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.