different country? Or maybe a whole other continent? If so, how did you get here? This is a question that's been running on from generation to generation. Now we have the answer thanks to the explorers: people who dedicate themselves to finding the answer and discovering new places, finding new civilizations and food, and making a new, livable place for people out of their over-crowded cities.
Many people have heard of explorers. I know I learned about my first explorer in Kindergarten. It was Christopher Columbus. However, we're going farther back, to the time of the Vikings. In fact, the explorer we'll be focusing on was a Viking. His name was Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red.
I had never heard about Leif Ericson until I got into this class at Eagleridge called The Golden Age of Exploration. In this class, we play games and do group projects to help us learn about the explorers. The project I am working on presently is were you create a report on one of the early explorers. We were told to make a group of two so I grouped up with my friend Katie who I did my last project with, mapping out were Ferdinand Magellan and his crew would stop to get food and what food they got there. We chose to learn about Leif Ericson. Since the class is only an hour long, and we were going nowhere from reading a book, we agreed to search our facts at home and combine our facts together the next time we met.
Over the past few days, I have collected lots of facts on Leif Ericson. I took my collected facts and turned them into a four-paged fact paper. Some of the things I've learned are:
Leif Ericson was a Norse explorer thought to be the first to land in North America
He was born around 970 C.E. in Iceland, son of Eric the Red
Leif's mother, Thjodhild, had three sons, Leif, Thorvald, and Thorstein, and a daughter, Freydis
The main sources of Icelandic legends are the Saga of Eric the Red and the Saga of Greenlanders
Leif Ericson died in about 1020 C.E.
I also learned many other things, but then this blog would become a book if I added them all and I don't want sore fingers. This is one of the great things about homeschooling is that if you find an interesting subject, you have plenty of time to research it. If you would like to learn more about Leif Ericson go to: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Leif_Ericson I got all my facts on Leif Ericson on this website.
There are many ways to learn through every day life. You can learn from cooking, cleaning, camping, traveling, eating, playing, and just plain living.You also learn from making mistakes. My family likes traveling and camping so you can guess that it's one of our main sources of learning.
It's quite easy to learn from traveling and camp-outs because it exposes you to different things. While you're there, ask your parents if you can visit a local museum or visitor center or search the web before leaving. I remember when my family and I went camping in Oregon, and we visited the whale watching center in Depoe Bay and learned about whales and whale migration. Camping is also a great way to learn about nature. When I was four years old, I went to Lyman Lake with my family, collected leaves in a journal, and later tried to figure out what type of tree it came from. Now, I write in my journal or draw what I see while we're camping. It's great to write about my travels so I can remember them without a camera. The writing is also part of my schooling so I can learn correct punctuation, spelling, and grammar. I love camp-outs because of the learning.
One of the other things I learn on camp-outs is outdoor skills. Back in October of 2009, I went on a beach camp-out with my friends and family. I learned fire safety, how to escape from a riptide, how the tides follow the moon which determines high tide and low tide, and how shark attacks are very rare. Since we were camping in California, we also learned about the animals in that area. I also go on camp-outs with my girl scout troop. One of the first camp-outs I've been on with my girl scout troop was when we went to Lost Dutchman State Park were we learned that if you're camping during a lighting storm you should go inside a car because it has rubber tires, to always hike with a buddy, and how to put up a tent. On another camp-out with girl scouts we went horse camping. There we learned all about a horse's body, how to take care of a horse, and how to ride a horse. I also find myself very lucky when it's time to ride the horses. It started back when my girl scout troop went to ride horses for a badge workshop. I got to ride the best out of three horses, Callie. It happened again at horse camp when I was supposed to ride Sassy Gassy (who, by the way, I'm deathly afraid of) but she turned out to have a hurt hoof so I got switched over to Daisy, who I found to be the best horse on the ranch. None of this would have happened if I hadn't camped in the great outdoors.
You can learn a lot from camp-ins, too. Now you're probably wondering what a camp-in is. Sometimes it means to stay in a hotel, but in our case, it's sleepovers, slumber parties, etc. Most camp-ins teach you about what no to do. Sometimes they include eating too much sugar before bed and feeling sick the next morning, running around the house and hurting yourself, and staying up late then being crabby the next morning. The most important thing I've learned is that you should not eat more than five pieces of chocolate before bed and zero before breakfast, but don't get me wrong, I love camp-ins. All your friends coming over to play games and eat candy, it's so much fun, and you learn stuff, too!
