Homeschool Day 8/31

 2nd Grader

Math

• Life of Fred - finished Apples, looked at Butterflies (the next book).  We are switching off between Mathusee and Life of Fred for now

Reading/Language Arts

• All About Reading
• All About Spelling - adding this has really helped his reading
• Funschooling's Storyteller Book
• He told me a story and I dictated the story into his notebook
• Funschooling's Curious Creatures Journal

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy Music Appreciation
• More ancient Roman instruments - the bagpipe isn't Scottish???

Sonlight B World History 1 (Bible, history and literature)

• Usual reading - Usborne Time Traveler and Owls in the Family
• Bedtime read-aloud: Henry and Beezus (Beverly Cleary)

Wednesday night church activities (Youth Group)

10th Grader

Mathusee Geometry

Bible

• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)
• Daily Bible reading (2 Kings)

Astronomy

• Smithsonian's The Planets

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy High School Music Appreciation
• Gustav Mahler
• We spent a loooooong time listening to what Spanish guitars/classical guitars sound like.  I think I am going to try to buy her one for Christmas.  We also listened to steel lap guitars, 12 string guitars, etc.  Apparently, we need to take a field trip to Guitar Center.
• She practiced Ukulele (because that ukulele has become an extension of her body)

Bookshark J History of Science (history and literature)

• The usual Bookshark reading
• Archimedes
• Zero and ancient number systems
• We watched some videos about Vedic math and she was fascinated by it
• Going Solo (Roald Dahl)

Wednesday night church activities (Youth Group)

Homeschool Day 8/30

2nd Grader

Reading/Language Arts

• All About Reading
• All About Spelling

Science

• We read Coral Reefs (Gail Gibbons)

Read-aloud

• Henry and Beezus (Beverly Cleary)

10th Grader

Geometry

• She read Horrible Maths Savage Shapes

Bible

• Daily Bible reading (2 Kings)

Language Skills

• Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate workbook
• Writing exercises in They Say, I Say

Bookshark J History of Science (history and literature)

• Going Solo
• Archimedes

Fine Arts

• Ukulele/Guitar Collaborative Class (outsourced)

Homeschool Day 8/29

 2nd Grader

Math

• Mathusee Alpha

Reading/Language Arts

• All About Reading
• Handwriting without Tears

Science

• We read the book Seashores (About Habitats)
• We watched the Pixar short Piper - excellent 5-6 minute film about a sandpiper on the beach (on Disney +)

Sonlight B World History 1 (Bible, literature and history)

• We did all of our Sonlight reading
• Henry and Beezus (bedtime reading)
• Owls in the Family (read-aloud)

10th Grader

Geometry

• Mathusee Geometry

Bible

• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)
• Daily Bible reading (2 Kings)

Grammar/Writing

• Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate workbook
• She did some writing exercises from They Say, I Say

Astronomy

• Smithsonian's The Planets
• We looked at more pictures of Messier 57 (the Ring Nebula) and compared them to pictures we had taken from the Mamalluca Observatory in Chile last week (through the NASA MicroObservatory website)
• Followed the failure of the Artemis Launch this morning (unmanned spacecraft to the moon)
• Spent some time looking at the Artemis missions on NASA's website 

Bookshark History of Science J (history and literature)

• We did our usual reading
• Going Solo (Roald Dahl)
• Archimedes
• Claudius Ptolemy
• Geocentric models
• Dark Ages

Fine Arts

• She practiced ukulele again (we can't get her away from the ukulele)

Homeschool Day 8/26: Robotics and Writing

 2nd Grader

• Lego Engineering class (outsourced)
• Theater class (outsourced)
• Building with K'Nex

10th Grader

STEM/Technology (co-op'ing with another homeschool family)

• Ozobot - they completed a couple of the programming challenges on Ozoblockly

Writing (co-op'ing with another homeschool family)

• They Say, You Say - writing exercises 

Homeschool Day 8/25: PE (Cycling)

 2nd Grader

• He spent the entire morning playing with his green army guys, so I left him alone
• Bedtime read-aloud: Henry and Beezus (Beverly Cleary)

10th Grader

Bookshark J History of Science

• She spent a big chunk of time finishing her essay on The Thief.  I read it and we went over some issues with her writing - structure, etc.

