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]