Homeschool Report

SCIENCE

Thalia continues with Apologia Biology. Yawn.

Annabeth continues to do various projects from the Girl Scout Junior Badge book. Last week she worked on Science in Everyday Life activity #9 Here Today, Still Here Tomorrow in which she took a look at the history of the telephone, and thought about what a telephone might be like in about 25 years.

She also worked some more on the Water Wonders badge, doing acitivity #2 The Water You Drink, which focusses on where our drinking water comes from. Rick was able to give a rundown of water treatment (oh, the advantages of having a Chemical Engineer around!). And then we somehow got sidetracked with this video of desalination. Which had prompted an earlier discussion with Mr. ChemE about the strength of the bond between salt and water.

MATH

RIghtStart Geometry week for Annabeth. She hasn't been photocopying the worksheets before using them since we figure this is our last time to use them. Unfortunately, that means when she has to start over because she misunderstood the directions she either needs to erase or come up with another way to have a "new" copy.

Thalia has forged ahead in Jacob's Geometry, and is about a week ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, this means she does a boatload of assignments and then thrusts a pile at me all at once with the comment: "I need these graded so I can see if I'm ready to take the test." And, really, grading this stuff is tedious.

ENGLISH

Thalia is supposed to be picking out a topic for a 10 page research paper. She's also been working on Analytical Grammar -- Shakespeare's Plays.

A friend invited her to Metro Theater's production of The Giver on Saturday night, so she read and we discussed the book before she went. It seemed like every library copy of the book in the entire metro area was checked out, so we ended up buying it on Kindle, and she read it on her iPod (honestly, it didn't even cross my mind to go to a bookstore to see if there were any copies there). Anyway, she said the performance was well done. They went to the cast party afterwards because the friend's mom knows the guy who was celebrating his 5000th performance.

And Annabeth worked on Junior Analytical Grammar.

ART

The Drawing and Painting badge has an activity called In Shape that sounds like it's straight out of an Ed Emberley book. So I picked one up at the library, Annabeth glanced through it, and decided to draw the Enterprise.

She also spent quite a bit of time playing with Sumopaint, both with photographs and without. I'm pretty sure this counts towards a couple of other badges like Photography and Graphic Design -- I need to look up the requirements for those badges.

And Thalia attended her art class. Then was sitting in church with her friends, drawing on the bulletin during the service, when a retired high school art teacher happened to sit down next to her. Afterwards the woman GUSHED about Thalia's ability, and wanted to know where she went to school. It was weird. I was very impressed with the woman's metallic gold fingernail polish, though, and think I might've been missing the boat on that sort of thing.

OTHER STUFF

Thalia baked cookies and asked if that could count as home ec. Really, no. She's also spent hours each week working out, which WILL count towards a PE credit. She lifts weights, rides a stationary bike, does Pilates, works on flexibility and dance technique.

Annabeth worked on another badge that counts towards geography -- Global Awareness. Activity #5 In the News had her looking at international news, #4 International Friendship gave us a reason to look up what sister cities St. Louis has around the world (there are 15) and how the sister cities program works, and #3 Show Your Colors prompted us to sutdy the flag of France. We also worked more on Money Sense by discussing activity #9 Money Doesn't Always Matter.

And dance class. And musical theater class. And drama class for Thalia. And voice lessons. We skipped piano lessons this week due to snow (somewhere around 6-8 inches -- all the schools were closed, many of them for 2 days due to the cold weather that followed the snow).