Fine Arts

• She spent a long time playing ukulele again
• Ballet class (outsourced)

Physical Education

• We biked for about 3 miles this afternoon.  We took a scenic bike trail that runs through the woods alongside a creek.  Lots of bridges to cross and squirrels everywhere.  Both of them really enjoyed the ride.  

Homeschool Day 8/24

 2nd Grader

Math

• Life of Fred Apples (only one more chapter left of this - thank goodness)

Reading

• All About Reading

Language Arts

• All About Spelling

Science

• The Good and Beautiful Marine Biology
• Finished marine reptiles

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy Music Appreciation Ancients
• String instruments

Sonlight B World History 1 (Bible, literature, history)

• We did all of our reading
• Owls in the Family
• Henry and Beezus (bedtime read-aloud)

Wednesday night Youth Group activities at church

10th Grader

Bookshark J History of Science (literature and history)

• Spelling words
• Essay writing assignment - she worked on this for a loooong time
• Writing about the plot of The Thief
• History and literature reading
• Eudoxus 
• Hipparchus
• Archimedes and the Door of Science
• Going Solo (Roald Dahl)

Astronomy

• Azimuth
• Astrolabe
• Using your hands to measure elevation above the horizon
• Video about how the night sky changes because of the Earth's wobble
• SkyView app 

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy High School Music Appreciation
• Gustav Mahler

Wednesday night Youth Group activities at church

Homeschool Day: 8/23 Trip to the Zoo

 2nd Grader

Math

• Life of Fred Apples
• We worked on telling time with clock manipulative
• We went through all the +3 addition facts

Reading

• All About Reading

Language Arts

• Handwriting without Tears
• All About Spelling

Science

• Field Trip to the ZOO
• Documentary: Inside the Mind of a Cat

10th Grader

Math

• Mathusee Geometry

Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate Grammar workbook

Astronomy

• Smithsonian's The Planets

Fine Arts

• She practiced ukulele

Extras

• We went to the ZOO
• Documentary: Inside the Mind of a Cat

Homeschool Day 8/22

 2nd Grader

Math

• Life of Fred Apples
• We worked on telling time with a clock manipulative

Science

• The Good and Beautiful Marine Biology
• Marine Reptiles
• We did the sea turtle craft

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy Music Appreciation (Ancients)
• Woodwind instruments

Sonlight B World History 1 (history, Bible and literature)

• Sonlight reading
• We worked on his Timeline Book

10th Grader

Geometry

Bible

• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)

Bookshark J History of Science

• Bookshark Reading
• Eratosthenes
• Ancient Rome
• Archimedes
• Going Solo (Roald Dahl)
• Spelling words
• She started the writing assignment for the week

Fine Arts

• Ukulele class (outsourced)

Astronomy

• We requested more pictures from the NASA MicroObservatory
• Sun
• Moon
• One of the galaxies 
• We visited www.hubblesite.org
• Hubble Telescope home page
• Hubble Telescope image gallery
• There is a link on Hubble's website where you can see what image Hubble is currently looking at

Homeschool Day 8/19: Project-Based STEM

 2nd Grader

• Lego Engineering class (outsourced)
• Theater class (outsourced)
• Snap Circuits 
• We did several projects together
• ZomeTools
• He built several structures on his own

10th Grader

• Robotics - Evo Ozobot
• This was her first day working with Ozobot
• She spent a couple of hours learning how to use the coding software and run a program using Ozoblockly (which uses Python and looks similar to MIT Scratch)
• She programmed the robot to run a course, play a song, light up, etc
• Awesome robot, awesome software!

www.ozobot.com

https://ozobot.com/create/ozoblockly

Homeschool Day 8/18: PE and Robotics

 We did a little bit of bookwork today, but most of today was projects and PE.

2nd Grader

• Life of Fred Apples (I didn't feel like reading this today, but he cried to read it, so ((rolling my eyes)) we read it)
• All About Reading
• Read-aloud: Henry and Beezus (Beverly Cleary)

10th Grader

• She did her Bookshark J reading

Physical Education (together)

• They played basketball at the park with another homeschool family

Project-based Technology/STEM (together)

• I don't know what to call this, but I am setting aside one afternoon a week for the kids to work on STEM/technology projects.  I have a big list of kits and projects that I want the kids to work on, including Evo Ozobot, some beginning circuitry kits, soldering, Lego Robot Inventor, learn to use the 3D printer, some coding, etc.
• I picked up an Evo Ozobot from the library and spent the afternoon figuring out how it works and installing its software

www.ozobot.com

Our city's library had the Evo Student Pack and I was able to check a kit out with my library card.

