The Last Week of Quarter Two

Hi. This is Tian here. Another quarter of torturous school is over and when we get back we will have two new students to join us in our daily regimen of torture. Poor them. In the meantime we are going crazy finishing up this quarter with completing art projects, making videos, and compiling photos of things we have done in the last eight weeks. Oh, and we are driving Mom crazy.

Language

OK, you know, there is nothing usually going on in Language but last time with the test in language I actually got a 78%. Ugh, not good. This time I got a 98% on the test and I am so happy!

I also had to make a video on giving oral instructions, so I instructed on making tomato soup. As always, everyone had to help me make the soup (and eat the soup). Even the cat helped!

Math

I just started up with the Order of Operations in math. It's OK, but only if I remember PEDMAS

or Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. They both stand for parentheses, exponents, division, multiplication, adding, subtracting. Ugh...

History

The other day we learned about this South African guy who was named Shaka Zulu and he was really weird. He went on a killing spree and killed a lot of the dudes in South Africa. And when he killed one tribe the remaining people moved to another tribe's land and killed (or displaced) all of the guys in the tribe. And so then the tribe who got taken over moved over to another tribe's land killed them and so on. Pretty nice, huh?

Science

We are learning about fossils and we went on this AMAZING fossil walk that was sooooooooooo cool and we found these amazing fossils! And dad found these really BIG and I mean BIG clam fossils the size of his fists! OH! Does anyone know the song by Lady Gaga called Born This Way? Well we are making a parody of it about the making of the earth and it's so cool!

And of course, since it is the end of the quarter, we are also finishing up a science unit on inventors which we started WAAAAAY back in October. We had to research an inventor, write an interview for that person, and then dress up and do an interview like we were that person. We are all interviewing and, if I may say so, my portrayal of Ruth Wakefield, inventor of the Toll House Cookie, is excellent. I will post it after I finish it, maybe in a second post that I will create later on. For now you will just have to be content with the video "How To Make Tomato Soup".

Later,

Tian

Quarter 2 Week 4

This week we went to a co-op meeting, made Christmas cookies, studied Indians in history, started studying fossils in science, made gingerbread houses, started new math books (except for Tehva, who is still using her old one), took a spelling test, started reading The Courage of Sarah Noble (except for Tian, who is reading The Broken Blade), and worked on the last part of our play. Whew.

My Favorite Thing

Going to the homeschool co-op was my favorite thing. We went on Tuesday. I met a new friend named Callum, and he had AWESOME TOYS (you can see that there was a lot of educational type of stuff going on). One lady taught us about how Santa Claus formed. She said that a man, I mean a boy, saw that two girls had been sold to a slave trader. When the boy heard about this, he decided to leave some of his gold at the house of the slave trader (the boy was really rich).

When the boy left the gold at the house, the slave trader heard him and ran after him with a stick. Finally, the slave trader caught the boy and asked him why he had robbed his house! Then one of the girls came out and told the slave trader that the boy had left sacks of gold at the house. The slave trader grumbled but left the boy alone.

And guess what the boy's name was...Nicholas! Saint Nicholas! Get it? Now Saint Nicholas has gotten used to the secret leaving that he started all those years ago. He is, in fact, immortal!

My Tastiest Thing

We made gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, candy, and icing. I will post some pictures below.

I LOVE Math (actually I don't)

I have a new math book and it is called Singapore Primary Mathematics 3B. I'm learning new things in there. Tian says that her math is too hard, but guess what...even if she has to write one word down she still complains. Easy? So easy. My sister complains too much.

Also Tasty...

This week we made our first batch of Christmas cookies! Mine was chocolate chip almond cookies and I made them almost all by myself. Tian chose gingerbread, Cady chose peanut butter, and Tehva chose MnM cookies. We tested them, of course. We will give them to the people who helped us this year so far in school as thank you presents. I think that is a good thing to do.

I learned that you always have to use the right amount of ingredients when you make cookies. That is definitely an important lesson to learn at my age.

Other Stuff

The Indians and fossils we studied were not so interesting. I am much more interested in reading my school book, Gulliver's Travels, than doing much of anything else right now. I actually already finished it so I will have to read the other versions that we have here.

I don't know. I think that is all.

Silas