Learn On Purpose

Field Trip Day

2012-03-02T05:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, we had a fabulous, fun, full day of activities out of the house. Good thing, too, as I will be working today. The boys will have plenty of time to take care of all their other learning at home.

I started the day with my usual walk with my hubby in the morning. We ate breakfast, and then we were off!

Piano was first on our list. We took care of that. Mario was a little nervous because, as he said, the piano teacher is yelling at him all the time. It turns our that she is not really yelling; she is just telling him he needs to be more disciplined in his practice. The good thing is that Mario also told me he loves piano. Good thing he said so--otherwise we might not know. :-)

After piano we went to the Natural History Museum. A friend had guest passes which needed to be used before April. She gave us two and we needed to purchase only one entry ticket. We checked out two exhibits: Skulls and Gems. After that we had lunch at our favorite place: The Japanese Tea Garden. We all ordered Salmon Teriyaki Rice Bowls -- Yum.

From there we headed to the park to play with our 'park day' friends. The boys played Yu-Gi-Oh, Basketball, and who knows what else. I spent a couple of hours chatting with friends.

Finally, on the way home we stopped at the library to pick up books for fun as well as school and then headed home.

We ended the day (after dinner) with some AFV and our Harry Potter story time.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry!

2012-03-02T04:59:00.000-08:00

The boys are reading this book right now. I assigned it as part of our Philosophy unit. It is recommended in Philosophy for Kids. The book has a great many philosophical issues to ponder.
However, I am finding that this book is a great eye-opener for both boys. They are completely flabbergasted by how terrible racism of any kind can really be. I don't think their mind has gone to think beyond being mean to someone. Mario said: "Why wouldn't you want to have the white kids know that you got them back?" This question was a great lead into what really was going on, not too long ago.

For those of you who don't know the book: It's set in the 1940's (only 70 years ago) in Mississippi. The story is about a black family trying to fight for their rights while at the same time trying not to endanger themselves and others in the community. The book is a must read for anyone to grasp what racism really was like (and in many areas of the world still is).

Another use for Giant Pumpkins

2012-02-27T18:10:00.000-08:00

A Start in Philosophy

2012-02-24T17:39:00.000-08:00

Our week was full of interesting discussions about BIG ideas. We actually started on Philosophy for Kids by David White. Obviously, this is a book which should spark discussion. Questions we explored were: Are you just? Should you be just even to your enemy? How do you know who is your friend? Are there different types of friendship? Should you be rewarded for your efforts? To be continued next week.

Literature also took us into some deep philosophical discussions. We read the poem The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson. To supplement we also watched an old movie clip on You Tube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyqcZMsBOU4 ). This sparked a heavy discussion about honor. What is honor anyway? Can you be honorable in war? While watching the movie the boys noticed all the horses falling and said: "It looks like 30 horses got killed in the making of the movie." It turns out that more like 200 horses indeed did get killed in the making of this movie. This, of course, led to a long discussion about animal rights, and from there we went to modern special effects in movies.

Math: Just he usual. Mario continued in Key to Fractions Book 4 and in Videotext Algebra. I can see now that we'll be moving into Algebra slower than I initially thought. Luigi is working through Key to Decimals Book 2.

English: Mario completed some pages in SWO and a week worth of lessons in WWS. Luigi did SWO and WWE.

German: Rosetta Stone

Mario also practiced typing every day. He really needs to just get this done.

Luigi started working on his Critical Thinking book again.

Science: Our first set of experiments this week were all about candles. We actually decided to make candles next week. After the experiments the boys read "The Natural History of the Candle" from the Christmas Lecture series by Michael Faraday. You can read it here: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1860Faraday-candle.asp . This led us to this website about the bogs in Ireland http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/geography/bogs.html . We found lots of fascinating information about candles and the Irish bogs in our research. Now that's how you do science in my opinion. The second set of experiments had us build an alcohol burner and learn to use it. Fire is always fun. No need to explain more.
We also read another chapter in The World of Chemistry. The chapter this week was about carbon and its compounds. We learned loads of information about the uses of petroleum. We looked up Asphalt Lake in Trinidad and found this http://www.richard-seaman.com/Travel/TrinidadAndTobago/Trinidad/PitchLake/ . The boys did some more research in the Usborne Science Encyclopedia and found this website http://resources.schoolscience.co.uk/SPE/index.html about an oil rig. Dad watched Black Gold: The Story of Oil with the boys. All in all a good science week.

What else did we do? Dad worked, Mom worked, we went to the park with friends, watched AFV, swam, went to the gym, had tacos at our Mexican store, played soccer, played Yu-Gi-Oh, read Harry Potter and The Red Pyramid, drew, listened to music, played video games, cleaned out the garage, read Fabelhaven.

Our Week of Rest

2012-02-18T08:17:00.000-08:00

Ahhhhh.......

This was a much needed week of rest.

Here is what we did this week:

went to see The Phantom Menace in 3D, had friends over for a friendly game of Yu-Gi-Oh, read Harry Potter, watched Discovering England, read The Seventh Tower, listened to AC/DC, watched Men in Black, went to the Science Museum, watched Whitney Houston videos on You Tube, went to our Co-op classes, swam, played soccer, went to a birthday party sleep-over, played piano, watched Billy Madison, cooked.

The highlight of the week for Luigi was the long-awaited arrival of his 3DS.

Next week we'll back to a regular week of learning.

Cool Illusions

2012-02-18T08:08:00.000-08:00

This week we visited the local science museum http://www.rhfleet.org/. There are currently two exhibits we wanted to see.

One is about Black Holes. The exhibit did have some useful information, however, the technology used was not very impressive. They tried to make it interactive with computers, but this seems a difficult undertaking these days. The kids are used to stellar graphics and fantastic interactivity through a variety of games which in comparison are just way better than what the museum offered. Maybe the museum should stick with displays. Maybe we'll go see the Digital Show about Black Holes soon.

The second exhibit we went to see is about Geometry. This was cool! They had giant geometric climbing structure in the middle and all sorts of other things to explore around. We especially loved the illusions. Here is one of them:

This is what the bench really looked liked.

This is the view of the bench in a circular mirror.

Obviously, it now looks like a chair.

Carrots

2012-02-15T14:25:00.000-08:00

Our late harvest. or should we say early?

Ready for a Break?

2012-02-10T16:44:00.000-08:00

We are!

This week was quite eventful. Both boys had something due this week. It is a good thing to learn to deal with deadlines, but, boy, it sure makes life much more stressful.

Luigi had a report due for his co-op class. In the co-op we are currently studying American Indians. His report was on Sitting Bull. He did very well writing up a summary and presenting it. Especially the presenting is difficult for him. He even had a flush face. But he did. I am so proud of him. We learned that Sitting Bull actually toured with Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill. So Luigi brought a picture of Buffalo Bill's grave we have from a trip to Colorado for the show-and-tell part. It worked out really well.

Mario had his HUGE Science Fair Project due this week. This project caused some serious family friction. However, now that it is done we can look back at it and say with confidence that we learned a lot. We started on the project in October but procrastination took over. It took a lot of convincing, bribing, and eventually threatening to get the boy on board. He did a project on airfoils. This turned out quite challenging. Mario and Dad got it done in the end. Mario learned a lot about planes, but even more about other things; like Excel and making graphs, putting together a decent poster board, and including all the parts of the 'scientific process'.

What else did we do?

Math: Luigi started Key to Decimals Book 2 and made pretty good progress. Mario was excused this week (Science Fair)

English: Luigi continued on with SWO and WWE. Mario worked on the Science Fair.

German: Rosetta Stone

Science: Science Fair

Music: Luigi read about Gershwin and listened to music.

We also had our meeting with our ES from the charter school and visited the Science Fair to see the projects other kids came up with. As you can tell we were completely consumed with the Science Fair project. Next week we are taking a break and then we'll be back to normal.

Other things we did: played Connect 4, read Harry Potter, watched You Tube, went to soccer try-outs, spent a day at Knott's Berry Farm, played piano, read Eragon, read The Son of Neptune, watched cake boss and Lewis and Clark and more.

Rambutan

2012-02-06T18:32:00.000-08:00

While grocery shopping earlier today I found this:

It looked so intriguing that I decided to buy one and bring it home for a little dinner speculation. Everyone tried to guess what it is. The closest guess was a nut. It is a Rambutan Nut from Vietnam. This is what it looks like inside:

Its flesh is soft and has a sweet tropical taste. We all enjoyed the taste bud adventure. :-)

Music, Theater and more

2012-02-04T19:08:00.000-08:00

This was a challenging week with Mario. He seems to be going through his 'I really don't need to learn any of this' period which happens every few months or so. Hopefully, it will end soon.
Mario needs to work on a Science Fair Project which is due next week. Are you familiar with the word 'prcastination'? Well, we are becoming very familiar with it. Let's just say a lot of work remains to be done. Poor Dad! This is his project to work on with dear son. :-)

Math: Mario continued using Videotext Algebra with Lesson 2. This is proving more challenging than I anticipated. I can see that just having to learn all that vocabulary and the specific rules will take some getting used to. On the days we didn't do VT he completed some pages in Key to Fractions Book 4. Luigi finished Key to Measurement Book 2. He decided to start Key to Decimals next week.

English: As usual the boys completed some SWO pages. Mario did some lessons in WWS and Luigi did WWE. Our reading this week was The Way to Wealth by Benjamin Franklin. I loved it!! The boys liked it okay. We did have to talk about lots of vocabulary and phrases. We learned a lot, not only about English, but about work, play, money etc. For the rest of the day we asked this question a lot: "Are you doing something useful with your leisure time?" If you haven't read it you should.

Science: We did more experiments from our science kit. What we discovered was that we forgot how to fold those paper boats. So we spent a considerable amount relearning that technique. We also read a couple of chapters in The World of Chemistry. While reading about salt we learned about www.bonnevilleracing.com . This is so cool. We all decided that we really needed to go and check this out. We did look at it on Google Earth.

Music: Piano practice happened daily as usual. This week we studied Mozart. We listened to Janissary Music on http://www.classicsforkids.com/ . We learned about the contrabassoon and watched some of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B08YMuB6gGQ . While listening to the radio show we also learned about the Zildjian Family history. That's the family which makes symbols. Cymbols actually come from Turkey. You can find out more about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avedis_Zildjian_Company . We also read about Peter Tchaikovsky and listened to some of his music as well as the radio show.

German: We mostly used Rosetta Stone.

One evening we went to the theater to watch Cinderella. Our friend was actually Cinderella in the play! It was so fun to see her perform.

