Journey to Excellence

Sorry to have abandoned you on the Study America Saturday posts. I was out of town one weekend and last weekend I had absolutely nothing to share nor time to do a post. This weekend I had this post prepared, but hadn't had time to put on the pictures. So, here it is, better late than never. I just had to share our history week, even if it is late. On Wednesday, my kids and I traveled to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to the Cherokee Heritage Center . The Trail of Tears, a result of the Indian Removal Act, ended in Tahlequah in 1838. Living in Oklahoma gives us a plethora of field trip opportunities when we are studying Native Americans. To prepare for the trip, Dawson read the book The Trail of Tears by Alan Pierce. He did a photo analysis of "The Trail of Tears" by Robert Lindneux. Did you know that there is no firsthand pictorial accounts of The Trail of Tears? Every picture or painting you see is one done by at least a secondhand perspective. Dawson also did a map s...

Dawson has been learning about the basic patterns of all life. One that we studied this week is: Life Runs on Sugar. From The Way Life Works by Mahlon Hoagland, "Sugars are simple, energy-packed chains of three to seven carbon atoms festooned with hydrogens and oxygens ." Sugar is carbon and water fused together. When sugar is heated, it breaks down into it's original carbon and water elements. So, to demonstrate the decomposition of sugar, we did the following experiment: Dawson poured 1/2 cup of sugar into a small pan and heated it until the hydrogen and oxygen were revealed in their natural combined form: water. As it was broken down into the carbon element, it turn into a blackish  color. Once the sugar was caramelized into a liquid form, he slowly added 1/2 cup of water. It sizzled and popped, so he poured slowly and stayed back. Part of it crystalized immediately and it tasted like rock candy. The sugar was decomposed and made into a completely...

Today the kids and I went on a field trip with our homeschool co-op to Cherokee Heritage Center to learn about the Cherokee Indians and The Trail of Tears that ended in nearby Tahlequah, Oklahoma. On Saturday I will have specific pictures of the Cherokee Indian villages and The Trail of Tears. But today I will just show you some of my favorite pictures from the day ... It was just a beautiful day in a very beautiful and meaningful place.

This past week was Red Ribbon Week at Eli's school. He dressed up various ways: clothes wrongside out, all in black, and crazy hair. Eli has very long, fine hair, so doing something crazy is a tad difficult. This is what we came up with .... Crazy hair or not, this child got STRAIGHT A'S on his report card for first quarter! Absolutely amazing for a little boy who started his little life with so many delays. He is progressing in leaps and bounds this year. SO PROUD OF HIM!

We have had school. It has just taken on some different forms. For instance, Dawson celebrated his 15th birthday and spent the day showing me all the educational aspects of his games on Xbox 360 . I surprised Dawson by picking up his two best friends (one who has moved to a nearby town), and some pizza and cookies, for a weekend of hanging out. Dawson has spent the past couple of weeks concentrating his studies on Lewis and Clark, The Alamo, The California Gold Rush . He has moved along in Algebra, Grammar, Critical Thinking, Typing, and the patterns of cells . He continued working on his IEW writing lesson practicing summarizing references . We finished The Captain's Dog , but didn't enjoy it as much as we had hoped. But we have been pleasantly surprised with the first several chapters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , that we started this week. I think the most enjoyable part has been me trying to pull off the various dialects. He spent this past week covered in ...

Eli's librarian e-mailed a note last week asking for families to paint pumpkins in the theme of their favorite storybook characters. I immediately knew what we would do! Eli LOVES the Fly Guy series by Tedd Arnold. Those are the books he brings home from the library every week. They are perfect for him. So, meet Fly Guy [the Pumpkin] vs. the Flyswatter . Eli's librarian was elated and thought it was the perfect character for Eli to choose!! It is now being displayed in the library at his school.

When I think about the past week, I only think two things: Dang, another week has whizzed by and I'm exhausted; and, Fossils . We had kind of a different week this week. It's so great when an opportunity comes up (especially when it's FREE), that is about something we haven't really studied much. Then I can take that thing and work it into a unit. This was an unexpected unit on Fossils because we had the opportunity to tour the Tulsa Geoscience Center on Wednesday. So, Dawson and I took a breather from Cells to study about the relationship between fossils and solar energy (we were going to do more with solar energy, but ran into a glitch when his solar kit we purchased was missing a couple of important parts). And Brynne and I chose not to start our Fall science unit and, instead, to focus on learning about Fossils. We were out of the house all day Wednesday, and then again all day Friday (to go on a field trip to the zoo with Eli). With our short day on Monday, be...