Smrt Lernins

As we’re headed to Asheville, NC tomorrow for Biltmore’s Homeschool Day*, we’re only logging two real days of school this week. Technically, Captain S will be in classes all morning at Biltmore, but I’ll just have to review those later.

This week was pretty light, two days of wrapping things up. Captain Science did the final pass of his Confucius essay, finished the next lesson in Life of Fred: Algebra (lesson 16, Queen City and San Juan), read the section on phrases in Grammar Voyage (including DOING the activity on identifying phrases in sentences), and knocked out the play-test deck of his Pantheon Project cards. He also had a piano lesson and will do his KidCoder computer programming on Saturday.

Tank’s week consisted mainly of tracing the cursive upper and lower case letters on his dry erase sheet. He traced and erased the alphabet, then wrote the numbers 1-10 below them, multiple times, all under his own steam. He also drew several more monsters for me to put in the file, because they’re all so cute that I can’t stand throwing them out. I added a few preschool apps to my iPhone for him: Fairytail Preschool, a simple phonics app (really, it’s just letter sounds), and a preschool matching and puzzle app.

Babypie’s week has consisted mainly of pitching fits and dancing.

Badge the beagle’s main accomplishment was yarking on the carpet.

*Leaving Officer Daddyman here to man the fort

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.

We’ve been working our way through ancient history this year, as I think the idea of doing history in order on a four-year(-ish) cycle, as presented in The Well-Trained Mind, is a great one. As Captain Science has shown a great deal of interest in the mythology and dieties of these early cultures, I decided it would be fun to make a large project out of it, something to tie together the whole year. After all, the way a culture worships and the things they believe says a lot about that culture [moment for pointed silence whilst my readers consider what much of the beliefs and worship in our culture says about us -- hint: it ain't particularly flattering, from this secular homeschooler's perspective].

The idea for the Pantheon Project sprang from “oh crap, you mean we’ve finished Egypt and I haven’t quite gotten all my Greek materials yet? Uh…research the Egyptian gods this week!” Captain Science loved it! He read about the gods and wrote paragraphs about each of the ones he considered most important to the pantheon. He seemed so enthusiastic about the topic that I had him do the same for Greece and Rome. I started calling it the Pantheon Project and developing some longer-term goals with it.

As we move forward with ancient cultures of Asian, Africa, and the Americas, Captain Science will continue to compile information on the deities and religious practices. At the end of our school year, we’ll use all of this data to do a large comparative religions project, integrating art and writing into a giant Cage Match of the Gods card game.

No, really.

The thing Captain Science loves even more than weird ancient religions is inventing/designing card games with Officer Daddyman. What could possibly make a more awesome subject for a battle-style card game than various gods with strange powers and bizarre requirements for worship? Move over, Pokemon, because Poseidon, Osiris, and Kwan Yin are entering the arena! Instead of energy cards, I forsee cards like “burnt offering.” Instead of trainers, maybe priests and priestesses? The actual designing of the cards will likely take place over the summer. Captain Science and I will work on the information (review-style) and then I’ll turn it over to Officer Daddyman for game design. Should be fun times.

I wonder if any other homeschoolers would be interested in snagging a copy of this irreverent battle royale?