Week of December 8, 2012

School this week is over and we are looming dangerously close to Christmas in a country that gives so few clues that Christmas is coming. Unfortunately this makes Christmas shopping difficult to get finished in a timely manner. Fortunately, though, the kids remain buckled down without constant reminders of an approaching Christmas holiday.

Here is the report du semaine:

Tian
This week at co-op we did a writing exercise that made us write as quickly as possible. We had a two minute set time and had to write as much as possible on a topic/in a story before we passed it on. It was fun because we passed them around and the other students made characters get eaten, which I think is hilarious.

Here is the story entitled The Beautiful Girl, with a ten writers contributing.

The beautiful girl is actually not beautiful. Everyone just says she is. Truth be told, she is incredibly ugly. How she got the name "The Beautiful Girl" is unknown. As a matter of fact, she was so ugly that everyone thought it was time to be rid of her so they stuffed her in a barrel and threw her down Niagra Falls. When they found the barrel, they chopped her up and sold her to a shop called "Sale of Chicken Murder" in Nizwa (ed note: for those of you who have not been to Nizwa, it is a pretty racey place). How mean was that? 

However, life was not so easy for a chopped up chunk of meat with a 3 OR sticker on her. She was not even recognized as a human being. Poor poor Karis, for her name was Karis (ed note: Karis is the most popular girl in co-op). You have probably met her before.

Well, another lovely girl at the co-op tried to salvage her remains. This girl doing the salvaging was really truly kind--do not be deceived! The salvaging girl was named Kelly. Unfortunately, Kelly did not realize that the Karis blob wrapped inside the package and marked with a 3 OR sticker was actually alive. She buried Karis's remains, and the living blob called Karis ended up suffocating.

The amazingly beautiful Kelly mourned the loss of Karis until Kelly's paranormal romance began. Kelly's vampire boyfriend named Gary convinced the once kind Kelly to dig up Karis's remains and feast on what was left of Karis.

Gary took Kelly to the store so they could buy some ingredients to cook Karis's remains. Their list contained hot sauce, pepper, and salt. But the amazing Kelly heard the truth about her boyfriend and Karis...they had been involved while Karis was still alive! Enraged, she broke up with her boyfriend and called the vampire police, who arrested him.

Then Kelly dug up Karis's remains and brought her to a hospital where they were able to sew Karis back together. Overjoyed, Kelly returned Karis to her family and they lived happily ever after.

Jensen
Of course the Indus Valley Day was my very favorite. I also enjoyed bring the Indian bride because it was fun to see Zara getting so dressed up and farded (ed note: look that one up in the dictionary!).

Making the kitchari was exciting because I enjoy cutting up potatoes (aloo in Hindi!).

Acdemically I learned that math is evil because I got a 10% on my first assignment of the week. Now, though, I am up to an 80%. Additionally, I suspect that Tian and I are morphing into one math mind as we have had identical grades on our math. This is creepy.

Silas
I am still writng a story called Super Dog Sox. It's about animals who are spies. It takes place in Oman with the main characters being Harry (my cat), Snowy (Jensen's cat), Sox (Cady's dog), and Zara's many many cats. It is not technically a school assignment but I use all of my spare time in school to write it.

I finished the first story in the series last week. It is called Super Cat Harry. Harry has powers, like laser powered fighting, super strength, and lots more.

What about school work? I don't remember anything. Oh, there is this really hard thing called upside down multiplication, and it's super hard to me because you have to line up columns of numbers and I am just not getting it.

Tehva
Today I am sick and I have a fever so I am not talking to anyone. So there.

Zara
Zara also has the fever and vomiting disease and isn't here today.

Aside from the usual excitement and our Indus Valley Day, the week was pretty low-key.

Indus Valley Day

It is hard to study ancient Indus Valley civilizations. Why? Well, this is a civilization that just spontaneously disappeared, leaving very little in the way of clues as to why it disappeared. And to top that off, the Indus Valley civilizations' writings remain largely untranslated.

But not to worry, I have become the master of fill-in-the-gaps. When Indus Valley began to loom large in the headlights, I gave Nancy a call and she came to our rescue! Nancy was born and raised in Lucknow, India, making her the closest thing to the ancient Indus Valley civilization that I could come up with on short notice.