We also played soccer, swam, listened to AC/DC, watched Cake Boss, played Sequence, watched Daddy Day Care, drew some Yu-Gi-Oh figures, went to the Chinese New Year's Celebration, visited USD, watched Rugby, went to Co-op class, worked on a science project, did some weeding, played with Bunny and Kitty, played Ping Pong etc.

What Costs More Money than Taxes?

2012-01-30T11:59:00.000-08:00

The short answer is idleness, pride and folly.

Today we were reading The Way to Wealth by Benjamin Franklin. Now, I have heard about this before; I even glanced at it. But I never read it. I advise everyone to go and read it right away. It is a short read and does not take much time to read at all. And it is stock full with simple and logical advise. Here are a few phrases:

We are taxed twice as much be our Idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly.

Sloth consumes faster than Labour wears.

Dost thou love Live, then do not squander Time, for that's the Stuff Life is made of.

The sleeping Fox catches no Poultry.

Lost Time is never found again.

Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him.

At the working man's house Hunger looks in, but dares not enter.

Industry pays Debts, while Despair encreaseth them.

Have you something to do Tomorrow, do it Today.

Employ thy Time well if thou meanest to gain Leisure.

Many have been ruined by buying good Pennyworths.

There are more, but you get the idea. Read it now. It will get you off to being productive instantly.

A visit to USD

2012-01-28T17:12:00.000-08:00

On the way home we decided to take a drive-through the University of San Diego (USD). You can visit it here http://www.sandiego.edu/ We started driving through various colleges and universities with the boys. This way we are able to have casual conversations about college. The boys are still young; so all of this is exploratory.

USD's campus is truly beautiful. All of us thought that this would be a wonderful place to study and live. We were even able to catch part of a Rugby game.

What a fascinating game! It is way more fun to watch than football. That's mainly because it is a continuous game. No constant calls for fouls or time-outs. It's definitively fast-paced.

Chinese New Year Festival

2012-01-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

This was the first year we decided to check out the Chinese New Year Festival in San Diego. It was great. The food was fantastic. I think I ate the best egg roll in my entire life. Of course, we saw the dragon.

Downtown San Diego is so beautiful. The city has done a lot to revitalize it. It is clean, new, close to the harbor and the convention center, restaurants, and to top it off, very easy to get around in and park. We definitively need to visit San Diego more often.

Tower Bridge and Fire Extinguishers

2012-01-27T21:16:00.000-08:00

Let's get straight to the exciting part! We finished the Tower Bridge today. Luigi did most of the building. But Mario and I did help. :-) Here is a picture of the finished model.

Math: Luigi continued on with Key to Measurements Book 2. Mario did some pages in Key to Fractions Book 4. He also started Videotext Algebra Module A this week. We just watched the introductory lesson, followed by lesson one. Right now it is all about learning, and memorizing, the vocabulary of Algebra. So not much to report on it yet.

English: As usual the boys worked in their spelling books. Mario also did a couple of lessons from WWS. This week he worked on outlining descriptions. This proved a bit challenging. He also rewrote a description using different adjectives and verbs from the original to give it a different mood. This exercise seemed pretty easy for him. He is on the creative side; rewriting using different words is more creative than outlining. That's why it was easier for him to do.
We also finished a Pilgrim's Progress today. As an aside we read the Lord is My Sheppard because it came up in the story.

German: The boys did their usual Rosetta Stone excercises.

Science: We read two chapters in The World of Chemistry, Sunlight Shows the Way and The Electron Shows the Way.
In the Chem2000 Kit we continued to do more experiments. Some of them seemed difficult for us. We tried our luck with the 'flower' designs similar to what F. F. Runge did. We added Runge to our timeline. As an aside, I thought he looked a little like Robin Williams. After that we moved on to experiments having to do with water and air pressure. We almost declared an experiment unsuccessful when Mario noticed that we where not paying attention the correct thing. We were looking for bubbles in the water when what was happening was that water was getting sucked up the pipe. Well, we just learned how important it is to not only read the instructions carefully but also observe very carefully.

Last but not least we made a mini fire extinguisher. In conclusion we looked up how fire extinguishers work in "The New Way Things Work". Both boys made a sketch of it for their notebook.

This is Mario's.

This is Luigi's drawing.

Music: Piano lessons, of course, and practice. This week we listened to Duke Ellington and wrote a paragraph about him. He also went onto the timeline. Next up was Mozart. We listened to Mozart's Magical Fantasy and some tunes by Mozart. He, too, was added to the timeline. The boys did talk about the house Mozart was born in. We saw it when we were in Salzburg a couple of years ago. Luigi is currently learning to play Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart.

What else did we do? Yu-Gi-oh, Park, Soccer, Swimming, watched Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, read Harry Potter, played ElementO, had friends over for dinner, video games, went to Taco Tuesday, lunch at Soup plantation, Legos, Drawing, watched Modern Marvels: Mount Rushmore, went to Co-op, worked on Science Fair project, listened to AC/DC and Grammy 2010, watched American Idol, Jogging, played Madden, watched Football and more.

A New Week With a New Furnace

2012-01-20T21:36:00.000-08:00

Yes, the exciting event this week was being able to use our new furnace. It did get pretty cool this week; so it was great to have it. Now for our regular week.

Math: Mario is working through Key to Fractions Book 4. He decided that he is ready to move on to Algebra. He'll be starting next week. Luigi finished Fractions Book 2 and started Measurements Book 2.

English: Both boys continue in Spelling Workout. Luigi started his new writing book, WWE 4. Mario finished week 7 in WWS and started week 8. Boy, did we have a long discussion about why it was important that he followed the instructions. Hopefully, some of it will stick. Our current literature book is A Pilgrim's Progress. I am surprised about how engaging the story is. To be honest, I was afraid that we wouldn't like it. We also enjoy the play on words a lot. All the characters are named after characteristics i.e. hopeful, graceless, talkative, faithful etc. And the places are named after similar things. We really enjoy it.

German: This week the boys simply did 15 minutes of Rosetta Stone everyday. Not exciting, but consistent.

Science: This week held more demonstrations from our Chem2000 kit. Most activities had to do with Chromatography. We learned the definition. The boys wrote a lab report and taped some of our experiment papers on the report. We read about various ways to separate liquids in the Usborne Science Encyclopedia. We also read the next chapter in The World of Chemistry. This chapter was mostly about the Periodic Table of Elements and Dimitri Mendeleev. We watched some clips from this website: http://www.periodicvideos.com/#

Music: This week we listened to music by Handel, as well as Hallelujah Handel. The boys read the Mike Venezia book about Handel. Then we changed direction completely and listened to Duke Ellington. The boys were in shock. How did we get from total classical to complete jazz?!
Of course, we went to piano lessons and practiced every day.

The rest of the week was taken up by a visit to the park with friends, basketball, Harry Potter, baking, Lego building, watching You Tube, playing video games, swimming, soccer, Eragon, The Hunt for the Red October, Yu-Gi-Oh, Little Britches, Co-op, the Warriors series, Cake Boss, the San Dieguito Heritage Museum, working on a science fair project and (I am sure) many more things.

The Color Purple

2012-01-19T17:49:00.000-08:00

First off I want to say that I love purple. That's why I chose this color; it could be any color really.

Today I was sitting at the park with friends, and we talked about how life is blending more and more. That life isn't black and white, but sort of purple (we didn't like the color grey so much). We are not totally healthy or totally sick. We don't do a lot of work or no work. Or school or no school. There are lots of shades of lots of colors all mixed together.

Everyone has a different way of realizing this truth. Everyone's journey is different. Sadly, some never realize this. We know many people that work a lot Monday through Friday and not at all on the weekends. Or people that either have a lot of fun (when on vacation) or no fun (when at work).

I arrived at the color purple through homeschooling. Homeschooling taught me, and my family, to live a more fluid life. We learn with school and without school. We work all the time and never. All our work is homework; or we could say we don't have homework. We work and learn while on vacation and while being home. Learning doesn't stop at 2:00 pm. Work doesn't end at 5:00. Fun doesn't suddenly begin at 5:00 pm. Life just gets mixed up. And it is all purple. It's good.

San Dieguito Heritage Museum

2012-01-15T17:42:00.000-08:00

We decided today to visit this museum because someone on our local homeschool e-mail list brought our attention to it. They do family activities on the weekends now so we went to check it out. You can visit them here: http://www.sdheritage.org/

The boys were not interested in this weekends' activity (it was rug braiding), however, we did find lots of other interesting things there. The most fascinating thing to the boys was all the skateboarding in the La Costa area in the early 70s. The area was still virtually empty. I found it fascinating to learn why the area is called Olivenhain. Apparently, a group of German settlers were told that the area was perfect for growing olive trees, hence the name Olivenhain. It turned out, however, that Olive trees needed more water than was available at the time. They had to grow other things. Hubby enjoys all things old. Here are some of pictures of the General Store.

gotta love the old crank phone

What we did this week....

2012-01-14T06:24:00.000-08:00

It was our first week back to class with our Coop.
Mario's class changed, and it is now a Lego Mindstorm Robotics class. He loves it!
Luigi's class continued on with "Little Britches" and we also made fudge in class. The kids, of course, liked this part best.

Math: Mario finished Key to Percents Book 1 and will move on to a new book next week. It will probably be Fractions Book 4. Luigi continued on in Key to Fractions Book 2. We also did some activities from 'Real-Live Math'. We looked at the highway numbering system of the country and used google maps to go to various places. That led into looking at our aunts houses, using street view, in other states. We explored the binary number system and tried to decode it as well as write some messages. Last but not least we made a roman arch (you can see it in a different post).

English: Both boys continued spelling. Luigi started the next level book. We finished Gulliver's Travel by making a book of pictures with the various places Gulliver visited. Next week we'll be starting The Pilgrim's Progress.

German: Both boys did Rosetta Stone for 15 min every day. I read aloud Die Feuerrote Fredericke. We talked about the meanings of words and phrases a lot. The boys understand this much better than I thought.

Science: As in the previous two weeks we did Science every day. This meant continuing the experiments from Chem2000. The boys wrote a definition for compounds and we wrote a lab report on 'Invisible Inks from the Kitchen'. We also read two chapters in The World of Chemistry where we learned about lots of different scientists. We discovered that many scientific terms come directly from the name of the scientist making the discovery. That was fun! The boys looked up a scientist and wrote a short report about the one they chose. Mario read The Story of Nitrogen and Luigi watched a few related videos on Brainpop.

Music: First we listened to a couple of radio shows on http://www.classicsforkids.com/ about Aaron Copeland. The boys also read the Aaron Copeland book from the Greatest Composers series by Mike Venezia. Then we moved on to Handel and listened to The Story of Handel and Hallelujah Handel .
Of course, both boys continued their piano lessons and practice.