I found these plans for 3D printer - plans go with the Ozobot.  There's a little bulldozer, trailer, barrels, etc for the robot.

Homeschool Day 8/17

 2nd Grader

Math

• Life of Fred Apples
• Addition flashcards
• We reviewed all the +0, +1 and +2 math facts

Reading/Language Arts

• All About Reading
• Handwriting without Tears

Sonlight B World History 1 (history, Bible and literature)

• We worked on his Timeline Book
• We did our reading

Extra read-aloud: Henry and Beezus (Beverly Clearly)

10th Grader

Geometry

Bible

• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)
• Daily Bible reading (1 Kings)

Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate workbook

Astronomy

• NASA MicroObservatory pictures came in from yesterday, so we were able to see pictures of Jupiter's moons, the Helix nebula and the Pinwheel galaxy

Bookshark J History of Science (history and literature)

• Archimedes
• Going Solo (Roald Dahl)

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy High School Music Appreciation
• She listened to a violin concerto

College Students

• We went on campus to the bookstore and bought their school books and they found where all of their classes will be next week (when the semester starts)

Homeschool Day 8/16: Movies and Astronomy

 2nd Grader

Math

• Math dice games - addition
• We played War with cards

Reading

• All About Reading

Language Arts

• All About Spelling

Science

• The Good and Beautiful Marine Biology
• Crustaceans
• He was researching squids on his own

We didn't make it through our Sonlight today, but we did read aloud Henry and Beezus (Beverly Cleary).

10th Grader

Movies: We watched the movie version of The Giver.  She loved this movie and I'm thinking of getting the book from the library to see how different the book is from the movie.

We ended up watching the movie version of Animal Farm, based off the book by George Orwell.  We've already read the book, but she wanted to watch the movie version, too.  The movie version is really weird!  Not sure I recommend it.

Bookshark J History of Science (history, literature)

• More Archimedes
• Going Solo by Roald Dahl

Astronomy

• We spent a lot of time on NASA's website
• We watched NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio's Inside Hurricane Maria in 360 degrees. You can move the cursor around the hurricane to see what's happening from different views
• NASA MicroObservatory https://mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/OWN/Own.pl
• You choose an object in space that you would like their telescope to take a picture of.  Choose image settings and they email you a picture of your target object the next day
• She chose these objects.  We googled more information about them (distance from Earth, location, etc)
• Helix Nebula
• Pinwheel Galaxy
• Jupiter
• LAB: We are going to spend some time with the telescope outside tonight

Fine Arts

• She played the ukulele for about an hour

Homeschool Day: 8/15

Today was just a tornado of activity.  We finished everything at 4pm. 

2nd Grader

Math

• Life of Fred Apples
• We worked on addition flashcards

Reading

• All About Reading

Language Arts

• All About Spelling
• Funschooling's Curious Creatures notebooking

Science

• The Good and the Beautiful Marine Biology
• Mollusks
• We looked at ocean clams and freshwater mussels that were found around Lake Ray Roberts, TX and Galveston, TX

Sonlight B World History 1 (literature, Bible and history)

10th Grader

Bible

• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)
• Oral narration on the chapter she read
• Daily Bible reading (1 Kings)

Mathusee Geometry

Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate workbook

Astronomy

• Smithsonian's The Planets

Bookshark J History of Science

• Archimedes
• Discussion of The Thief

Fine Arts

• I am not exaggerating - she spent hours playing the Ukulele at home and she started her Ukulele class at the homeschool enrichment center

Ballet class (outsourced)

College Kids

• Looked through their registration one more time for the fall semester.  Glad we did!  Two professors changed and we had to drop/add another section
• Double-checked that their tuition is paid
• Printed out syllabi
• Figured out which textbooks/access codes they need for their classes
• Looked up office hours, contact info, etc
• Made a list of supplies needed for Design 1
• Made a list of what the oldest needs to finish her Bachelor's degree and discussed continuing with her Master's

College Tour: Texas Woman's University

 Last week, we took a tour of Texas Woman's University (Denton, TX campus).  Here's the link to schedule a tour: https://twu.edu/visit/  The tour lasts a couple of hours and includes a walking tour of the campus, a presentation and you can talk with an admissions advisor.  When you schedule a tour, they email you a ParkMobile code for free parking on campus that day.  There are parking lots all over campus.