Nancy went straight to work setting up an afternoon of delicious excitement. We started out with a lesson on masalas (spices), kitchari (dal, rice, and vegetable stew), sheera (desert), and chutney. In addition, we got to learn how to say, in Hindi, all of the vegetables that we chopped. If our internet provider ever comes out of the Dark Ages, I will post a video of that very thing.

Rosie stirring the semolina for the sheera.

 Perusing the spice selection with Aly's help.

Lunch all finished and on the table. The chutney is in the middle, with the sheera (imagine cream o' wheat meets saffron, cashews, butter, and sugar) in the foreground, and the kitchari in the pot.




After lunch, Nancy had a Hindi movie all cued up and ready to play. The kids watched the dancing with their little jaws on the floor while the kitchari digested in their bellies. Nancy talked a little bit about weddings and some of the traditions surrounding marriage, and then whipped out her wedding dress and dressed each of the girls in it, complete with make-up. This was Tian's take on the whole process:

 But the others got way into the dressing up thing, with Zara even going in for the whole outfit.

The toothless "bride"

The "bride" who needed to be upheld by Nancy

The demure "bride"

The red-eyed bride

It was rough going, but we eventually peeled them all away from the wedding stuff to come outside and learn about traditional ways of keeping the bad gods out and the good gods in. Nancy took a bag of white powder and quickly made a design at her doorstep. Then she gave each of the kids a bag of colorful powder and had them fill in the design. Finally, she gave each a clay pot, a wick, and some cooking oil and had them light lamps inside the design. This, she said, would bring only good to the house.

There was lots more to see and do but we ran out of time and so we bade a tearful farewell to our Indus Valley expert.

It was possibly the coolest field trip ever.  

Some photos from the first quarter...

Service Shots

So here are some photos from quarter one. A new requirement this year is service hours, which I am defining broadly as any work that uses one of the kids' talents and results in no pay. All of their service  hours that they have amassed thus far have been through individual projects. However, we did a school-wide project creating games for a birthday party. Jensen and Silas collaborated on a fishing game. It was a splash (sorry, couldn't help myself). Silas hid on the inside and clipped candy bars onto fishermen's lines while Jensen manned the outside of the game and helped kids cast into the "boat". This suited Silas well as a he hates crowds, and it suited Jensen well because she is a closet extrovert, as you can see.  

Wadi Walks

Once again, we are doing a few wadi walks. We started small but since these girls are HARD-CORE we moved very quickly to the big guns. We were really lucky to have Janet lead us on a wadi walk up AJ Wadi, which we have renamed Cheese Grater Wadi (see nameless student's pants in bottom photo--they are all so modest that I couldn't say whose pants they were, but maybe you can figure it out).

The last push to the end of our walk.

Nameless student's pants. The wadi ate them up!

Zara did amazingly well considering the tread on her shoes was almost non-existent.

And at the end Janet gave everyone a certificate of completion. How cool is that?

 Irish Dance

 Irish dance is almost over because our teacher is leaving us for the Hyatt in Doha. However, because she is cool and has connections, she imported Irish examiners at the beginning of November and everyone did a graded test. Afterward, she had a party on the beach and the kids were awarded their grades and certificates by school. This is the Home School.

Project Work
The Sumeria Project

The idea behind this project was to 1.) teach advertisement techniques used to convince consumers to BUY BUY BUY; 2.) learn and use some of the tricks that advertisers use to make their products look more appealing; 3.) give the kids the opportunity to study intensively one aspect of Mesopotamian culture; and 4.) teach them how to use Picassa for photo enhancement.

Because Silas is a boy (I suspect), he ended up being a model for his own ad and Tian's, which was for Gilgamesh Crunch Cereal--he is Gilgamesh in the shot above. Makes you want a bowl of cereal, doesn't it?

Miscellaneous 

 And this, apparently, is what happens when you are 100% homeschooled. Since Tehva has not been exposed to the big world of public school education, and no one else seems to have this issue with looking like a hillbilly, we must simply assume that the photo below is the result of too much homeschooling. Or something.

More photos to come!

Week of November 16th

Our resolve sticks--at least for this week.