Aside from all that we also went to the beach, to Knott's Berry Farm and to the park. Mario went to swimming, Luigi to soccer practice. We also built Legos, watched Cake Boss and Bringing Up Baby and Football, played video games, read Harry Potter, Eragon and the Warrior series books, painted a picture, listened to Music, and more.

The Roman Arch

2012-01-14T05:32:00.000-08:00

We did some real-live math and explored shapes today. Since we owned the Roman Arch blocks I decided to have the boys build it. This proved surprisingly challenging for them. Here is the end result.

The most fun, however, was the destruction afterwards. Nothing has changed!

Knott's Berry Farm

2012-01-11T16:54:00.000-08:00

The kids were excited to visit Knott's (it has been three years since we were there last) this Sunday. There are still animals -- this was the first thing we saw:

However, the rides are way more exciting! Mario loved the Exhilarater, Luigi loved the Pony Express, and I was scared on the Wind Seeker. We'll be back often as Santa brought us Yearly Passes.

Guess what we found?

2012-01-11T16:40:00.000-08:00

This huge collection of mussels!

We went to a small local beach to meet friends. They boys and their friends played in the water while I had a chance to chat with my friend. The water was sooooo cold. Suddenly, the kids made us come see the mussel collection. They were all alive and well. We have never seen this many at once before.

Our First Week Back

2012-01-07T09:25:00.000-08:00

We started using our new plan. And it went really well!

Math: Mario is moving quickly through Key to Percents Book 1. Luigi is in Key to Fractions Book 2. We also did some Real-Live math activities this week. We played around with secret codes, discussed the ZIP code system of the US Postal Service, and we played with and discussed Fibonacci numbers.

English: Spelling as usual, WWE for Luigi; Mario wrote descriptions of the various places Gulliver visited on his travels. We also drew pictures of the places he visited and we'll be making a time-line poster on Monday.

German: We started up with Rosetta Stone again. They boys do not like this at all, but it is quick and easy to do.

Science: We accomplished quite a bit there. We did several experiments from the Chem2000 kit. All of them were related to Prussian blue and sending secret messages. We added some of our color results in our science notebook. We explored what 'milk water' is and wrote a short explanation.
We read about Gold and how 'alchemists' wanted to make Gold in 'The World of Chemistry'. This particular chapter mentioned many scientists. The boys decided to research Charles Goodyear and write a brief report about him. We watched related videos on Brainpop, and the boys started reading 'The Story of Nitrogen'.

Composer Study: This week we completed our study of Igor Stravinsky. We read a biography and listened to his music. We also listened to a short show on the classics for kids radio. On YouTube we found fantasia which included lots of Stravinsky's music, and we watched him conduct an orchestra when he was over 80 years old.
We started our study of Aaron Copeland and will continue with it next week.

Both boys played piano as usual. Mario is excited because he, finally, gets to learn the 'real' Fuer Elise by Beethoven. Mario started swimming this week after a month's break. He is happy to be back. Luigi met his new soccer coach this week and will start practice with him next week. We are very excited -- it looks to be an improvement. We also played Harry Potter Scene it, read Harry Potter, read more of the Warrior series, played chess, drew, played video games, went to the park, played Yu-Gi-Oh, cooked eggs, baked a cake, played with Legos, played several games of dart, visited a friend who taught us the game Rummikub and a number of other things.

It was a good week. Not too crazy and yet productive.

New Beginnings

2012-01-02T20:14:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of sports for both boys in the new year.

Mario went back to his swim team after a month and a half break because of illness. Both coaches were so happy to see him back. He is happy to be back. It is all good.

Luigi's soccer team had a practice today with the new coach (after a long saga with the old coaching team). This may be a very good beginning. You can feel the positive energy coming from the coach and the head of coaches. It can only get better.

Cheers to the new year!

Netflix and Poor Business Decisions

2012-01-01T19:30:00.000-08:00

We have used Netflix to watch movies and shows for many years. We never had issues with it. We loved it. It was convenient to search for movies, shows and documentaries on-line and have them mailed. When we had time we watched them and sent them back to Netflix. In return we'd receive our new movies. All this for a reasonable price. At some point Netflix added Instant-Watch which was also great. Now we could watch whatever we wanted while waiting for the next disc to arrive.

Then it happened!

Netflix decided to change their business model. They changed their pay structure for the service. Now huge numbers of customers use Instant-Watch because it is, well, less expensive than ordering the service which includes the discs. It is also, well, instant. Problem is -- nothing loads the same way anymore since the change took place. Sometimes nothing loads at all! This has to be the worst business decision made ever by a successful company. I wonder how many customers are unhappy this holiday season because they couldn't watch what they had planned. Not once. Not twice. But every time they tried.

Netflix, you need to fix this fast.

The First Day of 2012

2012-01-01T17:07:00.000-08:00

Yeah!! We are ready...

... to take on the New Year.

Goals are set.

DH is working from home again and growing his business.

Mario will start swimming again tomorrow and start entering more swim meets.

Luigi will try out for at least three soccer teams to see what's out there.

I will start my 'almost' full time career as a student while working, cooking, homeschooling etc.

In the midst of all this we are planning on lots of fun!

The Horrible Flu - Again

2011-12-29T18:11:00.000-08:00

It is back! Now Luigi has it. Hopefully we can kick it before we enter the 2012. We are tired of being sick.

A Simplified Plan for the New Year

2011-12-26T05:57:00.000-08:00

Someone on the WTM Board posted a simplified plan for school, and I really like it. So, we'll give it a try.

Here it is:

We'll do Science for 90 min every day for two blocks of 6 weeks (a total of 12 weeks). We are doing chemistry. Every day we will start with experiments from the Chem2000 kit. We will also read various books, write lab reports, make sketches etc. After 12 weeks we'll switch to History instead of Science.

Math will happen every day for about 60min. We'll continue on with Key to.... and 'fun' math.

English will alternate with German every week.
When it is 'English' week we'll do spelling, writing and literature for a total of @ 60min. We'll also spend 15 in on Rosetta Stone German.
When it is "German' week we'll do Rosetta Stone, Das Neue Deutschmobil and read German books. We'll also spend 15 min on English Spelling.

Piano practice happens as usual.

For 6 weeks we'll spend on Classical Composer Studies. We read the Mike Venezia books, write, put dates on timelines, and listen to music on Naxos. After 6 weeks we'll switch to something else (i.e. typing, art, logic).

The rest of our time we'll spend on reading, projects, hiking, field trips, swimming etc.

Friends (who needs them anyway)

2011-12-25T15:04:00.000-08:00

The older I get the more I realize that I only have one friend (my hubby). I find that depressing somehow, but then again, maybe that's enough. Maybe having a lot of friends is over-rated anyway. My family needs and other people's needs just don't mesh. Whatever. Friends--who needs them anyway?

An "interesting" quote

2011-12-19T18:17:00.000-08:00

Louis XIV wrote this in his memoir:

"In my heart I prefer fame above all else, even life itself."

This guy should have lived in Hollywood today! What an extremely superficial way of life. I can't imagine living for fame only.

Week 15

2011-12-19T18:08:00.000-08:00

I know, I am really late posting. The new week has already begun. Here is our weekly summary anyway.

Math: Mario started Key to Percent Book 1. This, of course, is very easy for him. He should plough through it quickly. Luigi started Key to Percent Book 2. It is getting a bit more challenging for him. I think he'll switch back to either Fractions or Decimals after this one.
We continued reading Life of Fred for fun.

English: Both boys did their spelling. Mario is in a groove now with Writing. WWS seems to be working very well. Suddenly, outlining, summarizing, narrating etc. is a breeze. Thank Goodness! Luigi is almost done with WWE 3; he'll be moving on to #4.

History: We did lots of history this week.
1. The Power of the Habsburgs
The boys read the section in the History Encyclopedia and made a fact list. We added the dates to the timeline. We read the appropriate chapters in SOTW 3. We talked about Charles V, the Thirty Year War, Cardinal Richelieu, Maria Theresa, Empress Elisabeth of Austria. We also looked at maps and googled the Schoenbrunn palace in Vienna where Empress Elisabeth lived. The research took us all the way to World War I when the Habsburg Empire finally ended.

2. The Rise of the Dutch
We read the section in the Encyclopedia, made fact lists and added to the timelines. We read the appropriate chapter in SOTW and discussed tulips and their origin. Then we used Google Earth to see some of the dutch dams and canals.

German: As usual I speak to the boys. They watched a German movie--this time Lucky Luke.

Music: We continued Piano Lessons.

We had our meeting this week with our charter school and turned in our samples. The last meeting for the year. While we don't have to do a lot for the charter school I do find it a disruption in our lives. Maybe we won't do it next year. We'll see.

On Friday we had our final meeting with the Lego League group. It was a good ending to a great experience. This was for Mario's group which worked out wonderfully. Maybe we'll join in next year again.

Luigi had a soccer tournament and hurt is hand. This meant that he could neither play in the final game nor perform at his piano recital. Luigi couldn't perform at the recital either because he had the flu.

That pretty much wraps up our week.

How Do We Use the Chem2000 kit?

2011-12-10T06:51:00.000-08:00

I suppose the real question is, "How do we do Science?"

I used to make long-term plans for Science. We were going to do Biology one year, then Earth and Space Science the next, then Chemistry, and then Physics. I included all the outlining and lab reports etc. But you know what it became drudgery. We scrapped it all! Science at our house is relaxed.
We pick something interesting and go with. I do try to find books, kits, curricula that fit our interests. Currently, we are exploring chemistry. (Even though we never finished Earth Science-the boys were not interested!)

We are using the Chem2000 kit by Thames and Kosmos. I really don't do any advanced planning for it other then trying to look ahead a few experiments at a time to see if I need to get any materials. Other then that we just do the experiments, have fun with them, talk about them etc. Then we do go to our Science Encyclopedias and look up information about things we learned. We also go online and look things up. We watch any appropriate movie clips we can find and so on. That's it! Very simple, very straight forward, most importantly very low-stress.

Now, I know people may think we need to do more writing or note taking or whatever. However, I have come to the conclusion that we don't NEED to do that. We can, if and when we feel like it. We have done lab reports before. They are not as difficult as people make them seem. Also, I have never in my entire 12 years of school done a lab report and had no trouble with it in College. That said, we do a lot of talking. Essentially, we talk through a lab report and answer all the necessary questions. What are we trying to do? What materials are we using? What do we think will happen? What did happen? What did we learn? What could we learn more about?

That's Science for us.

Week 14

2011-12-09T18:03:00.000-08:00

First of all, we are just now getting over the flu here. Today was the first day in over a week that Mario actually left the house on small outing. We went to the library, then checked out a Christmas Gingerbread Mountain Village, and had lunch.

