Smrt Lernins

I haven’t done a weekly update in a while. It felt too much like same-old, same-old.

We have only 15 days left in our school yet, and I won’t be here for the last five of them. Nana will be moderating the final week, while I jet off to Chicago to doula for our most precious and beloved Auntie D, godmother to my children and my best friend of 15+ years.

What have we been up to lately?

Well, Captain Science has reviewed some mathematics, doing a lovely job of demonstrating continued mastery of skills with another pass at the Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents final bridge. He’s also been working on some basic algebra concepts with Officer Daddyman, in preparation for this summer’s foray into algebra. I look forward to starting Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra.

Captain Science has finished Paragraph Town, though we’re going back and redoing a few lessons, using history texts as the writing topics. He’s continued to do work in Practice Town, keeping all those excellent language arts skills fresh in his mind. He’s written several excellent essays lately, including the introduction to a story about a revival of the Roman empire and an essay about Thor. He has also done some work in Building Poems.

History-wise, he has pretty much finished the stack of books on the Vikings, which is good, as they’ll be overdue if we don’t return them soon! He seemed to really enjoy the mythology and learning about longships and raiding parties. This wraps up the history we’re doing this year, as we’ll start ancient history of Asia, Africa, and the Americas in the fall. I want him to add the Norse gods to his pantheon project, which we’ll start wrapping up next week!

Science has continued to be all, you know, scienc-y. They’ve done some physics labs. This week, as Earth Day fell on science lab day, Patchfire had Captain Science and Eclectic Girl calculate their carbon footprint. Captain Science and I talked about ways we could reduce our carbon footprint, using examples like replacing store-bought beef with the locally raised beef we’ve been eating. The brain class is still loads of fun. They’ve made brain hats (a model of the brain to wear on their heads), have watched videos, have done neuron activities and short-term memory activities. Wait, what were we talking about?

Our co-op classes are starting to wind down for the semester. I’ve enjoyed them so much! The writing students are turning in completed drafts for me to edit. We’ve talked about the process of submitting written works to magazines, journals, and contests. The plan is to finish in the next two weeks or so, with submittable manuscripts for all the children. We’ll mail everything off on the last day of class. I hope someone gets something published!

Captain S has also done some work in his logic book and in a few other areas. His co-op board game class has proven to be one of his favorite things. Their food fight game is hilarious!

Wow! I can’t believe we’re almost done for the year. It’s gone by so fast.