As you can see, I have learned a lot from my camp-outs and camp-ins. It is very sad that the Arizona State Parks are closing due to budget problems. Many of these campgrounds that I have visited will be closing or have closed already. To learn more, go to http://www.azstateparks.com/.
Wow, it's been almost a month since I've blogged! In January, we began reading Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. We are using the "No Fear" version by Sparknotes. On one side of the page is Shakespeare's version in iambic pentameter which gives it a sing-song quality. On the other side is a more modern translation that is easier to understand. We were laughing at Act One, Scene One where they translated Flavius's words to, "Get out of here! Go home you lazy men!" I wouldn't have guessed that Shakespeare would write something like that. We also saw the play, and we're going to see the movie, or at least everyone else is. I have no intentions on seeing the bloody, tragic Julius Caesar again, not that I didn't like it. I also wrote a paper on Mark Antony's speech. I will share it with you as soon as possible.
I have been doing a lot of writing recently even though I haven't let you see it yet. I wrote a story called "My Night with the Loch Ness Monster" for my "Fantasy Fiction" class at Eagleridge. It's about a girl who finds a Loch Ness Monster egg and helps get the baby monster back into the loch it came from. I also wrote an article on Dian Fossey in my Composition class, also at Eagleridge. The next article we'll be doing in my Composition class is one on "The White House Gang," Teddy Roosevelt's children. The latest thing I did in my "Fantasy Fiction" class was write a summary on the book The Water Horse by Dick King-Smith. I'm also writing two stories right now. One is unnamed, but the other one is so far called "Terri Cooper." This blog is also one of my at-home writing projects. I want to share all of them with you. I will let you see them..... once I'm done with them.
While we have been doing all this writing, we have also been learning about the world around us. Since the earthquake in Haiti to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, our month has been filled with world geography. We even have our world thinking day celebration in Girl Scouts coming up! How do we get our answers to our questions? Well, one of the books we have been using is The Handy Geography Answer Book. It gave us answers to questions like: what is the fertility rate (average children per women) in Haiti? 4.7. What is the fertility rate in the U.S.? 2.1. What languages do they speak in Haiti? French and Creole. What about in the U.S.? English and Spanish. We can even look up populations and laugh at 4.7 of a person being born. Because of the Olympics, we looked up a lot more places than just Haiti and the U.S. We looked up just about every country that participated in the Olympics. We also decided, because we're learning about the world, to start learning German. I love it. I've been teaching it to my best friend and now we speak German(or Deutsch, pronounced doy-tch) very loudly in the car. My mom has lots of German books and just got a clearance ($2) German phrases and expressions calendar with a phrase for every day. I don't know what's more fun: teaching the phrases to my best friend Brenna, learning the phrases myself, or saying them with Brenna.
On Friday, February 19th, we went to the Phoenix Zoo to draw animals with a homeschooling art class. Even though we used only one type of pencil, we bought three different types: B, 2B, and 4B. Our teacher, Ms. Brown, sold us our special sketchbooks and gum erasers last year when we took a class with her. Some of the tips she gave us were to: look for basic shapes in the animals body, squint your eyes to see details better, look for the outline of the animal, and instead of looking at your paper, look at the animal and let your brain take control and focus on what the animal really looks like instead of what it's supposed to look like. We drew giraffes, zebras, ducks, komodo dragons, and elephants. Brenna went too. It was so much fun drawing pictures and laughing at our horrible imitations of these more realistic looking animals. It was truly a unique experience.
If you read "Checklist to Start Homeschooling: First I Shall.....", you know I said I would tell you why PJs are very important on our list to start homeschooling.
We didn't start out that we wore our PJs all day, it became a habit later on. We would wake up in the morning and think What's the point in getting dressed? We're going to stay home all day. Nobody's visiting us. You know what, I'm just going to stay in my PJs all day. So, like we said we would, we stayed in our PJs all day and we kept doing that 'til it eventually became a habit.
How didwe come up with the name "The PJ Club"? Well, one day we were doing homeschool when I noticed we were all still in our PJs. I told my mom and she said "Yah, it's like a PJ club around here." I thought about that. If this was a PJ club, we're going to need lots of PJs. So I added them to our important list. That's one great thing about homeschoolers, they can stay in the comfort of their home and pajamas as long as they want. Or just until it's time to head to the grocery store.