Tian
At co-op we have been following a class on Decopage, taught by Ms. Annie. It's when you take water and white glue and mix them together. Then you take napkins, wrapping paper, or scrap paper and make them into thin layers. You then dip the paper/napkins in the glue and coat the item that you are doing Decopage on.

This week I worked on a plate for Christmas. When it is finished I will post a picture of it on the blog.

Zara
Oh my gosh! Then thing that was so frustrating this week was that my collage of Enkidu, the monster-man from Gilgamesh, did not turn out like I wanted. As a matter of fact, my cats ate it! I know that is such an old excuse, but it's true!

Cady
All I can think about is math and it STINKS! I am working on calculating area and circumference of a circle. Each and every time I did the assignment I got ALL THE ANSWERS wrong! Now I am hating myself for having to do it all over again. Even at this moment, I am still correcting my work. I am able to correct it, though (ed not: and that's a good thing) thanks to a brand new concept called scrap paper and another list I have of eight steps to follow to find the circumference or area of a circle. So I guess that means that I am actually learning it.


Silas
Okay, we made little clay Enkidus. Enkidu is a monster dude from the story of Gilgamesh, which was written in Mesopotamia over 4000 years ago! My Enkidu was really tiny and he had so much hair that he ended up looking like he was pregnant.

I have also learned a frustrating new unit in math about place value up to trillions. There is a way to look at place value where there is multiplication like five times a trillion. Like that. It is amazingly hard, mostly because the lines on the paper are too small.

The best thing I have been doing is writing a story called Super Cat Harry. I have already finished the first story. Now I am writing a sequel.

Jensen
So this week we started studying Hammurabi's Code. The rules are very interesting. When Tian and I discussed punishments that we thought would be appropriate for the crimes that took place in Babylon, it was very funny. The best one was when we had to decide a punishment for a nun who drank alcohol (which really happened in Babylon). We decided that the people would all gather around her and watch her get drunk and then she would feel ashamed for what she had done.  In actuality, they burned her.

Tehva
Today I read Sam the Minuteman and I read the WHOLE book and after I finished I was so tired. It had 62 pages! Then I answered questions about it and I got them alllllllll right. Even the hard ones! The book was about a boy named Sam who went to fight the British during the Revolutionary War. The first time he went out to fight the British, the English soldiers won, but the second time he went out to fight the Minutemen won. His friend John got shot in the leg, too. In this book, Sam learned to fight really really well even though he is like nine or ten years old.

We also listened to Gilgamesh the Hero while we made our Enkidus. Jensen's Enkidu had a stick right through its body and balls of clay stuck on the end of it. It was really really funny.

We will add photos later. Until then the question is, "Will we be able to do this again next week?"

I Inspire Me Sometimes...

So as much as I struggled to find the time to add to the school blog last year, eventually giving up on it altogether, I really enjoyed reading through the posts we did manage to get in there. So this year I have resolved to get on the stick and make some consistent posts once again.

Just to give you a rundown of who we are this year...

We lost Alfie to the wilds of the UAE as his parents moved on to new jobs.

We also lost Hamid to a real school. We knew it was coming all along--as soon as he started here his mom made it very clear that he just needed to get his English up to snuff in order to move him on to something bigger and, well, bigger. We were successful on that front and so off he went.

And so, as the 2012-13 school year began, we were just four people. We did one whole week with just Tian, Silas, Tehva, and Cady. And then, before we knew it, J and Z moved in to those two empty spots and we were six once again. Or, I should say, we are six, because that's what we are.

In just one summer we went from being a wild and crazy boy school to being a subdued and sometimes angst-ridden girl school. It is a change to which I am still adjusting, although no one else seems too fussed by it.

I am finding, though, that it is harder to get buy-in from a group of girls than a group of boys. Anything hands-on was okay with the boys and they would attack it with a frightening zeal, so that I most days found myself scraping something or other off of the ceiling or walls by 3:30--something that had gone airborne in their enthusiasm.

Hands-on things with the girls result in cautious discussion and initial reticence. Comments like, "Ewww...do I really have to do this? Ewww...this is disgusting," often fly about before they will attempt anything that involves more than a pencil and paper. There is talk of nails breaking and things being unladylike. I am learning to ignore the talk and just get on with the lesson, but some days I am simply exhausted by their constant self-deprecation and chatter. Was I a girl like this at one point? I must have been. However, I think I have blocked it out as I quite likely traumatized myself with my girliness.