Math: The boys worked on the usual Key to .. Books. We read Life of Fred and played with it which brought us to the subject of Astronomy. That in turned led to the discovery of all the astronomy related names in books the boys like to read. Of course, Percy Jackson is pretty obvious, but we discovered names in Harry Potter also came from Astronomy, i.e. Sirius and Lupin.

English: The usual SWO and WWE/WWS. We are just plugging along there. As you can see we have not solved our Grammar dilemma. I really like ALL; so I am stuck.

Literature: We are still reading Gulliver's Travels. All of us are surprised how close the recent movie with Jack Black actually is to the book. Really, I thought all those bodily function scenes were put in there to make sure the kids were entertained. It turns out, they are really in the book. Who knew?

German: This is still casual. I am speaking to the boys in the afternoon. I do need to do more with this again. We are just not motivated for some reason. They did watch a German movie, too.

Logic: Luigi did manage to do a few pages of Critical Thinking this week.

History: This week we covered the English Civil War and Oliver Cromwell. Luigi already memorized the Gunpowder Plot poem. We had done this a few years ago; so it came back pretty easily. We entered the dates on the timeline and read the appropriate chapters in SOTW 3. We also read about King James.

Science: The Chem2000 kit is working well for us thus far. We just moved on with that. In addition we read a couple of chapters in The Story of Chemistry by Tiner. We love this book. I do wish it didn't have so many biblical references, however, we love it so much otherwise that we just skip over those. The chapters on ancient metals and money metals started many great topic conversations. It lead to:

the Colossus of Rhodes which led to all the other wonders of the ancient world which led to the statue of liberty which led to the empire state buildings which led to the twin towers which led to terrorism

the study of the word 'quick' from quicksilver

how money is made today and what it is made of.

This was a really great discovery driven discussion.

Music: Piano as usual. Luigi is in piano recital on Sunday. He has been working hard on that. Mario can't play in it now because he just missed so much practice being sick. He is only a little sad about it.

Luigi played in a soccer tournament over the weekend. They won enough games to continue on this weekend.

Other then that: We went to the park, read Harry Potter and Inheritance, watched lots of Mythbusters, watched the old Hawaii 50 series, played labyrinth, continued building the Lego London Tower, baked cookies, decorated a Gingerbread House, listened to lots of music etc., etc. ...

The Horrible Flu

2011-12-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

It has been here for over a week now. It is just now starting to get out the door. Mario has been having a fever for 7 days straight. Today was the first day with his temperature at normal. Thank Goodness! He is still very tired and looks pretty pale, but he is on the way up! Let's hope the rest of us don't get it.

Week 13

2011-12-02T15:47:00.000-08:00

I just realized that we skipped Week 12. We'll just call it Thanksgiving Week since we mostly gave thanks that week.

On to Week 13....

We accomplished a lot considering that we are still fighting with the flu-bug. Now Mario has it (hubby and Luigi had it last week). The poor guy has a fever. However, he seems to be completing all his 'boring' assignments much better. Maybe he just doesn't have the energy to argue over it. hmmm...

Math: The usual...Mario is going through Key to Fractions Book 3; Luigi is in Key to Percent Book 1. They are both very easy books for them. We may be getting ready for more Math. Finally! We also read a chapter in Life of Fred Butterflies (mostly for fun). I did, however, notice that both boys avoid reading the clock unless it's digital. I have them draw me the time (and the clock) as we read Fred. It's quick and easy and therefor kind of fun.

English: Mario is working through WWS and this is working very well. He wrote me an excellent retelling yesterday. The writing assignments help him improve a lot. Luigi is plugging along in WWE 3. He is almost done and ready to go to Book 4.

Literature: We started reading Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. This is a fun read, and I highly recommend it. We all have fun with the usage of words and phrases that are a bit foreign to us. This book uses a very rich vocabulary.

German: As always the boys watched a German movie. This week they watched a couple of episodes of Wickie und die starken Maenner. The series is about a viking boy who always comes up with smart ways to solve a problem. Other then that I spoke German with them quite a bit.

History: We are currently in England with Queen Elizabeth I. We read about her and how she became queen. We learned about her sister, 'bloody' Mary, and her brother. We checked out some websites: We found one where you can go on a virtual tour of the Globe Theater in London ( http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/about-us/virtual-tour ) and we toured Tudor London ( http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server.php?show=ConPackage.20 ). We also did some puzzles in a tourist puzzle book about London we got when we visited London a couple of years ago. Mario read 'You Wouldn't Want to Sail in the Spanish Armada' and Luigi read 'You Wouldn't Want to Explore With Sir Francis Drake. We read the chapter about the Armada in SOTW II and completed the map. On-line we looked up where Sir Francis Drake landed in North America and found that it most likely was here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakes_Bay . We also looked up the London Bridge which was brought to the US and rebuilt at Lake Havasu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_(Lake_Havasu_City) We decided that we have a lot of places to visit. We need more time.... Last but not least, we are building the Lego Tower Bridge. One tower is done; one more to go.

Science: We were still busy with Lego League meetings. This coming Sunday will be our last competition day; this time at Legoland. Yeah! The kids added another mission to our existing mission and should be able to get additional points.
At home we finally got around to starting some or the Chem 2000 experiments. We are still at the beginning. However, we got started on them. It got us talking and reading about acids and bases and, of course, neutrals. We watched the little clip on Brainpop as well.
Just for fun we did the old coke and mentos demonstration. The boys said they had never seen it before. They have seen it, of course, they just didn't remember. It was fun. We took a picture which I'll try to post later.
Since we had someone sick all the time lately we also watched a lot of Netflix movies. We watched several Mythbuster episodes and Blue Planet: Sea of Life (Attenborough).
For us, this is actually a lot of Science!

Music: Piano Lessons for both boys. Our piano teacher is so thrilled with Luigi. She wants him to play in the County Sonatina Competition. Wow! He can't do it this year because he is already at the soccer state cup that same weekend. Maybe next time. Of course, both boys practice every day to get ready for their recital. We listened to lots of Christmas music and other classical music while building our Lego towers.

Art: Hmmm...not much this week. :-(

Logic: not much either :-(

Other than that they both spent a lot of time reading this week since we didn't go out much. Mario is working his way through the Harry Potter books (which we are also reading aloud with Dad). We picked up a Harry Potter cookbook this week. Maybe we'll try something next week. Luigi is reading the Warrior series by Erin Hunt. Luigi is customizing his You Tube page. He loves all the little tech things. He routinely posts videos he makes. Mario has spent some time with Dad on his Science Fair Project which will be on air foils.

I went to my book club this week. We are still reading The Odyssey which is just now getting exciting. It takes a little while to get into it but it is now quite rewarding. We have fun discussion throughout the evening. One of us did a little report on human sacrifice. This turned out to be a very common practice all over the world. Only very few places did not do this.

Gulliver's Travels

2011-12-01T13:30:00.000-08:00

Our current reading is Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. We only just finished chapter II of A Voyage to Lilliput. The reading is very engaging and funny. Here is an example of a passage the boys found very amusing:

Soon after I heard a general Shout, with frequent Repetitions of the Words, Peplom Selan, and I felt a great Numbers of the People on my Left Side relaxing the Cords to such a Degree, that I was able to turn upon my Right, and to ease my self with making Water; which I very plentifully did, to the great Astonishment of the People, who conjecturing by my Motions what I was going to do, immediately opened to the right and left on that Side, to avoid the Torrent which fell with such Noise and Violence from me.

Also note that all the nouns are capitalized (just like German).

Week 11

2011-11-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

This week we finally had our FIRST Lego League competition! It was a lot of fun. What a great experience for the kids. They had to give 3 different presentations and then run their robot in a race for the most points. This is the most my kids have ever had to present thus far. It was very challanging at time, especially for Luigi (see a previous post). However, the experience was still worth it. We'll do it again next year.

Math: Mario continued Key to Fractions Book 2; Luigi finished Book 1 and started Key to Percent Book 1.

English: Mario worked on some WWS assignments. We are stuck on the assignment in Week 4 about Writing from an Outline. We'll continue with this next week. Luigi is still plowing through WWE 3. Both boys also did spelling.

Literature: We read some more tales from "Charles Perrault's Fairy Tales" and copied the morals in cursive for some practice.

History: We read a few chapters in "The First Americans", and we started reading about Queen Elizabeth. We are currently building the Lego Tower Bridge as well.

On Monday we went on a field trip to Cabrillo National Park. We went to see the statue of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, saw were he supposedly landed when he first arrived in San Diego. We watched the movie about Cabrillo. After all that Cabrillo activity we checked out the lighthouse, walked down the bayside trail, and drove over to the tide pools. The tide was too high to see anything; so we just watched a sea lion for a while, had lunch, and headed home.

We also played Risk and Clue, the boys played Plants vs. Zombies, Luigi finished reading 'The Sun of Neptune", Mario is reading the "Warriors" series and the new "Diary of a Wimpy Kid", Mario swam, Luigi played soccer, went to Yu-Gi-Oh tournament, played with friends at the park, and had a verrrrry looooooong sleep-over birthday party on Friday. We are all tired after that.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

2011-11-15T08:20:00.000-08:00

"It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "because I asked not to go in Slytherin..."
"Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Week 10

2011-11-11T14:16:00.000-08:00

This has been an interesting and disruptive week to say the least.

We are up to our eye balls in Lego League projects. We spent all afternoon on Monday working on the research presentation and the robot game. On Wednesday we worked on it all afternoon, and then had a parent demonstration and pot luck in the evening. We really didn't have energy for much else. This Saturday is our first competition. Wish us luck!

On top of all this activity both boys got sick one after the other. Hopefully, we'll be better tomorrow, otherwise one of them will end up missing the competition.

So what did we do:

Math: Basic Fact Drill. Mario worked on Key to Fractions Book 2 while Luigi worked on Key to Fractions Book 1. We also did some other math activities which were great for some journaling i.e. Mayan numbers, roman numerals etc.

English: Mario continued on in WWS. I found out that I really need to watch him. He likes to tell me that there was only reading involved when in reality there is always some writing. Can't trust that boy when it comes to school work. Luigi continued on in WWE. He did only 4 lessons this week. Normally, he completes twice as much. Both boys did some pages in SWO.

German: They did some Rosetta Stone and watched Asterix in German.

Literature: We are reading Charles Perrault's Fairy Tales. At the same time we are practicing cursive writing. I discovered recently that they have a hard time reading cursive. I typed up the morals of the stories in cursive and they are copying them for practice.

Music: Both boys went to piano lessons. They are working hard right now because the recital is only 4 weeks away. We also listened to the Cello CD of classical music.

