Homeschool Day 9/21

 Here's what we did today.

Bible

• The Action Bible - John the Baptist

Reading

• Where the Red Fern Grows
• The Wild Robot

Language Arts

• Spelling Workout F
• The Good and the Beautiful LA 6

Math

• More testing with the California Achievement Test (we only have two sections left)
• He scored a perfect score on the word problem section.  Some of the problems were word for word from our Saxon textbook, it seemed like

History

• Story of the World 2 - Ferdinand and Isabella
• Famous Figures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance - Queen Isabella
• The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn

Art & Music

• The Good and the Beautiful Drawing I
• Violin practice

Friday Co-op Day 9/19

 I am teaching a weekly mini-co-op class using BJU Press' 7th Grade Life Science textbook and lab manual.  The students are all boys in the age range of 11 and 14.  

Chapter 1: Seeing Life Through the Bible's Story

• We watched a BBC Earth video about the Tenrecs of Madagascar
• We discussed what an organism is and the characteristics of something that is alive
• We looked at the section on the elephant bird
• I introduced the 6 kingdoms (this text lists four, but I disagree, so I introduced six - my degree is in biological sciences)
• LAB: I introduced how to use the microscope, how to make a slide with coverslip and we looked at prepared slides of stained onion epidermis

Homeschool Day 9/16

 Reading

• Where the Red Fern Grows
• The Wild Robot

Language Arts

• The Good and the Beautiful LA 6
• The Good and the Beautiful Cursive 6
• Spelling Workout F

Math

• We did the Fractions section of the California Achievement Test

History

• The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn
• Story of the World 2 - the Princes in the Tower (Richard III)

German

• DuoLingo

Art & Music

• Violin Lesson

Homeschool Day 9/15

 Bible

• The Action Bible - King Herod, Jesus in Egypt

Language Arts

• The Good and the Beautiful LA 6 - he finished his persuasive essay today

Science

• Apologia Earth Science - caves, we started the chapter on the hydrosphere

Extras

• Karate class
• Boy Scouts

Homeschool Day 9/14 + More CAT Testing

 We finished school at about 1:30pm, so we were both losing it at that point.  But I was proud of the effort he put in for the CAT test and his violin practice.

Reading

• Where the Red Fern Grows
• The Wild Robot

Language Arts

• He wrote paragraph 3 of his four paragraph, persuasive essay
• CAT Testing
• He did the Language Usage section of the California Achievement Test.  
• Scored in the 99th percentile
• His total composite for Reading was 94th percentile
• His total composite for Language Arts was 99th percentile
• We haven't started the math section

Math

• Saxon 6/5 - dividing by tens

History

• Story of the War 2 - The War of the Roses
• The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn

Art and Music

• We practiced violin together.  I played guitar and he practiced reading sheet music he was given to practice at his lesson last week
• The Good and the Beautiful Drawing I - more tracing with tracing paper

Field Trip to Galveston, Texas 2026

 Because we are kicking off next Friday with the first week of our co-op, in which I will be teaching biology, we took a long field trip last weekend to Galveston Island off the coast near Houston.  

We took a boat in the harbor and watched dolphins.  There's a nursery pod of about 1,000 dolphins that live together in Galveston Harbor.  They patrol the harbor looking for sharks.  If they see a shark, they will usually kill it.  So there aren't a lot of sharks in the harbor, even though they have found hammerheads, etc.  The last time we watched the dolphins, two of them had a flounder and were throwing it up in the air to each other.  The dolphins have a ton of personality and will play in the wake of boats, following them and jumping out of the water.

We did some beach combing and playing on the beach. I think that's a blue crab in the picture. 

We also went to Moody Gardens, which are three glass pyramids containing a rainforest exhibit, an aquarium and a Children's Discovery Museum, which showed an exhibit about animal skeletons.  Moody Gardens also has a zipline, gift shop, several restaurants and several mini movie theaters, which show nature-based 3D movies.  We enjoyed the rainforest the most.  The aquarium was very crowded, which made it difficult to see the animals.  Ironically, no one was in the children's museum and we were able to spend a lot of time in there looking at the skeletons.

This field trip was a great start to our biology co-op.  I will be teaching from BJU Press' Life Science, which is written for 7th grade.  Each week, I'll be teaching concepts from the chapter, followed by a lab.  I'm very excited, because my degree is in biology, so it's generally an easy class for me to teach.

Day 2 of Testing

 We're actually learning a lot doing this.  Even though it sounds dumb to take a standardized test as a homeschooler in Texas, we both are actually get a lot out of this.  It's been a huge boost to his self-confidence.  He was much faster with the test on Day 2.  He was less confused and knew more of what the test was looking for.  During the last section, he didn't even want to look at the instructions and do the example problem.  He just kept trying to grab the computer and get started.

Blue light lenses.  He needs them.  He told me that he's turning on the color-blind settings when he plays Playstation.  I didn't realize that he was having so much nausea/headaches with screens.  That was eye-opening.  No pun intended.  

I realized that his reading scores are so high because he starts every morning reading his Bible.  I honestly think that might actually be boosting his reading skills.  Not that boosting reading skills is why we read the Bible...lol. I guess it's an added bonus.  

We did the language mechanics sections today, which took all day, because he has a five minute attention span.  He scored in the 97th percentile, so apparently The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts is pretty awesome.  And thank-you, Spelling Workout, because his spelling was in the 96th percentile.  Even I can't spell some of the words in Spelling Workout.  I'm very happy with our curriculum selection right now and he doesn't want to change anything.