Month 1 Review

ART
Two lessons from our art curriculum completed, some modeling work, three art appreciation lessons (appreciating background), an introduction to the life, personality, and work of Beethoven has been fairly simple and perhaps not a big part of the school day, but impactful all the same. If one is to groan about the classical music station being on yet again, one ought to at least be able to groan out the proper names of the composers. And so, the first three weeks of school are a success!
PE/HEALTH
Completed Presidential Fitness Test, charted own results against "healthy range" averages.
Completed summer quarter rock climbing class, several hikes, runs, and informal team sports events (kick ball, sword fighting). Spent an entire day climbing Smith Rocks in Oregon with a climbing guide, starting at 5.4 climbs and finishing with 5.9 climbing and practice rappelling.
Swam and practiced diving.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Reviewed nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, the articles, and pronouns.
Completed one formal writing lesson as well as several smaller writing assignments.
Work on cursive is progressing.
Reading: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1080L) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, funny and interesting; Flush (830L) Carl Hiassen, hilarious; A Wrinkle in Time (740 L) A Wind in the Door (790L) Madeleine L'Engle, first was great and a fast read, second was boring; The Mysterious Benedict Society (840 L) Trenton Lee Stewart, awesome, really good; The Cay (860L) by Theodore Taylor, easy to read, good to talk about; The Book of Three (770L) by Lloyd Alexander, scary (good scary) and exciting; Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransomme, calm and nice to read; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (880L) JK Rowling, exciting and scary to read by yourself; The Breadwinner (lexile 630), Parvana's Journey (lexile 640), Mud City (lexile 740) all by Deborah Ellis, really good, wish there were more.
MATH
A review of material covered last year in beginning algebra is progressing, with factoring, PI, infinite and finite numbers, ratios, and the integers covered so far.
Review of fractions (multiplying and dividing), and percents is ongoing as an extra math lesson.
Practice with logic and story problems is a daily and enjoyable part of the school schedule. A weekly hands on math lab (one involving 30 feet of butcher paper, crayons, and a series of rectangles to divide with various numbers of straight lines) has been quite fun.
SCIENCE
Science thus far has been limited to simple nature observation and a weekly class learning about scientists, scientific current events, and studies. Articles about insect eggs and the dangers of and ways of dealing with space trash were read and reported on, both verbally and in writing.
Several trees and a couple of types of mushrooms were identified. Ecosystems of the high desert and the coastal wetlands and forests were explored.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Reading, narration, and illustrating of the beginning of civilizations was completed. Experiments with simple tools and possible evolution of tool making were spontaneously devised and carried through.
Geography study included a review of the world- oceans and continents, basic geographic terms, map reading- then narrowed in focus to North America.
A mini study about Uruguay was completed, including making dulce de leche candy-sauce.

Weather Tree

We've done weather trees before, but this one was inspired by Ann Druitt, Christine Fynes-Clinton, and Marije Rowling's book "All Year Round" which is chock-full of verses, recipes, craft ideas and games. I drew the tree on bigger paper, though- 18x24", and I discarded their suggestion of different leaf colors for different types of weather, and stuck with temperatures instead. Because we live in a place without weather. Seriously. It is sunny nearly every day. I thought temperatures would show the transitions of the year better- we'll see. In any case, the boys like it, and keep careful track of whose turn it is to color in the leaves. Miles, after being excluded for making some little angry scribbles, now takes great care and even colors inside the lines of the tiny leaves!

Lessons Learned on Vacation

1) When your Mom says "Don't lean over the railing" she actually means "Don't go anywhere near the steep side of the road, no matter what." In fact, don't even undo your seat belt. Let's just get down the mountain, really, really slowly. 'Cause, you know, she's trying to be cool, and let everyone enjoy this amazing adventure, but really, she keeps having flashes of children falling off cliffs and being devoured by wild animals.... Well, at least she's trying, right?
2) Mountain goats, big horn sheep, black bears, black back woodpeckers, deer, elk, even the antelope and bison, bears, turtles, and elk at the National Bison Refuge, are all really interesting and fun to watch. But getting to hold a little slug, watch it for hours, and take pictures of it close up? Well, that, apparently, is worth going on vacation and camping out for.

3)This is close enough to a black bear for your mother's comfort. Especially since there were three, and we can only see two. And there might be rustling in those bushes right behind us....

4)Bison don't care about the rules of the road as they apply to automobiles. And we're not arguing with them. We don't mind sitting still, right here. No sir.

5) A carousel ride (or maybe three) is a great way to end a vacation. Riding with your brother is even nicer.

6) We love going on vacation. We love each other, and we love visiting our friends. We love camping, but maybe we can love a newer, bigger, more weather-proof tent next time. We love being away, seeing new things and having adventures, but we really love coming home again.

Nature Study 1B Wasps

Following up on our first Handbook of Nature Study lesson, we learned a little bit about wasps this week. Wasps are related to bees, but are not hairy like bees are. Wasps are solitary or social- those are the ones that build those paper pulp nests, like the one we saw on the slide the other day. Only the females have stingers. Some live on nectar, but others are omnivores, and eat carrion along with their sweets. Some wasps are parasitic, and they lay their eggs inside caterpillars, then when the eggs hatch, they eat the caterpillar from the inside out. Totally awesome, apparently. We did all agree that using parasitic wasps for pest control was way cooler than using toxic pesticides. Though I guess we don't want close encounters with either form of insect control!

Nature Study 1A Cottonwood

Cottonwood Seeds. Photo from Land Arts in an Electronic Age.

We learned a little bit about Cottonwood Trees this week, after seeing a little farm COVERED in the fluffy cottony spiderwebby seeds, and seeing them at the Ahtanum Mission. Avery was interested to find out that Cottonwoods have light, flexible wood, often used to make those round cheese boxes, matches, paper, cheap plywood, snowboard cores, and perhaps most excitingly, the "bones" of Buster, the crash test dummy on the TV show Mythbusters! Apparently cottonwood breaks under the same pressure as human bones. Good to know, good to know. Another interesting thing about cottonwoods is that they can sprout roots from buried limbs and trunk (and vice versa) making them good at holding sand dunes, and one of the few trees able to survive a sand dune existence.

Also, cottonwoods are Poplar type trees, and like to grow in wet areas. Around here they are found down in the little valleys and canyons along stream banks.

Nature Study 1

We started our new Nature Study program today. We're using Anna Botsford Comstock's The Handbook of Nature Study, and the guidance and some of the ideas from The One Hour Challenges at this website, plus our regular nature science stories, like these, and these, as well as made up ones and Native American stories.
Avery's drawing of a Clover flower. It doesn't show up well in the picture, but in his book it is sweet. Diminutive, but isn't clover, really?

We had a picnic under this tree. What a great way to start a nature study outing!

One of the original old apple trees still growing and producing on the Mission grounds.

I think this is the seedpod of an American Sycamore tree. There are several at the Mission, providing beauty and shade to the park grounds.

Wasp nest under the slide ramp. The boys watched closely for some time.

Miles' nature book drawing. He finished pretty quickly then spent some time moving piles of dirt around and poking them with his apple wood stick.

My page. We were sitting directly under one of those ancient apple trees, so it seemed natural to draw that. Ummm... not that I'm a fabulous artist or anything, but it's fun to all sit and draw together. And we were using these cool Lyra Aquacolor crayons, which draw nicely like rich, soft crayons, then magically turn into a watercolor painting when you brush with water!

Our two topics for further study are wasps and cottonwoods. We'll spend a bit of time this week finding out about those things.