Science: That fell by the wayside completely. I guess, we did robotics. :-)

History: This weeks' lesson was about Martin Luther and the Reformation. As usual they read in the Encyclopedia and wrote down important facts, and noted dates on their timeline. They read appropriate chapters in SOTW, completed a map, did the tudor family tree, colored a letter from the medieval alphabet book, and started memorizing countries of Europe. All while complaining the entire time--really tired of this.

Logic: didn't happen this week.

Art: nothing this week.

It was also Luigi's birthday yesterday! We spent some time celebrating and opening gifts. Other then that we had soccer, swimming, continued reading Harry Potter, watched the football game, played Yu-Gi-oh, started building the Tower Bridge from Legos, watched Cake Boss, free reading etc.

On the good news side: Luigi's soccer team finally won a game!

Up to Our 'You-Know-What' in Robotics

2011-11-10T19:22:00.000-08:00

This week, and last, we have been extremely busy with our First Lego League projects. The boys are part of different FIRST Lego teams. Last week we had charter school presentations on two days for both teams. This week we had a parent demonstration potluck. We were all scrambling to get as much as possible done because on Saturday we have our first competition. This will take all day long! Mario's team turned out to work out very well. The kids learned a lot about food (this years' research topic), making movies, building robots and programming. Luigi's team didn't turn out so well. The research part of it went fine, however, the robot programming was not so great. This is what happens when you have volunteers. I appreciate the time people spend on working with the kids. But sometimes you just get someone that doesn't connect so great with the kids. This seemed to be the problem here. However, this week Luigi was able to do lots of programming. He learned a lot and even felt a little successful.

Now on to the competition on Saturday!

Athena has Humor

2011-11-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

I just love how Athena speaks to Zeus (especially the bolded part) to convince him to help Odysseus get home. Obviously, this passage is from 'The Odyssey. Here is what she says:

"Father Zeus--you other happy gods who never die--
never let any sceptered king be kind and gentle now,
not with all his heart, or set his mind on justice--
no, let him be cruel and always practice outrage.
Think: not one of the people whom he ruled
remembers Odysseus now, that godlike man,
and kindly as a father to his children.
Now
he's left to pine on an island, racked with grief
in the nymph Calypso's house--she hold him there by force.
He has no way to voyage home to his won native land,
no trim ships in reach, no crew to ply the oars
and send him sculling over the sea's broad back.
And now his dear son...they plot to kill the boy
on his way back home. Yes, he has sailed off
for news of his father, to holy Pylos first,
then out to the sunny hills of Lacedaemon."

My Favorite Saying for the Week

2011-11-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

Fun is a choice!

by Me

I find that I need to point this out to both boys a lot lately. You know, you really can find something positive about almost everything. Putting away laundry really can be rewarding; so can working on Math problems and practicing piano.

Week 8

2011-10-31T04:15:00.000-07:00

We didn't get to much school work this week. Grammy and Bobby came for a visit (and are still here). We are spending time with them and that's as important as school work.

Here is what we did.

The boys did a little bit of Math and Spelling. We went to our Lego League meetings and we are getting close to the end. In a way I am glad it will be ending soon. We will all be able to concentrate on other learning activities. We did some German.

Mostly, though, we visited with Grammy and Bobby. They are getting up there in age now and we realise that life is slowing down. We are having a great time with time and are moving much slower than usual. We took them to Balboa Park so that Grammy could visit the Spanish Village which she loves. Then we took them to lunch at the Japanese Friendship Garden.

That's it. We'll have another week like this and then we'll pick up were we left off.

Week 7

2011-10-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

What did we do this week? Somehow it seems difficult to recall all that we accomplished. I am not sure why.

Math: Mario is working on Key to Fractions Book 2. Luigi is working on Key to Measurements Book 1. We are still reading Life of Fred Apples. This week we were drawing triangles and circles. We did indeed discover that it is much easier to fit a triangle inside a circle than to fit a circle perfectly inside a triangle. We'll be playing around with this some more next week.

English: Mario completed a lesson in ALL and did a lesson in WWS. Luigi sped along in ALL (2 lessons) and WWE (6 lessons). Both boys also continued on with SWO.

Literature: Mario is still reading Carry on, Mr. Bowditch. Luigi started reading Stout-hearted Seven and is still reading Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault.

German: Is still only me reading right now. We'll add more formal German again soon.

History: This week we visited India during the time the Taj Mahal was built. As usual we did the reading from the Usborne History Encyclopedia, made a fact list, completed a map and read appropriate chapters form SOTW. We also cooked Indian Dahl aka Lentils. :-)

Science: Finally, we finished our book From Greek Atoms to Quarks. We started with our Chem2000 kit. So far so good.

Music: Piano Lessons and practice for both; listening to music CD's.

Art: This week we went on an excellent field trip to the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park. If you ever have a chance to go there and do the Follow the Bard tour you should definitively do it. It was so much fun. Look at the website here: http://www.oldglobe.org/ I'll be posting some pictures in another post.

Other things we did: Lego League Meetings, soccer, swimming, park, pumpkin patch visit, played four-square, read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, read Warriors, watched Sahara with Michael Palin, family movie night, watched Asterix and Obelix in German, played video games, made movies and posted to You Tube account etc.

Whatever Happened to Justice?

2011-10-20T16:33:00.000-07:00

This is one of the popular "Uncle Eric" books. It contains loads of interesting quotes, but I particularly love this one.

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million human beings collected together are not under the same moral rules as bind each of them separately.

Thomas Jefferson

Week 6

2011-10-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

This week was fun! We did, of course, the usual Math, English and Literature studies. We added a second period of Math to our days for "fun" math. We are currently reading Life of Fred Apples. I know the boys are really too old for this., but they are having a lot of fun with this. We actually did the activity of drawing 4 + 3 = 7 elephants. The elephants were quite elaborate. It became art. The book also prompted us to read a biography on Pythagoras and play a game of chess. We can't wait what other surprise activities we'll find. :-)

Mario continued on with WWS. This week he only did one lesson. It was the thesaurus lesson. It worked fine for us, but was mostly reading. He continued on with SWO and ALL.
Luigi moved forward with WWE. This week was a loooong poetry lesson. Luigi does not enjoy poetry very much. He just wanted to get it over with. He also continued in ALL and SWO.

Mario is currently reading Carry on, Mr. Bowditch for his coop class. I am surprised that he likes this book. I thought he would find it too slow, but he loves it.
Luigi finished the Dover edition of Don Quixote and started reading Charles Perrault's Fairy Tales. The first one he read was Sleeping Beauty and we discovered the beginning of the story was essentially the same as the beginning in The Tale of Troy. It was fun to discuss!

History took us to the Ottoman Empire this week. As always both boys made a fact list. We read the appropriate chapters in SOTW II and III. Then they copied the map from the Usborne History Encyclopedia. We also made a note of the Blue Mosque in our notebook. Then we read some library books about the Ottomans, Mosques, and Turkey.

We started Chem2000 for science; So far so good. We continued reading in our book From Greek Atoms to Quarks, and we made a page of Atomic Mass for our notebook.

FIRST Lego League went well for Luigi this week. He and a partner really enjoyed actually building and programming the robot this week. They did a great job. We'll see how the research part goes. This is his least favorite thing to do. He loves hands-on stuff; other things not so much.

We listened to The Trumpet from The Instruments of Classical Music series.

Other things we did: Watched Rick Steves' Italy: Florence, went to a soccer game, soccer practice, swimming, read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, went to our coop class, Lego League, piano lessons, played yugioh and basketball at the park, worked on a science fair project, worked on our giant bunny hutch, cooked and went to the yughio tournament.

That's all folks!

Week 5

2011-10-08T05:56:00.000-07:00

We had a very light week academically speaking. We took a week off from most subjects. Both boys did continue Math and practiced piano daily.

Aside from that we read a couple of chapters in The Story of Us, The First Americans. We played with Dry Ice, started to plan our Halloween party, played board games, hung up our wall maps to use for Geography, cleaned the house, went to the park, played soccer, swam, read, visited a local bird sanctuary and went to our FIRST Lego League meetings. Over the weekend the boys went to a sleep-over birthday party, and on Sunday afternoon we all went to the beach. We thought this may be the last real beach day of the year. I think we were right; it actually rained this week.

Next week, we'll be back to our studies.

Dry Ice Fun

2011-10-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

We recently started studying Chemistry which also co insides with Halloween. Earlier this week we decided to check out Steve Spanglers Website to see if we couldn't find some fun experiments for Halloween. Guess what?! We did. Most of them involved Dry Ice. We ran to the store, purchased Dry Ice, and off we went on a fun Halloween planning adventure.

Here is what we did:

We carbonated apple juice.

We made this giant bubble.

Here is a video of the Gian Bubble.

All of this is from watching this: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/content/experiment/00000079 and http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/content/science-video/spooky-halloween-beverage .

With Ann Agee at the Lux

2011-10-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

Last week we went on our second trip to the Lux Art Institute. You can check it out here: http://www.luxartinstitute.org/ We got to meet Ann and look at her work. She does excellent work with figurines and tiles as well as wall paper. Check out her studio here: http://www.annageestudio.com/ . After looking at Ann's art work and speaking with her the kids went off to create based on Ann's work. The picture is their favorite place.

Luigi's favorite place is the TV.

Mario's favorite place is In N Out Burger.

Hmmm?!? Maybe I need to take them out more often. :-)

Working on Christmas Gifts

2011-10-07T15:21:00.000-07:00

This year we decided to start working on Christmas gifts for all the boy's cousins early so that we could get something we made ourselves to all of them. We have thirteen of them!! We decided to go with a simple woodworking project to practice using some tools. They will all get their names cut out, sanded and stained.

Here they are working away. We are almost finished. Yeah!!!

Week 4

2011-10-03T06:54:00.000-07:00

This was a pretty smooth week. We continued on our usual in Math and English.

Science: We are deep into Chemistry now. Currently, we are reading 'From Greek Atom to Quarks'. This has turned into a very interesting read. We have also started writing out definitions and making sketches. Books we are using are the Usborne Internet-Linked Science Encyclopedia, Adventures with Atoms and Molecules, various books by Janice VanCleave, and we order the Chem2000 kit.

History: We spent this week in the explorations of Canada and South America.

Literature: We finished 'The Shakespeare Stealer' and 'Shakespeare for Kids'. We discussed the book a bit and they wrote a short summary.

On Thursday we went on a fieldtrip at the Lux Art Institue (more about that later).

The boys also had their FIRST Lego League meetings, soccer, swimming, park day, piano lessons, went to a birthday sleep-over party, and the beach. The ocean looks fascinating right now. We have a red tide that makes the water look a bit murky but at night it glows. Watch this to see the glow: http://io9.com/5845782/watchers-surfers-ride-neon-blue-bioluminescent-waves-caused-by-red-tide

Both boys also went to their co-op class one morning.

