Week Eight

On Monday of this week, we had two periods of math back-to-back. I know that sounds like torture to have 2 hours of math but it was awesome! The first was our Life of Fred math. That one is just math made into a story with problems to do. But the second period was Life Skills Math, and that was AWESOME!!!! First we talked about the differences between capitalism, socialism, and communism. I think I’d like to live on a kibbutz some day! Then, we got to pick our first scenarios! Our scenarios go like this: every week each of us rolls three dice. Depending on the odd and even combination, we get a problem that we have to solve. For example, I got even-even-odd, and that is a positive windfall scenario. My specific “problem” was that the IRS owed me money for overpaying my taxes. If I can figure out how much they owe me (12% of my annual salary), I get that money in my checking account to spend! Not all of the scenarios are positive. Half of the time you’ll get a negative scenario. For example, your aunt is sick and you need to fly to California to visit her. Then you have to find a real live ticket on the internet and fake purchase it. You have to take the total out of your account. We also had logic which was hard but it was kind of cool. We are learning about logic symbols, especially “if-then” statements and how you can take an argument and break it down into symbols to see if it’s true or false. Here was one we did, and in it D= “dinosaurs exist”, I= “invisible horses are polka-dotted, and E= “elephants have wings”. The argument was “Either dinosaurs don’t exist, or elephants don’t have wings. But if elephants don’t have wings, then invisible horses are not polka-dotted. However, invisible horses are polka-dotted. Therefore, dinosaurs don’t exist.” Don’t worry, the first time I heard it I was lost at “But if…” It is very confusing to know if this is a true statement. So, you write it in these crazy symbol things and it would be

• Dà~E and Eà~D and ~Eà~I . Therefore, Ià~D. And eventually you figure out that it is true in this case. Anyway, if your brain isn’t fried yet then I’ll go on to Tuesday…

Tuesday was wicked fun! We played this game in History where the three of us were the leaders of early cities. I was the city of Amut; Able was Meso; Sarah was Potum.

Each city had strengths and weaknesses. The object of the game was to keep your city going and your citizens happy. On your turn you could trade, battle or alliance. I had a lot of weapons, so I had a lot of strength. But I didn’t have much for crops or salt. I needed to be nice to trade for those things or my citizens would have a civil war. Plus, you wanted to conquer the other cities sometimes if you needed stuff that they wouldn’t trade you. If you wanted to go to war, you had to roll the dice to see what the outcome would be. If you were stronger, you lost fewer people and got more stuff. Able and Sarah made an alliance near the end of the game. They became a city-state called Meso-Potum. Finally they conquered me, and the new city-state became Meso-Potum-Amut, otherwise known as Mesopotamia. Later that day, in Science we did two lab experiments. We were studying how flowering plants take water and sunlight, make food, and give off oxygen. The formula we were proving was: light + water + CO2 = sugar + oxygen.

Wednesday wasn’t at all like Tuesday. First we had a long Spelling and Word Derivation exam. Then in Reading Comp. we read about the death of King Saul, the reign of King David, Solomon’s 40 year reign, and the building of the first temple. We had writing before lunch, and I worked on this blog. After a filling lunch at Edna and Lucy’s, we headed back. The last period of the day was grammar. We’re still reviewing Predicate Nouns and Adjectives, Direct Objects and Indirect Objects, but we also started on the difference between adverbs and adjectives. This is our instructor’s biggest pet peeve.

Of course on Thursday we had Co-op. This week was the Halloween party so it was crazy. I was upstairs the whole time doing a Haunted House, but I heard it was hectic downstairs. Anyway, the Haunted House was really fun; plus, we had fake blood and everything! We decided to run the fog machine so it would be foggy before we started. But no, that didn’t work. Yep, you guessed it. “Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!” The fog apparently was too thick or something and it triggered the fire alarm. It was still really fun and next week we start our second semester of classes. I’m taking Odyssey of the Mind for two periods, Digital Camera, and a period for organizing the holiday performances in December.

Today I went to my internship which I love! The babies are sooooo adorable! They know me now and they cry when I leave. I got a packet of information about early childhood development, and I am going to go to a few night classes at the University with some of the other people that I work with. That was it for this week!

Written by Sophie

[Pownal Independent School can not be held responsible for any brain damage caused by any confusing symbol content]

Week Seven

I hate to disappoint, but I have decided to give the kids a break and write this week's blog. I can assure you that it won't be nearly as political nor accusative as those of the past few weeks. Evidently, China really hits a nerve... Sinophobia is SO last century, guys.

Moving on. We decided to reward our students this week with a morning out to see Around the World in 80 Days at The Public Theater in Lewiston. The show ends this weekend, but if you have any opportunity to go, we highly recommend it. It's hysterical. Not once during the two hour performance did the energy on stage wane. I believe that the kids did pick up a bit of geography while there (along with some heavy-handed cultural stereotypes).

In addition to our field trip, we did cover a bit of ground in some of our subjects. The students are continuing work on fractions, but, we did introduce some of the more interesting aspects of math in an attempt to answer that age old question "when are we ever going to use this?" Our early morning Monday lecture introduced infinite series, fractals, binary trees, and the undeniable beauty of two color graphs of even degree. Oh, and more importantly, we learned how to "doodle" examples of each. I don't believe I've ever seen fiercer notebook margins.

