Weekly Updates

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!

Week 30 of Homeschool: We made a Spanish Galleon ship and learned about Spain, performed reflection experiments, learned the commutative laws for math, made a projector, looked at some characteristics of light, took walks and collected specimens from our neighborhood, used pattern blocks to learn math concepts, made a Spanish Cubist sculpture, looked at the geography of Oceania, worked on our end of the year paper about the legendary King Arthur, listened to Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings and discussed, looked at coordinating conjunctions, harvested our first 2 crystals and examined pieces under the microscope, reviewed Latin Pluperfect endings, performed an experiment to measure how color attracts heat, learned about the fall of communism, spun colors really fast to make white, learned about fiber optics, and made our own CC Timeline Card and posted it on Facebook where it got over 750 likes!

 

Week 29 of Homeschool: We built a tower 10 feet high, learned the Associative Law for addition and multiplication, wrote a story about the Wild Kratts and Coronavirus, learned about the end of the Cold War, made Blues-berry Crumb Bars, learned about China and made an artist’s Signature Chop, started growing crystals, practiced our odd and even numbers, had a Zoom meet up with our CC community, listened to Brahms and discussed, learned the geography of Central America, hung out with our cousins on FaceTime, looked at Latin pluperfect tense endings, made stone soup, learned the definition of a conjunction, made a finger puppet theatre, learned the third law of thermodynamics, and took walks in our neighborhood!

Week 28 of Homeschool: We learned about Ireland and the history of Saint Patrick, studied the Mongol empire, practiced telling time and odd numbers, learned more about viruses than we ever wanted to know, finished reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and talked like pirates, colored the Irish flag and celtic knots, made a “hot air balloon” and flew it to learn about thermal heat energy, made a list of cool fake words, practiced diagramming sentences, made nifty placemats with Duct tape, constructed tall towers using craft sticks and tape, learned to paint using the watercolor technique of wet-on-wet, came up with mathematical laws that actually work, worked on spelling and reading, and saw some wild turkey at our cousins on our one outing of the week!