So as you follow along with this blog which we will post upon weekly (or maybe more if I can come up with a creative way to use it) please keep in mind that we are no longer who we were last year and I am no longer grasping my sanity firmly in two hands.

Enjoy.

Cruel or Fair?

Check this out for a quick overview of the stele itself.

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/Hammurabi.html

After you look at that, try this link for a quick overview of a few of Hammurabi's laws.

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1WhxpDC6TcXKFQDF-8v-7bP24UAP0BfS51NbzH6WgPKE

Okay, now that you have done that, consider this:

Did you find the laws to be cruel, fair, or somewhere in between?

Make a comment in the comment box below and be sure that it makes sense and describes your opinion thoroughly.

Those of you who are visiting here are welcome to comment as well.

If you do not feel like commenting but would rather just eavesdrop, just look below for the stunningly literate and learned comments from the students of Mawaleh American School regarding Hammurabi's Code and its cruelty or fairness.

Quarter 3 Weeks 4-6 Learning Outside the Cement Box

It is amazing what the addition of two hot little bodies to the school room does for spare time. The mathematical equations are as follows, where c = children; t = tween; k = kindergartener; T = teenager:

c + t + k + T = 1 hr spare time/wk

However, add the following equation and the math comes out quite differently:

c + 2t + 2k + T = -1 hr spare time/wk

And so by the wayside go such niceties as the school blog, my personal blog, and any semblance of organization to the time after lunch each day. On top of the extra bodies we are now venturing out of the house almost every day to explore the nooks and crannies of Muscat, take tennis lessons, dance like mad people, and visit other homeschoolers in the area, which takes time and energy and time. And so it has been good-bye blog, until today.

Today I sat down to dump the photos off of the camera and thought, "Shoot, I have 10 minutes to kill here before I start my nightly round of medical journal edits and planning for tomorrow. Let me post some shots." If all goes well, you should see some picts of the last few weeks of school.

Week 4

We started a quick dash through cell studies, which pretty much devolved into knowing the names and functions of the parts of a plant cell, as well as the workings of the cell as a system. In actuality, it was an excuse to make a cells out of the green jello we have had sitting in our cupboard for the last 8 months.

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Silas and Alfie eat their cellular cytoplasm together.

Hamid and Cady and their cell. Notice the crumpled paper acting as a vacuole? Very clever!

Week 5

This was a "Whoa! How did we almost miss that?" week. The Tour of Oman, a professional bike tour that comes every year and attracts great bikers, went right past our neighborhood a couple of times. Finally I threw in the towel, packed the kids into our great big car, and chased the boys down as they started their last day of the tour.

As you may have predicted, this whole event put me miles behind on what I had planned to cover for the rest of the week and eventually I just kind of threw in the towel and **GASP** followed the kids' lead in terms of when and what they were ready to learn. That was a hard pill to swallow. After all, in spite of the rhetoric we are fed as public school teachers ("Differentiate differentiate differentiate and engage them with creative instruction!") inevitably this is what that command is followed with: ("But only after you have dragged them kicking and screaming through the state mandated crap"). I have been going full tilt on someone else's schedule with these curricula I am using, kind of just out of habit. However, I am now seeing the light. At least a sliver or two. Running on the kids' timeclock for once made for a very pleasant week, some amazing stuff from the kids, and some great photos by Silas, who was the cameraman after Hamid started vomiting everywhere minutes before the bikers left the starting line.

Week 6

After two weeks of running the kids and myself ragged with at least an hour in the morning spent OUTSIDE and well away from the house, I decided that this had been a GREAT idea and that I should continue in that strain. So we inaugurated the new school week with a wadi walk for science. In one fell swoop we covered geology, botany, ecology, biology, and geography (who knew that Azerbaijan has sections that are just as desolate-looking as the areas around Muscat?).

I personally learned that photographing six children is far harder than photographing three, as is evidenced by their collective inability to look at the camera WITHOUT their mouths wide open.

Alfie's hat gets lifted by an accacia tree.

And so Al Mawaleh American School chugs along.