library

2024-25 School Year–Week Twenty-Three

Ladybug continued reading Jane Eyre this week. She also started Murder on the Orient Express. In psychology she learned about IQ tests and the difference between general intelligence and emotional intelligence as well as the difference between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. In writing she practiced writing different forms of parallelism. We read about John Knox and John Wesley in religion.

Chickadee continued to work with systems of equations and also converted between celsius and fahrenheit in pre-algebra. We read about the Zulu in Africa in history. In science, she finished the chapter on the superstructures of the human body. We continued The Bronze Bow. We also began our Lenten Jesus Tree readings and Amon’s Adventure. We stopped by the library to see the baby chicks once more before they move on…they’ve gotten so big!

Speaking of birds, we’ve been on pip watch and absolutely obsessed with Jackie and Shadow’s adorable babies…the Big Bear Bald Eagle Live Nest cam has been on pretty much all day all week here!

We celebrated making it to March and the return of our very favorite Starbucks drink, too!

One more week of school, and then it’s time for spring break!

2024-25 School Year–Week Twenty-Two

It’s finally the last day of February (and the month decided to be annoying one last time with the gift of a flat tire, but that’s neither here nor there….)!

Ladybug began reading Jane Eyre for her next literature study. In religion we discussed Calvin and Zwingli and Reformed theology. She worked on extending sentences with prepositional phrases, participles, and appositives in writing. In psychology she read about spotlight effect and self-esteem. She finished Wuthering Heights and continued to read Travel as a Political Act.

Chickadee learned how to calculate slope, rewrite equations in slope-intercept form, and solve systems of equations in pre-algebra. In history she read about Santa Anna and Mexican independence. We finished reading Heart and Soul, which was an overview of Black history in the US, and turned our attention to the stories of some specific Black Americans…in addition to more well-known figures like Ruby Bridges, Coretta Scott King, and Jackie Robinson, we also read about a few lesser-known individuals like Ann Lowe and Ethel Payne. In science she learned about the skeletal system and began a section on muscles. We began reading The Bronze Bow.

We also went to the library to check up on the chicks. We saw some the day they hatched:

And we went back once all five of them were moved from the incubator to the box they’re currently residing in:

We’re hoping to go back to the library next week and see the chicks once more before they move to the farm that will be their new home!

2024-25 School Year–Week Twenty-One

This week, Ladybug finished A Tale of Two Cities, and is working on her final essay on the book. In psychology she learned about Freud’s id, ego, and superego, as well as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In religion, we took a closer look at The Book of Concord and especially the Augsburg Confession. She worked on writing and rewriting sentences in active and passive voice in writing. She continued reading Wuthering Heights and Travel as a Political Act.

Chickadee learned about the Cartesian coordinate system in pre-algebra, and also solved two-variable equations and graphed the results. In science, we finished up the chapter on the five-kingdom classification system, and did a classic experiment with celery and dyed water to demonstrate turgor pressure in plants. She finished reading The Trojan War. We revisited Napoleon and read about Waterloo in history. We continued reading Heart & Soul.

Our library has been incubating chicken eggs, so we got to go see an egg candling this week…I had not idea how much detail we’d be able to see, but there was definite movement within the eggs, and you could clearly make out the shape of a foot in more than one of them!

The eggs are supposed to hatch next week, so we’re planning on going back and seeing the chicks at some point!

Chickadee Thursday

Chickadee finished this school year’s reading program at the library, and it’s also the last one she’ll complete, as she’s now aged (graded?) out of it! She’s pretty proud of herself for collecting every single “Reading Dragon” card they offered!

The big event of the week, though, was the solar eclipse. We weren’t at 100% totality, but we were over 99%, and Chickadee was really excited to view it since she really doesn’t remember The Great American Eclipse of 2017!

Chickadee Thursday

Chickadee has been doing a great job keeping up with our library’s reading program and earning Pokémon-style cards…on Tuesday she received her selections for February, and only has two more months to go!

Chickadee Thursday

I’m going to be honest here…we haven’t been to our local public library since before the pandemic began. So today we went and got new library cards and checked out a few books…Chickadee was especially excited, because this is actually her first library card of her own!