Journey to Excellence

Well, it must be the end of the year. I am sure I am experiencing a common phenomenon: I am so excited about what we are going to be learning next year that I just want to get done with what we are doing this year so I can get to planning. (Wrong attitude, I know! We need to finish strong!) And, the weather has just been so nice that about all I have wanted to do is take advantage of it ... just be outside soaking it in! Dawson ~ 8th Grade This week Dawson had a book due back to our public library that he is really enjoying, but reading slowly. Because there is a "hold list" for it, he wasn't able to renew it for another two weeks. So, I decided to let him incur a fine and keep reading so that he is ready for the next book when it becomes available (he's on that "hold list"). But, I told him he had to have it finished by today. So he had 200 pages to read in four days. Because we finished The Swiss Family Robinson and our study of the Age of Explorati...

We were out of town this weekend and I have been behind since we got home. Therefore, our wrap-up from last week is late and we weren't prepared to start this new week! Ughhh! I hate that! Here is a short synopsis of what we got done last week. Dawson ~ 8th Grade We are knee-deep in the Age of Exploration . We were learning about Christopher Columbus this week and went to the driveway to draw out the measurements of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria with sidewalk chalk. You can't see the lines, but they were basically about the size you see here. Not very big for all they were trying to carry. In science we discussed the different ways water freezes depending on the amount of salt in the water. Water definitely does not freeze as fast or as solid when it has salt in it. The Swiss Family Robinson has actually been boring to Dawson. I think what is frustrating for him is that they basically had everything they needed to survive. And they always seemed to find exactly w...

This was another great week! It seems our studies (and the beautiful weather) have been getting us out-and-about the last couple of weeks. This week we went on a field trip and a hike, and called it all "school". Dawson ~ 8th Grade Dawson and I began reading The Swiss Family Robinson and skipped ahead in our A World of Adventure Curriculum to the Age of Exploration . This was totally selfish on my part because I have never read The Swiss Family Robinson and since we are running out of time I was fearful we wouldn't get to it. In fact, we are only doing 17 days of the Age of Exploration, to read the book and do all of the lessons surrounding it, and then will be finishing our year going back to The Renaissance. Since this Age is mostly about just reading about adventure, I have Dawson doing LOTS of vocabulary words from the chapters. I like the "flashcard method", so have him writing the words on one side and the definitions on the other for easy self-qu...

Dawson started a new unit on Oceanography with is study of the Age of Exploration. He suggested that we go to the Oklahoma Aquarium. Because it is mucho expensive, we squeezed in a quick trip on Tuesday because it was the last Homeschool Day of the school year and the price was greatly reduced. We had planned to go to an educational class that afternoon about Oklahoma Aquatics, but Pizza Hut was calling our names so we did that instead. For me, a fish is a fish is a fish. Perhaps if we were doing a fish study I would be more interested. But for some reason aquariums have never interested me much. Dawson and Brynne enjoyed it, though. Brynne observed every single exhibit and wanted to know what everything was. Of course her favorite was Nemo . Dawson was the only one brave enough to touch things and feed the turtles. We did learn a few things, like: All clown fish start out as males and when their one female dies, a male transforms into a female; Male seahorses carry the ba...