Week 15

I'm sure I'm not the only one here shocked that we're this far into December already. I'll say this right off the bat: my internal clock is somewhere in mid-November. So, for those of you reading this who may be wondering "Where's my Christmas card from the Kaplans?" or "Hey, I wonder if that Hanukkah gift from Jen got lost in the mail", don't waste any more of your time pondering. I'm AWOL in regard to this year's holiday rituals. Frankly, it's going to be touch-and-go whether you hear from us or not. So plan accordingly.

With that full disclosure, I will say that the time I should have spent at the mall or in the Sears' Portrait Studio didn't go entirely to waste. At the P.I.S. we're doing a fine job staying on task. The majority of this week was devoted to subject review in preparation for the mid-term exams this coming week. As none of these students has ever taken a mid-term, they are trying to get themselves, their notes, and their study habits aligned.

One of the biggest challenges for them has been note-taking. I am trying to reinforce the idea that notes without context are worthless. Words, phrases, and sketches (while possibly spelled correctly, legible, or showing artistic talent) are meaningless if they simply float in an otherwise empty space. The process of outlining as applied to chronology, context, and importance is an important skill. I forget what a difficult one it is to master.

Our review this week covered Science (from plant and animal cell structure through simple plants, flowering plants, and plant reproduction), Grammar (identifying subject, modal and finite verbs, predicate adjectives and nouns, direct and indirect objects, adjectives, adverbs, definite and indefinite articles, prepositional signifiers, and object of the preposition while being able to correctly diagram them), Math (fractions, in all of their glorious poses and positions), and finally Latin (vocabulary and translations). I would like to note that we are practicing our Latin translations using a primer from the 1930s. This primer was designed for a third grade reading level. My students were surprised by its difficulty. We also reviewed our Spelling and Word Derivatives. This is the exam that is going to really test them. I'm afraid that both subjects require rote memorization, and (for my two kids, at least) academic memorization is unfamiliar territory. I know there are many of you who believe that rote memorization is ineffective. I am not one of you. What I know is that my 9 year old can whip off the name and rank of 142 different Star Wars characters in addition to naming all of the inter-galactic planets along the outer rim (still talking Star Wars, BTW). If he can do that, then by god, he's going to work a bit on memorizing the derivatives of "amo", "laudo", and "spero".

Some of the new things we did manage to cover this week were:

LOGIC: We're continuing our rather meaty work with Propositional Logic. We've identified the 5 operators, and we are slowly building the truth-tables for each.

ETHICS: We continued reading The Little Prince. This week's discussion revolved around the quotes "Before they grow so big, the baobabs start out by being little...The danger of the baobabs is so little understood." and "It is such a secret place, the land of tears."

HISTORY: We continued study of Old Kingdom Egypt. We read about the pharaohs through the 4th dynasty, and we read a brief bio on Imenhotep, architect/physician/priest/the-world's-first-Renaissance-man-before-the-Renaissance. The kids made this really cool peephole Sanctuary of Anubis from a shoe-box. They decorated all sides with Egyptian drawings, and they added a Senet (an ancient Egyptian game that resembles backgammon) board to the top. We have yet to play--maybe this coming week.

READING COMPREHENSION: We read through the first 5 "chapters" of the Iliad, and the students are trying really hard to keep the characters straight. They all agree that the story, so far, is riveting, but the introduction of so many (seemingly superfluous) characters is odd and clunky at times. We've discussed the possibility that Homer, in an effort to attract crowds to his traveling recitations, would add characters with local appeal. It seems plausible to me. If anyone out there knows something about that, please comment.

The above, in addition to internships, pretty much wrapped up our week. We did take a break on Thursday to enjoy one of our student's performances at The Children's Theater. Also, I'm writing the original of this post in long hand as we are currently traveling to our co-op in Gorham to attend a dinner/talent show/dance organized by the students. Good luck to both Sophie and Sarah on their performances this evening. With 175+ students attending, there should be quite a crowd!