I started reading Richard Maybury's Uncle Eric books series. I finished Personal, Career, and Financial Security which I liked. My point of view agrees with the idea of owning your business, and therefor a lot of what he says makes sense to me.
Then I finished Ancient Rome and How it Effects You Today. It is interesting, however, I find this book too negative. I don't believe things are quite as dire as Maybury seems to think.

First Goal

2011-09-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

Luigi did it! He set himself a goal this year for soccer. It was to shoot a goal. Yesterday he did it. He shot his first goal since playing on a competitive team. He is so happy!

Week 3 -- A full of little inconviniences

2011-09-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

We really had a fantastic week overall, except those little things that come up once in a while. They seem to occur all at once, too, not spread over the course of the year so that you might not notice them. No! They always happen in one week; maybe even within one day.

This weeks happenings: Mario didn't fell well at the beginning of the week. Luigi followed. I drove Mario to a coop on Tuesday, rushed home to spend my time with Luigi. When I was ready to pick Mario up my car keys had vanished. After a 30 minute search I called dh, and he went to pick Mario up from class. We found my keys later behind the decorative couch pillows (perfect spot).
On the same day, later that afternoon, I went to work. After an hour at work a co-worker informed me of my flat tire. Dh and kids had to come over and and put my spare tire on.
Of course, this meant that I spent Wednesday morning at shop to get new tires. Wednesday afternoon I spent as the main mentor for our FIRST lego league meeting with 8 kids between 10 and 12. This was challenging for me. I was completely exhausted afterwards. However, I had to rush home to drop off Mario, and pick up sick Luigi because the soccer team had picture day that evening. We ran up there to do that, and then immediately returned home. I fell into bed that night in complete exhaustion.
Thursday I drove around a bunch of extra kids to help out, but also because my dss want to spend time with their friends.
Friday was finally a calm and normal day.

Now back to Week 4. Despite all of the little inconveniences we still accomplished a lot.

Math: Still MathMammoth and RightStart Geometry for Mario and Key to Decimals for Luigi.

Literature: We are almost finished with The Shakespeare Stealer. We continued reading Shakespeare for Kids. Luigi watched Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare Tales) on U-Tube.

English: Both boys are continuing SWO. This is smooth sailing now. Mario did three more lessons in WWS. All of them were on outlining. After a frustrating start at the beginning of the week, he finished off quite well. Luigi is doing WWE 3. We also did lesson 6 in ALL for grammar.

History: We are still in the Renaissance period. We read lots about Leonardo Da Vinci and Gutenberg. We also watched part I of Leonardo's Dream Machine, a documentary about people in England who are trying to build a couple of Leonardo's inventions. We'll be watching part II next week.

Science: We finally decided on what to do for Science. Chemistry! We are going to approach Science similar to history. We'll read a couple of pages in the Encyclopedia and make a list of facts once a week. The rest of the week we'll spend on other books, projects, experiments, etc. I don't know why it didn't occur to us before to do Science this way. We are looking forward to this.

Art: We drew cassette tapes and then took them apart and drew the parts. We also tried to think up inventions and draw them. Somehow our minds were blank. :-(

Music: Piano lessons as usual and listening to music.

Logic: Mario is doing Mindbenders. Luigi is doing the Critical Thinking Book II. He says he doesn't like it.

German: That's just me speaking right now.

PE: Well, not much this week as everyone was not feeling that great.

The boys also met friends at the park, went to our FIRST Lego League meetings, Mario was at his coop class, they attended a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament, and tonight we'll be seeing an outdoor screening of Frontier Badmen, a 1940's film at a local ranch which is now a local historic park. The man who owned the ranch loved films and played several movies back then.

Harvesting Our Tomatoes

2011-09-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

While picking our beautiful tomatoes

we found these incredible critter!

Halloween Already?

2011-09-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

Week 2

2011-09-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

This week was very busy! All our outside activities started.

Monday and Wednesday both boys had FIRST Lego League meetings for two hours each day. We did a little bit of research at home and watched a video about last years project.

Tuesday both boys went to our first co-op class for the year. This year Mario will study explorations, inventions and innovations. I think he will love this class. Luigi will be taking Trailblazers which is about the Westward Expansion.

Mario started to think about his first official Science Fair Project. This shall be interesting--more about this as time goes on.

Math: Mario continued MathMammoth and RightStart Geometry. He says he hates Geometry, but then he comes up with this:

Luigi finished Key to Metrics Book 2 and will start Decimals Book 1 next week. He also did some problems in Challenge Math.
Both boys did some practice problems in Garlic Press Advanced Addition.

Literature: We continued to read The Shakespeare Stealer and took notes. We also read on in Shakespeare for Kids. The boys made our family tree after looking at Shakespeare's and a Horn Book. They colored a page in the Shakespeare coloring book. While on the road we listed to the All the World's a Stage speech and talked about the meaning of it.

The rest of English is still pretty straight forward. Both boys are working on Spelling Workout (2 pages a day). Mario did 2 lessons in WWS which seems to be working really well. He wrote the best narration I have ever seen from him. -- Big thumbs up on this program! Luigi is continuing WWE. We did 3 lessons in ALL together.

History: We entered the Renaissance in earnest this week. We learned about the Medici's, Michelangelo, Florence, Italy, Architecture, Botticelli. Next week we'll be covering Leonardo Da Vinci and Gutenberg. The boys made fact lists, looked at maps, and read several related books.

Science: I have not come up with a new Science plan so I decided to stick with the old one. We pulled out How the Earth Works and read the chapter on Volcanoes and Earthquakes. We did several activities. The most popular one is STILL the baking soda and vinegar thing. You would think at 12 and 10 years old they are over this one, but nope. It is as fun today as it was 6 years ago. Both boys wrote up a lab report (DS 12 on the vinegar activity and ds 10 on the S-Waves during an earthquake).
Luigi also read The Magic School Bus went to the Science Fair. I know he really is kind of "old" for this, but he is having fun with it. So why not?!

Music: Piano practice continues, of course. Outside of that we just listened again to the Music Masters CD we have.

Art: Well, we had a lot of Art through history this week. In addition to that we painted like Michelangelo. We taped paper on the underside of the table and then laid on the floor under the table to paint. In turns out that this is extremely tiring for your arms. It was a lot of fun and Luigi really got into it. All this painting even inspired us to set up a better art supply area. We are still working on it.

PE: As always consisted of Swimming and Soccer.

That's it for this week! I think it's enough. :-)

What to do with Strawberry Guavas?

2011-09-16T07:15:00.000-07:00

This year we had a boat load of strawberry guavas on our tree. I should have taken a picture. It looked awesome with the little red fruit on it. Anyway, we had so many that we did not know what to with them. We decided to try strawberry guava muffins. All we did is use our regular cranberry muffin recipe and add strawberry guavas instead of cranberries. They turned out pretty good! Only one little extra advice: Make sure all the seed are out. We did try to get all those little seeds, but some were still left in. When you eat the muffins watch out. These seeds are hard. You could break a tooth.

2011-09-12T15:56:00.000-07:00

"The lottery = false hope. If it worked, the rich would pay the poor to stand in line for them to purchase tickets."

Dave Ramsey

2011-09-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.

William Shakepeare

Back to School

2011-09-10T10:47:00.000-07:00

Well, we are officially back to school now. We decided to take the whole summer off and start up after Labor Day. I was certainly ready to be back learning and doing!

We accomplished quite a bit this first week, but it also is a challenge to get back into the groove.

This year we are working our way through the Saxon Middle School Activities book. Most of the things are review, however, all of them are important. It only takes a few minutes to do. This week we started out with the calender and skip counting.
Mario is continuing Math Mammoth, and started RightStart Geometry. The plan is to do MathMammoth 4 days a week and have Geometry Friday.
Luigi is continuing Key to Metrics. The plan for him is to finish the Metrics books, move to Key to Decimals (the first 2 books), and then switch back to MathMammoth. We'll see how that works.

Literature is my favorite this month. We started reading The Shakespeare Stealer. At the same time we reading Shakespeare for kids and complete some of the projects. This week we made the pomanders to keep away the plague. We also use the Shakespeare coloring book. We read the Macbeth version from Story of the World 2 and discussed it a bit. This has been a fun subject for us this week.

The rest of Language Arts is not so fun right now. However, I have made it a goal to get through this skill areas as quickly as possible so that we can move on to other things (like our Shakespeare studies). Both boys started Advanced Language Lessons which seemed to work well. Mario started Week 1 in WWS. This seems to be a good fit for him, but also a big step up. Luigi is continuing WWE. They both do Spelling Workout which I hope to have finished by the end of this year.
This is going to be the most challenging subject for both boys. However, it so important!

History is a continuation of last year. We are entering the Renaissance using the WTM approach of reading an encyclopedia, writing a fact list, entering dates on to the timeline, and then doing extra reading, projects, or maps. This has always worked well for us.

Science is awful. I am still trying to find some kind of groove with it. Nothing seems to be working well. Hopefully, I can figure something out next week.

Music happens pretty casually here. This week we listened to Master of Music while working on projects. Both boys continue their piano lessons. This year we finally added a metronome to our music tools.

Art will be casual. Luigi looked up information about Ansel Adams which inspired a conversation about the changes in photography over the years. Luigi just couldn't understand what was so special about photographs. Anyone can do that, right?

Luigi is continuing Evan-Moor Geography. This is easy for him but he likes it.

I need to address Logic still.

This week was also the week of our very first FIRST Lego League meeting. This is new for us. We'll see how it goes.

Mario moved from the intermediate swim team to the advanced swim team this week. We was very excited about that. He also decided that he was ready to tackle some swim meets. We have the first one next week.

Luigi's soccer games are starting up. He has two this weekend. His goal this year is to actually shoot a goal.

That's it for this week. We are still adjusting, but so far so good.

The End of Summer

2011-08-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

Summer is coming to an end. We are starting to get busy with new sport schedules, school schedules, Lego schedules, music schedules, etc. We are changing things up quite a bit this year. The boys will be attending a local Co-op all day once a week, and they will attend charter school classes two days a week. The thing is we are doing this mostly to be immersed in learning with people. It has been difficult to find a variety of people in the homeschool community. It seems most children start school around this age (middle school). We hope we find what we are looking for. If we don't, well, we tried.

All of us have continued learning a lot over the summer.

Luigi has been busy with the new soccer season. So far the season has been challanging. The kids are now playing on a regular size field with 11 players. This seems to be a big change for them. They are working on it and are improving all the time. He has read The Throne of Fire, Harry Potter 7, and a Warrior book.

Mario is still swimming. He has read Lucas Kasha which he seems to enjoy. Mario has also done a lot of cooking and mowing lately. He is turning into a serious help around the house and yard.

