Week Two

The second week is down and we're still here. I find that in the afternoons, when I'm picking up the classroom, I have the time to reflect on how hard these kids are working and what a big leap of faith they have taken to be here. I am so proud of them.

At this moment, our students are back at their internships. Each has a journal to keep track of their duties, report on how the day's work brought them closer to their internship goals, and have their overseers sign off on how students spent their mornings. Before they left for the working world, I did manage to get a few quotes from them regarding this past week:

• Writing my novel is my favorite.
• I loved designing and modeling my living space in Life Skills Math.
• Looking for mushrooms and lichen was fun.
• I was surprised Homo Sapiens Sapiens outlived both Homo Sapiens Heidelbergensis and Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis. [And yes, they did use the genus, species, and sub-species names on their own. I didn't enhance that quote.]

Other topics covered this past week that didn't make the "quote cut" were:

• Fraction logic in Independent Math
• How to read a pay stub and figure out where all those taxes and deductions go, and how to compute and price the square footage of their designed houses/apartments in Life Skills Math
• Is honesty always the best policy in Ethics
• The assent from Australopithecus to Homo Ergaster and on to the variations of Homo Sapiens in History
• Labs for learning the Linnaean taxonomy in Science
• More drilling in subject/predicate/finite verb identification in Grammar
• Derivations from the Latin verbs amo [I love] and credo [I believe]
• The most common symbolism and archetypes found in the Hebrew bible [from Abraham to the flight of Jacob]
• The awarding of the first Spelling Bee Scholar Dollar to Sarah!

In addition, we attended our first extended homeschool co-op group in Gorham. With over 175 kids ranging in age from 4-16, this co-op is a bit overwhelming but promises to be a great experience for our students. It is during these co-op hours that our students participate in Odyssey of the Mind, Cooking, Drama, Journalism, and Hip Hop dance. With the exception of Odyssey, these classes run for eight weeks; then a whole new schedule of options will be available.

It's a busy week, and it's a challenging week. But so far, I'm pretty confident that I can say it's a fun week.