Author: Thena

Week 2 of Homeschool: We learned 5 more states and capitals of the United States, learned Latin conjunctions and adverbs, met with our charter support teacher online and played a hide and seek clue game, memorized John 1:2 and translated it into Latin, practiced skip-counting 3s and 4s,  learned about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony, learned what a present participle is, practiced diagramming sentences, started writing a paper about the Mayflower, used geo-boards to make congruent shapes, learned about the bones that make up the axial skeleton and examined rib bones, made a skeleton mobile, learned about Pennsylvania, practiced spelling and dictation, wrote a short story called “The Nostalgia Machine,” built an infinity mirror, and made rock sugar using the magic of chemical reactions!

 

Week 1 of Homeschool: We learned about four kinds of tissue, built a radio, reviewed sentence classification, learned about Columbus’ voyage to the Caribbean, made a strip-map showing landmarks from our house to Granny & Grampy’s, read the Native American legend about The King of the Buffaloes and drew buffaloes step-by-step, made time capsules, learned 5 states and capitals of the United States, started memorizing John 1:1 and translating it into Latin, read the Native American legend about Mudjee Monedo and colored pictures of him, built a claw machine using strings and tension, wrote a paper about Columbus, folded Star Wars paper spaceships, learned Latin prepositions and the Latin alphabet, learned the definition of an infinitive, and opened our schule-tutes!

 

Week 38 (and 39) of Homeschool: We caught a Passiflora incarnata butterfly (and caterpillars!), finished writing a novel entitled “The Trials of Kay Oss” (Field), learned about Thai shadow puppet theatres and made our own, acquired cool free books from a book nook, performed an experiment to see how water changes land forms, finished reading Pilgrim’s Progress and watched the movie, made a coin-eating robot, dipped our feet in cool creek water, defied gravity with magnets, made a wine-cork picture frame, drew butterflies, practiced writing in Arabic, painted a little red house, read poetry while sipping tea, finished reading George MacDonald’s wonderful “The Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman,” had a piano recital (Field), and celebrated our last day of school!!!

 

Week 37 of Homeschool: We created a tic-tac-toe board with Legos, wrote computer code and connected it to hardware to activate lights (Pod-Pi), cooked a Moroccan feast with crunchy Kefta rolls and Chicken Tangine then ate on the floor Moroccan-style, researched Stephen Hawking’s theories of Time Travel, finished our water park designs, rode bikes, made Martha Washington’s Ginger cookies, finished our 600-piece puzzle of the world, learned all about black holes, played a Swedish game with wooden blocks called Kubb, looked at the contrast between the gnostic/pantheistic worldview and the Christian worldview, had a Lego zoom meet-up, took apart an iPhone to see how it works, studied DNA, learned about the probability of order and life in a theory of spontaneous origins, and won a Jamba Juice card for our water park designs!

 

Week 36 of Homeschool: We looked at bacteria under the microscope, built light-up snap-circuits, added to our 600 piece puzzle of the world, did a Lego Zoom meeting, learned how to create graphs, took a walk down to the American River with friends, looked at light spectrums, made Swedish Tomte’s, used geo-boards to learn about congruent shapes, made a stop-motion movie called “The Ice Creams,” used lentils and rice to skip-count, started planning a water park, wrote about our cousin Makari, made Moroccan Orange Blossom Tea Cakes, got our Memory Master t-shirt (Field!), had Zoom meet-ups with our cousins and baked home-made apple pie for Granny’s birthday!

Week 35 of Homeschool: We built a ballista and launched balls, created foraged art from leaves, grass and flowers we found in our neighborhood, read in Carry on Mr. Bowditch, performed disgusting science experiments and grew bacteria from toes, ears, armpits and the bathroom floor, built snap-circuits, learned all about Sweden, built a marble-run, made a Tolkien map and coronavirus quiz, did a lego Zoom session, wrote 1 Peter 5:7 in chalk on our driveway, had friends over, pieced together the edges of a 600-piece world map puzzle, read in the Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman, performed piano for an online music showcase, worked on doubles plus 1 number facts, bonded with our bunny Henrietta, and drove our cousins’ electric car all over their property!

 

 

Week 34 of Homeschool: We made passion flower tea from our passion flowers, scratched-off the states we’ve been to as a family from our scratch off-map, made a “where’s Coronavirus” version of “Where’s Waldo,” did some inductive Bible study, practiced grammar by writing out the definition of a verb, types of verbs, verb attributes and verb tenses, performed a really disgusting science experiment, went on a walk in a field of yellow flowers, drew portraits, played National Number Knockout (Francis did great!), played with our new bunny Henrietta, practiced grammar by writing out the definition of a noun, noun usages and noun attributes, tested our dad’s editing skills, wrote out the principal parts fo verbs and irregular verbs, created an authentic-looking Covid-19 CC Timeline card and added it to our timeline, and had fun on Zoom calls with friends!

 

Week 33 of Homeschool: Field won Memory-Master, Zoom-style (!), we made entries in our Covid-19 Time Capsule journal, added dimes and pennies and pretended to buy items at stores, read in The Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman, wrote our own fixed-fairy-tale, found a snail and a ladybug who became friends, read The Gettysburg Address out-loud (Field), finished lesson #89 in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Francis!), started writing a Covid-19 Constitution, made chocolate-covered bananas, read the Declaration of Independence out-loud, and had our own end of the year Classical Conversations party, including a slip and slide, a marshmallow catapult launching competition, a water ballon fight, and an egg drop contest!

Week 32 of Homeschool: We finished reading The Phantom Tollbooth and drew the cover, baked carrot cake cookies, wrote acrostic poetry in honor of poetry month, gave our final paper presentation in full-costume for “Arthur: King of Superb Traits,” memorized the Presidents of the United States, painted our memories of Arnold, California, learned the Identity Law for math, made a toaster and a fridge from online lego tutorials, diagrammed sentences, read in George MacDonald’s “The Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman,” learned the geography of Southern Africa, made Cardamom Cinnamon Rolls for Dad’s Birthday, learned about Nelson Mandela becoming South Africa’s first black president, reviewed Latin, and went to see our cousins, because we couldn’t stand not seeing them, but we stayed 6 feet apart!

Week 31 of Homeschool: We wrote letters to ourselves (so we can remember what sheltering in place was like), practiced writing with ink and a quill pen, built an outdoor fort, met up with CC friends on Zoom, learned about the Gulf War, made catapults and launched marshmallows, practiced shading techniques, looked at adjectives, wrote a movie review of Wreck-It Ralph, made a tiny Easter basket out of string, learned some ways that heat flows, painted with watercolor, looked at the parts of an orchestra, created an original recipe for “Egg Roll Bars,” looked at the distributive law for math, made Easter sugar cookies, read about Shakespeare and listened to sonnets, gave presentations for CC and posted them online, attempted to classify items we collected on a neighborhood walk, studied Latin, made resurrection rolls and painted Easter eggs!