Both boys started piano lessons again after a month of break from it. The piano teacher was actually pleased by how well they played after a month off.

We all have been learning a lot about keeping up with busy schedules. Both J and I have been working hard this summer. It has been hard on the boys. However, they seem to appreciate me, and the time I give them, much more now. That's definitively good.

I will try and write more often. Maybe I should set myself a goal of adding to my blog once a day.

The Heat Arrived!

2011-07-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

This week started to get hot! We included lots of swimming in our week. We spent a day at the beach. It was a little cloudy still, but it was warm. One day we bbq'ed at a friends pool. This was a lot of fun. We hung out with old friends, swam, munched etc. until 8:00 pm.

We watched MegaMind at the movie theater on 'free' day and brought along friends. It was taco night that day as well.

We went to the zoo. It is amazing! Now that the boys are older we can actually walk the whole zoo in 5 hours without taking the skyfari. It was great to go. We got two free tickets from a friend; so we only needed to pay for one.

As usual we met our friends at the park for some Yu-Gi-Oh, basketball and simply hanging out.

On Saturday evening we were invited to dinner at Mario's friend's house. This was fun! We had very stimulating conversations while the kids played. The surprising thing was, though, how much the boys talked at the dinner table. We had quite an interesting conversation with them. Mario impressed us with his knowledge of The Odyssey. Our friends named their dog Argos--that's what started that whole conversation.

Luigi played in his first scrimmage of the soccer season. It was the first time that he and his team played on a regular size soccer field with 11 players. They played as expected. In other words, everyone discovered what needed to be practiced.

Aside from all these outings the boys played tons of video games and ds games, watched U-tube videos, went to the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament, played piano, watched Hawaii 50. Mario was listening to Eragon. Luigi was readingThe Throne of Fire (almost finished). They played basketball in the backyard, messed about with the hose, and cooked hot dogs in a pizza solar oven.

Summer Break

2011-06-26T21:41:00.000-07:00

It is summer -- and we decided to enjoy it to its' fullest. This was our first week of summer break. What did we do all week you ask?

The boys pulled out all their video games and played a lot. They also played DS Games and watched U-Tube videos (mostly about video games). Dad and I joined in on SuperMario Smashbrothers.

Dad took the boys on a bike ride through the hills.

We met a friend at the pool where everyone enjoyed the diving boards.

We played Clue.

We went to the library. Mario picked up a couple of old friends to listen to (Eragon and Hank the Cowdog). Luigi finally received the new Rick Riordan title Throne of Fire.

We watched numerous episodes of Hawaii Five-O.

We used our ice cream maker and made vanilla ice cream and orange sorbet. Yumm!

We had tacos at our local grocer on taco tuesday.

We enjoyed our weekly park day with friends to play Yu-Gi-Oh and basketball.

Mario swam.

Luigi played soccer.

Both had piano lessons and played piano daily.

I propably forgot something we did. However, you can see that we are taking it easy and are enjoying ourselves.

A Relaxing Week

2011-06-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

This was our OFF week! Yeah!

We enjoyed ourselves with friends at an 'Herb Walk' at Mission Gorge Trails. We learned lots about our local plants (mustard, lemonberry, sage, plantain etc.). We alse discovered that this park was used as a military training area for World War II; a piece of local history new to us.

Our official school year ended with our final meeting with our charter school. Once again, I feel like we really need to pick up the pace.

Another interesting fieldtrip this week was to the Encina Waste Water Plant were we learned all about the process of cleaning up our used water, and where it goes from there. This was an interesting 'smelling' experience.

The boys played at their bi-annual piano recital. Both did really well. Some of the kids there are just amazing! I find it interesting that most kids there are asian, second are europeans, and loooong after american. It seems that american parents don't value music a whole lot.

Other than that we did our usual: swimming, soccer, piano, reading, working, cooking, Yu-Gi-Oh, played video games, Clue and Monopoly, watched movies and documentaries, met friends at the park etc. etc. etc.

Behind in Posting, but here it is anyway -- A Week in Review

2011-06-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

Since I am late posting this I will keep it short.

We pretty much continued on with MathMammoth, Key to.., Khan Academy, WWE, Writing Tales, SWO, Rosetta Stone, La Clase Divertida etc.

History

This week we entered West Africa. Mario read the chapter in SOTW 2 and outlined a couple of pages. Luigi read the appropriate section in the Usborne Book and made a fact list.

Both boys read a chapter in A History of Us: The First Americans. Luigi also did another awesome 3-D map; this time on Columbus' voyage.

Science

Sketched the Magnetosphere
Did a project on convection including a lab report
Watched the lesson on Continental Drift (Teaching Company Course)
Mario continued reading Mercador
Luigi finished Copernicus

We went on two fieldtrips this week: The Botanic Garden and The Lux Art Institute. I wrote more about those other posts. Mario is still reading the Prydain Chronicles, and Luigi is reading Percy Jackson (again). We watched some of Terry Jones' People of Mediaval Times. Of course, Mario swam, Luigi played soccer, both played Piano. Another busy week.

San Diego Botanic Garden

2011-06-12T12:56:00.000-07:00

We decided to visit the San Diego Botanic Garden on FREE Tuesday last week. This is the first time we ever visited. It was wonderful. I discovered that we have many Japanese plants in our own garden--who knew? We all concluded that it is too bad that the Botanic Garden didn't have the children's area when the children were, well, children. They do seem a bit too old for it now. Nevertheless, we did have fun discovering it. Our friends, however, do have a couple of younger girls who can still enjoy it for some time.

This is the view from the San Diego Botanic Garden entrance.

We also discovered an outdoor oversized version of tic-tac-toe. How fun!

Lux Art Institute

2011-06-12T07:13:00.000-07:00

We toured the Lux this week. We walked through the gardens on a treasure hunt for art pieces made by previous resident artists. After the walk we toured the small gallery where wood sculptures by Claudette Schreuder were on display. After looking at and talking about the sculptures we met Claudette. She is from South Africa and gets to stay at the Lux for a couple of months. The program ended with an art project for the kids to do.

I loved this fieldtrip! The Lux does a wonderful job showing art and allowing visitors to meet the artists. The art project is so-so. It may be simply that Mario and Luigi are getting to old for these kinds of projects. Loved the rest, though.

Columbus Lands in America

2011-06-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

Another 3-D Map

The moving parts on this map are Columbus' three ships: Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria.

A German Quote

2011-06-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

Man muss das Unmoegliche versuchen um das Moegliche zu erreichen.

Hermann Hesse

A friend posted this on facebook. It basically means: One must try the impossible to achieve the possible . There propably is an english phrase or saying like this, but I can't think of it right now. The german one must do.

Kikuyu Initiation Shield

2011-06-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

We found this project in a book titled Hands-On Africa: Art Activities for all Ages.

This is the project description in the book which inspired us. Following are our interpretations.

First up: Mario. Here is the beginning of his shield. He insisted on two eyes instead of one. :-)

The final product turned out very well. He was very creative in using fabric shapes to glue on to the shield and black marker to add more of a 'face' to the shield.

Luigi decided to cover his entire shield with fabric. He thought that this particular fabric made the shield more real.

Once the shield was covered he painted a design onto it using acrylic paints. It turned out very colorful indeed.

2011-06-08T06:52:00.000-07:00

"I haven't failed. I've just learned 10,000 ways that won't work."

Thomas Edison

It seems summer is here!

2011-06-05T17:29:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh....We love summer! Not that it really gets cold here, but still...

This week was Memorial Day Weekend. The boys spent Sunday playing Yu-Gi-Oh. Memorial Day we went to the beach with some friends. It was sunny, but the wind was cold. We laid flat on the sand to avoid most of it. The boys had fun boogie boarding with their friends (too cold for me). The Pacific is still COLD!

School started on Tuesday.

Math

Mario continued graphs in Math Mammoth. He is finally done with his division drills. Luigi started Key to Metrics Book 2 and continued watching Kahn Academy videos.

English

Mario started the next chapter in Writing Tales. Luigi continued WWE. For some reason he did not like narrations this week at all; no problem with dictations. Both did SWO E. We gave up on grammar once again. I really need Susan Wise Bauer's new grammar program Advanced Language Lessons. All of her books have worked very well for us. The program we are dropping is Easy Grammar.
We are all enjoying our literature book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, very much. The project is turning out quite well.

German

Rosetta Stone and me speaking to the boys, as usual.

Spanish

Luigi is almost finished with La Clase Divertida 1.

History

I. Read “Conquerers of North Africa” in Usborne Book, page 260

A. List facts.

B. Record dates on Timeline

C. Record Sultan Baibars in “Men and Women” section

D. Color in Geography Coloring Book

II. Read “Cities of East Africa” in Usborne Book page 261

A. List facts.

B. Record dates on Timeline

C. Record King Lalibela in “Men and Women” Section

D. Read “The Story behind Gold”

E. Project: Kikuyu Initiation Shied

F. Color in Geography Coloring Book

III. Play Settera-Africa

The project "Kikuyu Initiation Shield" was really fun. Mario and Luigi got into it.

Science

A. Read “How the Earth Works” page 22-31, activities, report

1. Sketch an Eclipse

2. Gerardus Mercator – make page

3. Read “ The Librarian Who Measured the Earth”

4. Brainpop – Earth’s Structure, Earth

Music

We went to piano lessons and worked very had on our recital pieces. Other than that the boys practiced and we listened to Beethoven's Wig.

Art got skipped this week. We went to homeschool day at the Waterpark with tons of friends and made a day of it. We'll call it a field trip.

Other things we did: watched James Bond, Cake Boss, U-tube videos; played video games; went on a looong bike ride with Dad; read all sorts of books and comic books; listened to music; swam; played soccer and basketball; went on a sleep-over; stopped by the library; spent some time at the park; That's it.

Camping Trip

2011-05-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

The boys and Dad went on a one night camping/fishing trip this weekend. Some friends went with them. They did some shore fishing and some pier fishing.

They told me they caught lots of underwater plants. :-)

Aside from fishing they all went on a hike and had fun using their sling shots. They also played hide and seek inside the tent. How can 4 boys hide in a small space like that you might ask? Well, I really don't know, but they loved doing it.

Sony Online Entertainment

2011-05-30T06:37:00.000-07:00

Another interesting career type fieldtrip. This week we went to Sony Online Entertainment. It was very interesting to see what people to there. Mario and Luigi thought being a game tester sounds like a fun job. We'll see...
The most interesting office was one small office were a nice man showed the kids how he designs creatures on the computer. He was able to show them how he manipulates and changes the creatures basically by trial and error until he is pleased with the result. The kids would yell: "Make it fly!" He did. Then the kids shouted: "Make it jump over the mountain!" He did again. It all looked like his man was playing games all day long. We could tell he truly enjoyed it.