P.S. The only main reason we get out of our PJs is if we are going somewhere. You may also find we do not answer the door on homeschooling days because we are still in our PJs. :)
Well, there are many things to do before you actually start doing the schooling part of homeschooling. For some people it's buying the supplies or becoming an official homeschooler, getting a place to do the homeschooling, or, like us, pulling the kids out of school. I don't quite remember which came first for us, being pulled out of school or becoming an official homeschooler. For us, I think, they happened at the same time. It's quite simple to become a homeschooler. All you have to do is print out a form, sign it, then turn it in to the county courthouse. So we did just that. Yay! We're now official homeschoolers!Now we need to get our supplies. I was thinking we would take a long trip to one of those cool teacher supply stores that are jam-packed with stickers, (yay!) but we don't only use teacher supply stores. Instead, my mom decided to buy off the internet. Sure, now we don't have to go to a jam-packed (with people) store but I didn't get my stickers. Did my mom get everything we needed off the internet? Of course not! You can't get everything off the internet! We get a good amount of the stuff we need from places like Wal-Mart at back to school time (including my stickers.) "But what did you need?" you're probably thinking. Here's a list to answer that question, if you asked it:
Math books - Life of Fred by Stanley F. Schmidt, PhD
Writing books- Writing Strands by Dave Marks
Science books- McWizKid Science by Larry D. McClellan
History books and movie- What Your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grader needs to know and various movies and TV showsfrom the History Channel
Play tickets- for various plays at various theaters
Homeschooling classes- at various places
Notebooks- one of my personal favorites
Journals- another of my personal favorites
Folders- to hold our many reports and subjects
Pencils- another favorite
Glue sticks- to glue things together of course
Tape- to tape things together
Paper- pretty essential
Colored paper- a colored version of paper
Colored pencils- our colored pencils are erasable and come from Crayola
Crayons- not erasable, but still from Crayola
Computers- I'm pretty sure mine's not from Crayola (I'm on Frankenstein, Patrick's on Lydonstein - we all have our own computers that my dad put together)
Markers- not erasable, but washable..... from Crayola
Printers- they have nothing to do with Crayola
Rulers- from various places, maybe even some from Crayola!!!
Good books- from the book store...... not Crayola
Printable learning materials- from our computer to, oh, I don't know, our printer (not Crayola, or at least I don't think)
Helpful computer games- now tell me, where would you find helpful computer games?
Stickers :)- yet another personal favorite
and most importantly,
Pajamas (I'll explain in "My Life in the PJ Club")- um, the type I like.
Once you have all these things you are ready to become a homeschooler, sort of.
Every time I go somewhere I am asked where I go to school. Not everyone goes to school. I haven't been in a regular 5 day-a-week public school for 3 years. So I tell them, "I don't go to school, but I do go to an enrichment program called Eagleridge." One time I got asked, "What does it enrich?" Eagleridge is like school, it actually is a public school. I couldn't think of what to answer. So I just said, "It teaches you a little bit of every thing: writing, science, computers........ but no math." Math is the least popular subject to many so whenever I say we have no math, I usually get a big "LUCKY!!!" from someone my age. Or I will tell them I go to school only two days a week, "LUCKY!!!" I do get math but I get it at home. I probably get more math than regular schoolers actually. How am I "lucky"? I have "school" all seven days a week. I'm not saying homeschooling is bad, but you do have school all seven days a week, at least in our family.
One thing about Eagleridge is that they expect you to already know what they're talking about because Eagleridge is for enriching not teaching. I only go two days a week because I do my main schooling at home. Eagleridge lets you chose your classes on Mondays and Tuesday/Thursday. On those days you get mixed with kids of all different grades and ages. On Wednesdays and Fridays you go around to assigned classes with the kids of your grade.I enjoy Eagleridge because it gives me a chance to be with other homeschoolers. Eagleridge also doesn't give out too much homework because you already have the work that your parents assigned you to do and that is your "home work" (the work you do at home.) And yes, homeschooling is just like a school of homework.
I had a lot of problems with regular schooling. I was shy (and still am) so I had a lot of problems talking to the teacher. I was a lot smarter than the rest of the class so I was doing work that I already knew how to do. You see, I was ready for second grade in first and am ready for sixth grade and I am in fourth. Homeschooling has been very helpful to me because I can work at my own pace. Plus, lunch can be every 45 minutes!
This blog is an attempt to uncover a little of the mystery of what goes on behind the scenes with our homeschooling family, and to perhaps save us the trouble of answering the same questions over and over again. Posts are written by each member of our family (author listed at the end of each post), but if you want to see articles written specifically by one member of the family or on one subject matter, then just click on that word in the "Tag Cloud" below. Enjoy!
