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!

Quarter One Week Three

This week I helped to do the line experiment, which was our brain candy of the week. We used pipe cleaners, strips of paper, straws, and tape. We connected them all together. We had to suspend the line 18 inches off the floor without the line falling or breaking. Tian and I worked together and our line broke and fell.

We studied clouds in the water cycle in science. We made different types of clouds out of puff balls and then glued them onto paper, along with the clouds' names and what the clouds signify. For example, the wispy cirrus cloud, which is made of ice crystals, shows that the weather is about to change. We actually saw some cumulus clouds in the sky, and some cirrus clouds (Ed note: this is some sort of miracle for Oman since most days there is not a cloud in the sky!)

We learned about the triangle trade in history and Queen Nzinga of Ndomba in Africa. I colored her picture and made her skin dark brown. In one path of the triangle trade from Europe to Africa, they took utensils, pots and pans, and other European goods and traded the Africans for slaves. Then they traded the slaves in South America and the West Indies for sugar and molasses. They could use that to make rum.

We all went on a website called www.adaptedmind.com to practice math. Some of the problems were tough for me to solve. Others were nice and easy, such as multiplication and division.

I am reading the book Pocahontas and the Strangers. It has a sad part in the middle but it gets better when Pocahontas is released from prison by Governor Gates and ends up living with him and his two daughters, Mary and Betsy. It is a really good story, and it is also a really good biography!

It took me a few days to complete the puzzle of the week, which was one of the USA, and which included hidden fun facts about each of the fifty states along with a picture on each state. I found a camel on Arizona. Then I read the fun fact and found out that camels were once used for transportation around Arizona. I didn't know that!

Tian and I learned about compound subjects and predicates in language. Tian says, "Yuck! Language!"

In general, this week was interesting and fun, but tough.

By Cady

Here is a video that Tian made about Jebel Cat: