October 27 - 31

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston has been working really hard this year at balancing school and work.  He has a job at Papa John's and has done a great job learning what is required of him, showing up on time and working long hours and going the extra mile for his manager.  It's so much fun to watch him work hard and save money for some of his long-term goals.  One goal he has is to participate in a humanitarian trip this coming summer.  It is expensive so he is saving up for it with his money from work.  

MARISSA

Marissa read "The Princess and the Goblin" by George MacDonald for colloquia for Polar Star.  She loved it!  I read the book years ago, but only remembered a little bit about it.  It was fun to have a conversation with her about her take-aways from the book.  She particularly loved how much courage and faith Irene needed to have to guide her so she could rescue Curdie. 

CALEB

Caleb attended "Peter Pan" with the family this week.  We all loved the ballet!  We have had a fun couple of weeks with lots of field trips added into our regular schoolwork, which is so much fun, but less frequent because of all the difficult classes and curricula the kids have this year.  

October 20 - 24

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston is working really hard on his math.  He is working on learning Geometry right now through the Learn Math Fast system.  He is catching on fairly well and is excited to get through both Geometry and Algebra this year.  

MARISSA

Marissa attended the play "Sister Act" at Hale Center theater this week.  It was so much fun!  She loved watching a play with this level of professionalism.  Moving the scenes up and down was so fascinating to watch as well.  We all agreed we would love a behind the scenes tour of the stage, props and scenery.  Marissa was also so excited because many of her peers from both Polar Star and Kindred were there as well.  It is always so much fun to see friends at events.  

CALEB

Caleb had a field trip to Black Island Farms this week.  Actually, he ended up going to two separate field trips, one with DaVinci and one with Ninja Scholars class at Polar Star.  He had a great time going on a hay ride, picking out a pumpkin and participating in so many other fun fall activities. 

 

October 13 - 17

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston watched another physics video in The Great Courses catelog.  It was called "Nature of Matter: Understanding the Physical World."  He's not really enjoying physics the way I was hoping he would, but he's pressing through anyway to try to learn what he needs to for this class.  

MARISSA

Marissa wrote a paper for her Pyramid class this week.  The focus this semester is Zoology.  She has been learning so much about animal classification.  She has specifically enjoyed learning about biomimicry, which is what her project this semester will is supposed to focus on.  She's excited and has a couple of ideas for her project that she started working on this past weekend.  

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jK7i9T77LebiG6Fw-pVnQ2OLdhPgedmQHSngGOif-wY/edit?usp=sharing

CALEB

Caleb has a class at DaVinci called Biz Kids.  They are preparing for a big field trip in March at JA BizTown.  Caleb's group created a product this week as part of the class.  There were 5 of them and they made "Waffle-mon cards."  They are kind of like Pokemon cards, but they look like Waffles.  One of his friends, Liam, loves waffles, which is apparently where the idea originated.  It was fun to see the product when he brought it home. 

October 6 - 10

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston finished his book he was reading for enjoyment rather than a class this week.  It was "The Trials of Apollo" by Rick Riordan.  Preston has really enjoyed all of the books in the Percy Jackson series as well as the Heroes of Olympus series.  He loves fantasy books, especially this genre with the Greek gods.  I'm so glad he enjoys reading so much!    

MARISSA

Marissa read "Give Me Liberty" by Gene Edward Veith Jr. for her Quest class this week.  She also had a blue book essay test in class about the book.  She gets so nervous for the blue book tests, but she has done amazing demonstrating how much she learned from reading the book.  She learned about Patrick Henry in her Key of Liberty class three years ago so it was fun for her to read a book that went into more detail about him.  She said she really enjoyed it and she loves the courage that he had.  

CALEB

Caleb has been working so hard on his math the past week and a half.  We learned that even though he is able to skip lessons in CTC math when he gets 80% or more on the comprehensive test, that he wasn't really learning the parts that he didn't know.  We decided to have him work through all the lessons even if he already knows most of the material.  It meant a lot of extra lessons he hadn't planned on doing, but he was a champ and worked hard to catch up to where he wanted to be.