Progress Report

More than a week into our school year now (more than three weeks for Noah). If I were having a parent-teacher conference with myself, I'd be pretty happy and a wee bit boastful in both roles, lol. Just to touch on some highlights...

HISTORY. As I mentioned, we're working on tackling both ancient and medieval history this year. We're starting with ancient times for the first couple sessions. In our initial attempt to figure out what we're doing, we came up with this:

(Tangent: Yay for finally using this giant pad of paper that I've had since the boys were learning to read! lol)

So. This is a really rough start. We found three or four books with timelines and consolidated what we felt were important events. Then we added in some very preliminary details, still using our timelines in the books. We're going to go through and just research different points on our timeline and add details as they interest us. It's rather liberating not having a set plan or going in chronological order. :) We'll see where this goes...I'm pretty excited...

WRITING. Last week, we had a fantastic time doing a free-writing exercise. I won't retype it all here, though I'm guessing you'd enjoy it!, but the boys and I took turns writing three stories (all starting with the same sentence "Bob was bored") and then rotating the notebooks every five minutes to continue the story. It was entertaining. ;) 

This week (so far), we're starting on our report project for this session but also did a quick six word memoir exercise from one of the books I'm working from. I had each boy come up with three. Here are Micah's:

• I was born. I grew up.
• Archery & karate are part of me. (Yes, this is seven words. Micah claims that the ampersand doesn't count and that he should get credit for thinking outside the box. Yes, he really said that. LOL)
• Wake up. Eat. Play. Sleep. Repeat.

And here are Asher's:

• Karate. Gymnastics. Eat. Sleep. Rinse. Repeat.
• I wish I was Iron Man.
• I'm a black belt very soon.

CEC. Noah's classes are going well. No complaints, really. He's doing a good job of being responsible for his own work and time and has already had to handle a few hiccups (technological for the most part) that required sorting things out with his advisor. All good.

And, for those of you not on Facebook, CEC was recently named the top high school in Colorado by Newsweek. To celebrate, CEC had a party last weekend with free food and raffles for iPad minis and cake. :)

And that's some of what's been going on here...

PSA

Public Service Announcement: Watching Jaws with a somewhat melodramatic and fearful ten year old for the first time may result in bruising and may require earplugs. ;)

Yeah. We watched Jaws with the boys last night. It had been decades since either Nathan or I had seen it and the boys never had. We felt it might be a cultural thing that they should experience, lol. Micah has now (unsurprisingly) declared that he will never live near any ocean.

Also, fyi, the movie rating system from the 1970s seems to be rather different (and more lenient) than today's rating system. (Specifically, Jaws is listed as PG but contains some swearing, nudity and graphic dismemberment/death. Methinks that would not earn a PG rating these days and am now reminded that I apparently must check older movies and not just rely on their ratings.)

For what it's worth, knowing Micah, we would like to point out that we did begin the movie in full daylight. Noah's surprising Micah by yelling "BOO!" in the middle of the movie probably didn't help, though, lol. (Pausing the movie was required to retrieve Micah from his room and allow Noah to apologize.)

Just so you know... ;)

Stamping

Just a quick check in to show you our art lesson from last week. It was another of the Doodle Crate boxes and was a hit...

As you can see, we had some boxes in the garage which served nicely as catch-alls for the shavings created in making the stamps. I also happened to have a box of stamp carving materials on hand from doing this project years ago. :)

Micah set about drawing his stuffed monkey, Smiles, and creating a stamp and also a pair of swords. Asher started with his Avengers/Asher "A" and also made a creeper face (from Minecraft). I joined in with a pennant and koala. It took some trial and error to explain what would show up when stamped and how to control the carving tools, but it was worth it.

Yup. Fun afternoon project and lesson in patience and planning. ;)