About the university:

• It's coed.  Most of the students are women, but a small percentage of the students are men
• Nursing is their largest major
• Class sizes are fairly small
• The nursing campuses are actually in Dallas and Houston -not the Denton campus
• They have family housing on the Denton campus (dorms for married couples, families or single parents)!
• The campus is small - you can walk the entire Denton campus
• It is one of the safest college campuses in Texas.  They have their own police station on campus.  There are emergency police posts everywhere - you press the button and police come
• Their tuition is very reasonable compared to other universities in Dallas/Fort Worth.  
• They have transfer scholarships, but they aren't huge.  They have departmental scholarships, also
• Besides several competitive sports, they have intramural sports - sports that anyone can do for fun

Here's a list of their degree programs and majors:

https://twu.edu/programs-majors/

They are very homeschool-friendly.  First year admission requirements: https://twu.edu/admissions/first-year-admissions/first-year-admission-requirements/

The Denton campus is a pretty campus - by Texas standards (it was 100 degrees outside during the tour and every plant was struggling to survive).

The gym had an indoor rock-climbing wall.  The gym was nice.  They have an indoor Olympic-sized swimming pool, indoor track, indoor basketball courts and the usual weights/treadmills/etc.

They have a brand new student union center with restaurants, ballrooms and a bookstore.  There is a Starbucks on campus (in the library).  The restaurants we saw on campus were Chickfila, Qdobas, a sushi restaurant, a Boba tea place....they told us on the tour that the dining options change based on student survey.  They have a regular on-campus cafeteria also.

Homeschool Day 8/10

 2nd Grader

Math

• Life of Fred Apples
• Addition flashcards

Language Arts

• Handwriting without Tears
• All About Spelling 1

Reading

• All About Reading - after taking a break from this program, he just dove right back into it and is doing great

Sonlight B World History 1 (Bible, literature and history)

• We sat on the couch and did our reading together
• Owls in the Family - read-aloud
• I looked at the Instructor's Guide and we are now 1/3 of the way through Sonlight B

10th Grader

Geometry

• Mathusee Geometry

Bible

• Daily Bible reading (1 Kings)
• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)

Astronomy

• Smithsonian's The Planets

Bookshark J History of Science (history and literature)

• Last chapter of The Thief - great book
• We spent some time watching videos about Euclid and Elements
• Played around with a Prime Number calculator and looked at Python coding for a prime number calculator 

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy High School Music Appreciation 
• Percussion instruments
• Bassoon, trombone

It doesn't look like we did much, but this took us until about 2pm.

Homeschool Day 8/9

2nd Grader

Math

• We played addition games with the math dice
• We played War with playing cards
• Dragonbox Numbers (app on iPad)

Reading

• All About Reading 

Language Arts

• All About Spelling 1
• He wrote his spelling words

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy Music Appreciation Ancients
• This website was really fun: https://danielx.net/composer/

Sonlight B World History 1 (Bible, literature and history)

Physical Education

• Rollerskating

10th Grader

Bible

• Daily Bible reading (1 Kings)
• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)

Bookshark J History of Science

• We spent a lot of time watching videos about The Golden Ratio and Fibonacci numbers
• We did our Bookshark reading
• We finished String, Straightedge and Shadow

Physical Education

• She had physical therapy today
• They are going rollerskating

Homeschool Day 8/8

 2nd Grader

Math

• Life of Fred Apples
• Addition flashcards

Science

• The Good and the Beautiful Marine Biology
• We looked at real shark teeth and the specimens from Home Science Tools' Sea Life Pack (this is like the millionth time we have looked at this, but he is enamored with it)

Sonlight B World History 1 (literature, Bible and history)

• We started Owls in the Family
• We did our Sonlight reading

We took a "back to school" picture, even though we have been doing school all summer.

10th Grader

Geometry

• Mathusee Geometry

Bible

• Daily Bible reading
• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis) - she did an oral narration of the chapter

Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate Grammar workbook

Astronomy

• Smithsonian's The Planets
• Big Bang and the formation of the planets

Fine Arts

• Easy Peasy High School Music Appreciation
• She painted with watercolor pencils

Bookshark J History of Science

• We did our reading