Studio West

2011-05-30T06:30:00.000-07:00

We went on several fieldtrips this month. This one was a tour of Studio West, a recording studio. We got to see three studios. The children recorded some singing and listened to the playbacks. Mario played a great tune on the studios piano.

This is their music studio recording board from the 80s. They still use it and love it. All the kids were amazed by the number of buttons and levers. The other studios we saw are used to make and cut movies.

The First People Arrive in America

2011-05-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

Luigi's first 3-Map!

These maps are fabulous! Luigi really enjoyed this one. We can't wait to add more as we move through history. Someone on the Well-Trained Mind board recommended this book, and I am so glad I went ahead and purchased it.

Week in Review

2011-05-28T07:25:00.000-07:00

Once again we had a busy week with school work, field trips, and just plain fun.

Math
Luigi continued working through Key to Metrics. He'll finish Book 1 next week and start Book 2. He also watched Kahn Academy Videos. Mario worked on graphs in Math Mammoth and continued Divison Drill pages -- almost done.

English
As always both boys did their ususal spelling and grammar pages. Mario working on Writing Tales. Luigi continued in WWE.
Literature was the fun part of English Class this week. We started reading "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" and we'll be working on a great project invloving a map and little scene pictures. I can't wait to see how this turns out.

German
We are still using Rosetta Stone and both boys speak with me (not enough-my bad). I really need to incorporate reading, but I have trouble finding the time.

History
The boys read Conquerers of Africa in the Usborne Book.
They wrote a fact list.
They recorded dates on their timelines.
They made a record of Sultan Baibars in the "Men and Women" section of their notebooks.
They colored a section in the Geography Coloring Book.
Mario read "The Story of Gold".
Luigi read "Life At Inland Villages" in "Oh, California". He wrote a paragraph about acorns, and he made a chart of the type of houses different natives lived in. Luigi is our history buff.

Science
We read through "The Shape or the Earth" in "How the Earth Works".
The boys recorded Gerardus Mercator in the "Men and Women" section of their history notebook.
We discussed how one could go about making a globe based on an activity in the book.
We did the activity on "Map Projections". The boys wrote a lab report. After that they had some additional fun with projcetions and flashlights in the closet. Who knew that a 5th and 6th grader still like to play in closets?
Luigi also read a couple of chapters in "Copernicus".

Art
We read about Sandro Botticelli because he came up in our read-aloud this week. We discussed his painting "Venus and Mars". Both boys continued work on a project inspired by Jan Van Eyk. This seems to be a very loooong projcet. I'll post a picture when we are done.

Music
As usual we went to Piano Lessons and practiced every day.
We listened to Congo to Cuba by Putumayo.

On top of all this we continued reading Christopher Columbus' World, went to Sony Online Entertainment for a tour, played Yu-Gi-Oh in a tournament and at the park. Mario started book 5 of the Prydain Chronicles. Luigi is re-reading The Lost Hero. Mario went swimming. Dad took the boys on a one-night camping trip with friends to do some fishing and playing and .... Our current favorite TV show is Cake Boss. We watch it on Netflix.

This concludes another fun and busy week!

Back to School

2011-05-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

This was a very busy week. Both boys had to take two more tests at the Charter School. We are finally finished with all that testing. Friday we went on a fantastic fieldtrip at a recroding studio (more under the label 'Fieldtrips'.

School work we accomplished:

Math
Mario continued on with Math Mammoth Graphs and Division Drills. Luigi almost finished book 1 of Key to Metric Measurement, and he continued watching Khan Academy videos.

German - Rosetta Stone, as usual, and speaking with me.

English
Mario practiced more writing using Writing Tales. Luigi is still going through WWE 3 narration and dictation. the boys each did 1 lesson in SWO E and a few pages in Easy Grammar. Easy Grammar really is easy. I am so glad I found this program. It works at least for now. I will still investigate SWB Advanced Language Lessons when it comes out. Mario read "D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths" and Luigi finish "The Phantom Toll Booth" and wrote a summary.

Luigi watched lesson 14 of La Clase Divertida I. We already have La Clase Divertida II. He also continued on in his North America Geography book and worked on memorizing countries, capitals, rivers etc. He is doing very well with this.

History

We read chapter 23 in SOTW "The First Russions". Afterwards, they boys wrote a summary, did the SOTW map, made russian Gingerbread, and played Settera. We also read chapter 17, "The Next Voyage" in "The Story of Us" and chapter 2, lesson 2 and 3 in "Oh, California. To finish we played Seterra.

Science

We started a biography of Copernicus.

Music

The boys went to Piano Lessons and practiced every day. Mario pulled out a song and played it at the piano on our Recording Studio fieldtrip. I am very proud of him for stepping up in front of all these strangers. We listed to a Joseph Hayden CD while doing Art.
We continued working on a Jan VanEyk project we found in "Discovering Great Artists".

I think this covers our school work. We also went to our weekly park day, Luigi played soccer, Mario went swimming three times this week. On top of that we went to a FIRST Lego Meeting and the boys signed up for this fall's group. We are very excited about that.

We didn't do as much in History and Science this week as we were still disrupted by tests and went on a field trip. Hopefully, we'll get to more next week.

Quotes from "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"

2011-05-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

No one can hurt you without your consent. Eleanor Roosevelt

They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them. Ghandi

No school this week!

2011-05-14T06:03:00.000-07:00

This was a scheduled FREE week. We had lots of relaxation, but also went on fieldtrips, and I went to work for the first time in --- who knows how long.

Our Fieldtrips this week:

Natural History Museum in LA
Legoland
A Local River

Aside from that Mario went swimming, Luigi played soccer, and both boys went to Piano lessons.

Next week we'll be back to our regular schedule.

Ahh! The Joys of Sunning at the River

2011-05-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

Today was a perfect river day. We picked up some friends, brought some water and chips, and off we went. It turned out to be the right temperature to play not only around the river but also in the river. Everyone swam, climbed, built damns, and even found crawdads.

Birthday at Legoland

2011-05-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

Today was Mario's birthday. We went to Legoland. It was homeschool day. The price is right on this day. It was fun to watch the boys enjoy themselves at Legoland. They are outgrowing Legoland Park pretty quickly now, although Mario and Luigi still enjoy building.

The Greatest Gem and Mineral Exhibit Ever

2011-05-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we visited the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. We had never been there. It shows an impressive collection of gems and minerals; the largest I have ever seen. I am so excited to be studying earth science this year. California has so much to offer in this area. Death Valley, Lassen Volcanic Park, the San Andreas Fault--just to name a few. We are starting a rock collection. This will be so fun!

As you can see from this picture the museum also has a dinosaur exhibit. It was, however, closed the day we went.

John Adams Quotes

2011-05-09T17:11:00.000-07:00

I couldn't agree more with both of the following quotes!

In politics the middle way is none at all.

You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.

I love quotes like these--short and to the point.

Week In Review

2011-05-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

This week was very disrupted by several imporant events.

I. STAR testing! The boys spent all day, Monday, at the charter school testing. Personally, I find these tests quite useless, and I am glad to know that we do have the right to opt out. Amazingly, many people are unaware of this! We take the tests anyway to practice test-taking since this seems to be an important skill these days. Or is it?

II. It was really hot on Tuesday! So we decided to ditch school in the afternoon and go to the beach instead. We did learn some things there, too. The Pacific Ocean is freezing still. There are tons of sandhoppers right now (many babies).

III. Uncle Eric came to visit. We went to the beach again. The Pacific is still freezing!

IV. Mario's birthday party sleepover was this Friday. Noone could concentrate on other learning activities today. I decided it was best to keep it to a minimum.

Here is what we did accomplish this week:

Math

Mario continued on in Math Mammoth. He finished the chapter on decimals--thank goodness--and moved on to graphs. They are so much easier. He also continued working through division drill pages. He does not enjoy these at all.

Luigi continued working through Key to Metric Measurement Book 1. He is breezing through this quite easily. He also watches a KahnAcademy video and/or does the related practice exercises.

English

We did our usual routine of Spelling, Writing (WWE for Luigi, Writing Tales for Mario). Mario is reading "D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths". He also writes a summary paragraph and draws a picture for the stories. Luigi is currently reading "The Phantom Tollbooth".

German

Both the boys did their usual exercises on Rosetta Stone Level II.

Spanish

Luigi is slowly working through La Clase Divertida I. He is on lesson 13.

History

We did not finish all of our history plans for the week because of all the disruption. We did get to quite a bit, though. Here is this weeks plan (still working on it).

I. Read the Story of Us chapter 16: “A New Land Discovered”

II. Read Oh California, chapter 2 Lesson 1: The first Americans

A. Map-first Americans

III. Read “The Rise of the Russians” in Usborne Book; pages 256-257

A. List facts

B. Record dates on Timeline

C. Record in the ‘Men and Women’ section: Rurik, Prince Vladimir, Yaroslav the Wise, Nevsky,

D. Record the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Architecture section (You can print a picture to use)

E. Color Russia in Geography Coloring Book

IV. Read SOTW chapter 23: The First Russians

A. Summarize “Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible”

1. File in “Men and Women” section

B. Complete SOTW Map

C. Cooking this week: Borscht and Bread, Russian Gingerbread

D. Projects: Russian Batik Design; Architectural Eggs

V. Play Settera-Asia

Science

We started Earth Science, and we are very excited about this. This will be fun. There are so many cool places to visit in California. We are also starting a rock collection.

Here is what we did this week.

I. Origin of the Universe (Teaching Company "The Nature of Earth")

A. Bulging Earth Demonstration (from "Earth Science for Every Kid")

1. Write and sketch

II. Origin of the Solar System (Teaching Company "The Nature of Earth")

A. Read Our Solar System

B. Read The Universe

C. Watch Brainpop ‘Greenhouse Effect'

D. Read “How the Earth Works” page 12-21, activities, report

1. Sketch Moon and Tides

Other stuff we did:

Both boys had Piano lessons. They started working on their new recital pieces. Luigi started playing soccer in earnest again. New season! Luigi also worked on Evan-Moor Geography North America and did several pages in Logic Countdown. Mario is currently reading The Chronicles of Prydain by Loyd Alexander. He is on Book 3. Luigi is reading Brisinger by Christopher Paolini. We went to the park to play Yu-Gi-Oh (and several other things). Mario only made it to swimming once this week; he usually swims three times a week.

It still turned out to be a pretty productive week. Next week, we are off. No official school. Let's see what we can learn on purpose anyway.

Favorite Quotes and Passages

2011-05-07T15:38:00.000-07:00

"Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"

from "The Hobbit"
by J.R.R. Tolkien