Other topics covered this week:

• In Life Skills Math, students compared the cost of public transportation in their chosen city/town with the cost of owning a car.
• In Ethics, we studied the value and social significance of perseverance.
• We continued our study of the invalidity of "proof" by lack of counter-example in Logic.
• We worked on vocabulary, word derivations, and the introduction of future tense suffixes in Latin.
• We practiced for our cumulative spelling exam.
• We continued diagramming the predicate noun, predicate adjective, direct object and indirect object in Grammar.
• We read about the early battles between the Philistines and the armies of King Saul which led rise to the reign of King David.
• Work continues on independent novels and writing prompts. One of our students has begun the arduous work required of members of the National Young Writers Program.

Last, but by far not least, I would like to publicly thank both Karen and Carmen of the Pownal Veterinary Hospital. Not only have they provided the Pownal Independent School with material for our microscopes, but they have also been hosting one of our internships. Our nine year old student has been attending at the hospital on Fridays for the past seven weeks, and the opportunities provided him have far outdone any of my expectations. He has viewed a host of examinations and medical procedures. In fact, two weeks ago he participated in an ovariohysterectomy. Not only did he watch the entire procedure (from intubation to recovery), but Karen and Carmen took time to explain which organs were being removed and why. He reported out that he also saw the bladder and the small intestine and that the whole process was "Awesome. Gross at first, but then it was just neat." I can't thank them enough for providing such a great learning environment.

Week Six

I love homeschool! It's not boring because we do a lot of trips and projects. Even History is interesting. It's really just a long story. Reading Comprehension is fun, too, because we always stop at a cliff hanger which makes me feel like I can't wait for next week. I also like that I don't have homework. Well, sometimes we have to finish the stuff we didn't finish in the day.

This past week we made clay houses in History. They were models of the houses in the first cities. My house was from Catalhoyuk in Turkey. Catalhoyuk is important because it was one of the first cities ever to have a population over 10,000. Sarah and Sophie made round houses from an early city on the Yellow River in China. Sarah had a problem making the roof of her house because she made her house extra large. She couldn't make the roof work, and she couldn't make it strong enough to stand up. That's exactly what happened in China! A square house is easier to make larger and stronger. That's why early humans stopped making round houses and moved to square or rectangle

houses. I made a square house. Catalhoyuk houses had their doors in the roof so it was safer [harder for invaders to get into the houses]. Also, you had more room to build houses because you didn't need to worry about walkways. You could just build right up next to the other house. And, you had a second floor which was the roof, and you didn't have to use any wood or mud to make it! You just walked and cooked and slept on the roof if you wanted to.

This week we also made four different food webs in Science. And for Life Skills Math, we actually went to the grocery store to add up our weekly grocery bills that we had made. My grocery bill is $201.59 a week. I'm expensive.

I want someone in China to read this blog, so please email it to your friends in China if you have any. I love China. The people are so cool. The Chinese will rule the world because they are the hardest workers [Note: the opinions of the blogger are his and have not, in any way, been inculcated, indoctrinated, nor instilled by the instructors of Pownal Independent School.] Anyways, China is awesome! Don't forget I said that when you rule the world. Please leave all of your comments below. I will be blogging here again in four weeks. Just to clarify, the comments don't need to be nice.

I can't wait for homeschool next week.

By: Able H. K. (nine year old student)

Week Five

Monday
 This week we had some interesting classes that all of us loved. First class was Independent Math. We are still doing fractions with Life of Fred. Next class was Ethics. In ethics we learned about courage and trust. We were partnered up with different people and one person had to guide the other, by voice, while the other was blindfolded. The tricky part was the guider had to guide their partner through a maze of mouse traps. Luckily we had gloves on and no one got hurt. Next we did Logic. We learned about "Proof" by lack of a counter-example. This means that if you don’t have a counter-example it doesn’t necessarily mean that the statement is true. In Latin we learned our second conjunction. (-o , -s, -t, -mus, -tis, -nt.) We also played Vinco(Pronounced winco), my favorite game. We also caught up on what Minimus the mouse was up to.
Tuesday
Our first class was history. We learned about Otzi the iceman and learned who he was, and his cause of death. We also learned about the first city, Jericho. Next we learned about the Nile, Tigris, and the Euphrates rivers and the first farming communities in Geography. In science we learned about what overpopulation can do to a habitat and the animals living there. To understand it completely we played a game called ‘Oh Deer!’ It’s a game where you have twenty-five generations. You start off with three deer and one wolf. The wolf has to touch three deer to live. With every living animal it produces one offspring, including the deer. At the end of the day we wrapped up with more Independent Math.
Wednesday
Our first class was Spelling. In spelling we played Spengo(Bingo, but spelling Bingo) with our old words. Then we had a spelling test with our new words and our word derivatives. If we got any letter or answer wrong our teacher pelted a tennis ball at us. You would think that’s harsh but it helped us spell better. For example, terrestrial was one spelling word. If you spelled it terestial the teacher yelled NO and threw the tennis ball at you. Now we know to study more. Also our new spelling words were passed out. Next was reading comprehension. We read where Joseph accepts his family back to Egypt. We also read a story about a stubborn pharaoh and the ten plagues. Then we learned about predicate nouns, predicate adjectives and direct and indirect objects in Grammer. This is one sentence we had to do. Can you tell which is the subject, verb and PN (Predicate Noun)? You are my little brother, and I am your good little sister. (Hint: Look carefully) Writing was the last subject and right now Sophie is writing her novel, Able is writing about the writing prompt and I’m writing this blog. Tomorrow is Co-op and Friday is internship day! Next week will be a killer. (Literally)
Written by Sarah Cyr. (Student)