November 18 - 22

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston has been learning about Australia and New Zealand as part of his language arts and geography studies.  He worked on learning the regions and memorizing different facts as part of his geography flashcards.  He traced and labeled a map as part of his lesson.  

MARISSA

Marissa read the book "Up From Slavery" for her Georgics class.  She LOVED the book and resonated with so many things.  It was such a good book to build upon everything she learned about slavery and the Civil War last year in her Sword of Freedom class.  She particularly loved seeing different skills that the former slaves learned and how not only reading and higher education skills were important, but also trade skills.  

CALEB

Caleb has been reading "The Badger Hills" series.  He loves the series, but tells me that he misses Timothy because he isn't in as many of the books anymore.  He does like Zoey though.  He also loves updating me on the different parts he is reading.  Currently, he is very frustrated with their coach.  :)

November 11 - 15

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston learned about color alteration in his digital media arts class.  He had to select certain items in the photo and change them from one color to another color.  He learned a lot about changing some items without changing the entire photograph.  

Color Alteration

MARISSA

Marissa read "Black Stallion" for book colloquia this month.  Marissa loves animals and wants to be a vet (or a nurse) when she is older.  She loved reading the book and participating in the book discussion with her peers.  She loved reading about the bond that Alec and the horse form while living on the island and the fact that Alec refused to leave the island without his horse when he was rescued.  

CALEB

Caleb made a picture of a volcano from the book "Pedro's Choice."  It was part of his language arts' curriculum.  Caleb doesn't like art very much and really has to push himself to complete the art projects in the book.  I'm so proud of him and the grit he showed to complete this project to the best of his ability! 

November 4 - 8

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

Our family spent three weeks in Argentina.  Marcos (dad) was born in Argentina and many of his distant relatives still live there.  We planned a trip for all 5 of us (not our oldest son who no longer lives at home) to visit the country and learn all about the culture and history of Buenos Aires.   

PRESTON

Preston spent three weeks learning about the culture, language and history of Argentina.  One of his favorite things about Argentina was the City Tour.  It is a hop on, hop off bus that takes you to 22 different locations within the city of Buenos Aires.  He learned so much about the history of Argentina and many of the famous locations that people travel to see.  He loved learning about the soccer players and rival teams.  He also loved learning about their congress and "la casa rosada" (the pink house) where the president works.  

MARISSA

Marissa loved learning all about the plants and animals in Argentina.  We spent many days visiting parks that she loved.  Her favorites were El Rosedal (the rose garden), ecoparque (eco-park, which used to be a zoo, but has been transformed into a location for learning about natural plants species that grow in the area.  We took pictures of lots of trees we weren't used to seeing and looked them up through google lens or at home after our daily outings.  It was super cool to see so much biodiversity in a huge city like Buenos Aires.  

Loquat tree

A nest belonging to a bird

Date tree

Bamboo fence

She also loved visiting El Tigre, which is about an hour north of Buenos Aires on the train.  It is a city where you have to go by boat to get to the houses.  It was so fascinating to see a city like that (similar to Venice, but quite different also).  People who live in this area take boat "busses" to get to school, go shopping, take out their garbage, etc.  We learned so much on a boat toar that took us down 6 different rivers and canals in the area.  

CALEB

Caleb's favorite part of our Argentina trip was learning more about the culture.  He loved sampling the different foods like asado (bbq), milanesa (breaded steak), empanadas, pizza (it's totally different than the pizza here), gnocchis, alfajores (cookies), choco torta (chocolate cake) and dulce de leche ice cream.  He also loved meeting new people, working on his Spanish skills, and swimming in anyone's pool any time it was warm enough to put on a swimsuit.  What a great experience for all of us! 

October 28 - November 1

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston wrote a poem this week for his language arts course.  He is learning so much about the elements of poetry and reading many great poems from poets throughout time.  He complains a little bit when he has an assignment that asks him to write a poem, but he always ends up doing such a great job.  His writing is inspiring.  

MARISSA

Marissa read "The Imaginary Invalid" by Moliere for her Classical Acting class this week.  It is a French Farce.  She really enjoyed the play, which was a nice change from reading a tragedy a couple weeks ago.  She also learned about method acting and took notes on her final scene, which she will work on and perform at the end of the year.  She took notes on what emotions her character was feeling during the monologue.  She chose a scene from "As You Like It" to be her final scene and is working on it as she learns different elements of acting this year.  

CALEB

Caleb learned about the Navajo Code talkers for his Ninja Scholars class.  He was so excited to make his own secret code to take to class for his peers to decipher.  What an interesting topic from history! 

October 21 - 25

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston learned about filters in his PhotoShop class.  He had to use the same picture with multiple different filters for his assignment.  He chose a picture of Matthew LeBlanc for the assignment.  He really liked the way it turned out and said his favorite filter of this picture is glowing edges.  

MARISSA

Marissa read Antigone for her Classical Acting class this week.  She really enjoyed it even though it was a tragedy.  She learned so much in Shakespeare the past two years that now it is much easier to read, watch and listen to  plays from many centuries ago.   Antigone is a Roman tragedy, but seemed very similar to Shakespeare to her.  

CALEB

Caleb learned about making tiny robots in his specials class at DaVinci.  The body of his robot was made from the head of a toothbrush and he taped a battery with wires on top and hot glued the motor together.  He named his robot "The Lightning Tornado."  

October 14 - 18

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston had his belt test for his second degree black belt.  He has been working on this for two years...and he did it.  The test was all day long and he had to remember EVERYTHING he has learned through all the levels, plus the new katas and weapons.  They started with a 5 mile run, pushups, mountain climbers, sit-ups, etc.  Then they started the test.  They push them when they are completely worn out to see if they can perform even when they are exhausted.  Preston was AMAZING!!  There were only two of them to test for their 2nd degree.  It was so fun to watch him achieve something so difficult!  

MARISSA

Marissa finished reading "Girl of the Limberlost" for her Georgics class and participated in the book discussion.  She LOVED the book so much and was sad when it was over.  She loved all the nature themes throughout the book as well as the difficult relationship between Elnora and her mother.  But her favorite part was Elnora's grit and determination mixed with kindness and compassion. 

CALEB

Caleb read "A Long Way from Chicago" for his Ninja Scholars class.  He really enjoyed the book and was excited to participate in the book discussion.  Caleb is so busy with lots of different classes this year, but he is thriving and learning so much! 

October 7 - 11

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston completed a really cool project in PhotoShop this week for his Digital Media Arts class.  He had to turn a black and white photo into a color photo.  It was so much work and took him quite a bit of time, but he really enjoyed the project! He learned so much about PhotoShop that he would not have learned without this class.  

MARISSA

Marissa LOVES art!  She can often be found sketching or painting when she has some time to spare.  She works on language arts, math, piano and reading, and then finishes any assignments she has for any of her specific classes.  After that, she often turns to arts and crafts for extra learning.  Here are a few of her most recent paint projects.  

  

CALEB

Caleb learned a little bit about the science of cooking for the science portion of his Ninja Scholars class this week.  He learned that vegetables turn out better if they are cut and salted first to allow them to sweat and release some of the excess water first.  He did two separate sautee dishes to experiment and sure enough, the squash with salt on it turned out less mushy and soggy.  

The only thing we realized he didn't account for was using a different pan for each dish since we cooked them at the same time.  So that may have been a contributing factor.  We still think the experiment was pretty conclusive.