Dogwood Forest Creek School

I've been having enormous amounts of trouble getting pictures to do what I want them to here, so I'm trying something new this week. We had a very funky week--friends visiting from out of town, classes starting up, meetings--so it was an abbreviated week as far as homeschooling goes. Ari and Milo started Spanish at LEO, a homeschooling center near us, on Monday. We're doing our Odyssey of the Mind meetings there this year, too. Spanish is at 10, then we have a 2 hour break before OOTM from 1 to 2:30. My plan is to do about an hour and a half of school in the mornings before we leave, but I decided not to try that this week since getting out of the house by 9:30 would be enough of a challenge for the first class. Spanish seems to have gone well. They have a few friends in the class, so Ari wasn't nervous at all about going. It's always a dangerous thing putting Milo together with his brother (or, actually, with pretty much anyone he knows), and sure enough, their friend Lula reported back that "Milo goofed off a lot." The teacher didn't say anything to me, though, so maybe he wasn't TOO bad. Lula's mom, Kristi, and her 4 1/2 year old, Marcos, hung out with me and Gus during the class, and then we all went to Chick-fil-A together to eat and play on the playground before OOTM. I'll have to make sure to plan ahead and pack lunches or we'll wind up eating out every week. I need to look into some parks in the area, too, since 2 hours is a bit long for just lunch.


The first two pictures are from Odyssey of the Mind. The grown-up is my friend Di Linh, who coaches the team. I volunteered to be the assistant coach this year, so I'm going to be doing the practice for spontaneous problems (the OOTM competition has two parts: a "long term problem" that the kids prepare for all year and then a "spontaneous problem" that they don't get until the day of the competition. So we practice example problems all year to get ready). The team has seven kids this year. Five of them were on the team last year and two are new this year . The first meeting went really well, I think. They seem to have matured over the summer and toned down last year's wild goofiness a bit (although it's early; we'll see). They did some get to know eachother/teambuilding sorts of activities and then sat down to decide on a long term problem. There are 5 different problems to choose from; the kids make up some kind of skit for each of them, but some of them focus more on dramatics and some focus more on building something. They wound up choosing "Return to the Gift of Flight:"

Teams will make and operate a series of aircraft that will complete a variety of flight plans. The flight plans include flying straight, making a target spin, traveling slowly, dropping something into a target, touching down and taking off, and a mass launch of multiple aircraft. The aircraft in the solution will be made of a variety of materials and will have a variety of power sources. The testing of the aircraft will be presented in a team-created performance that will include a character that serves as a creative "air traffic controller."

This sounds really...hard. Kristi and I were sort of hoping they would pick any one EXCEPT that one, but oh well. I'm sure it will work out okay. So, all in all, first long Monday full of activities was a success. Now we'll see how successful that whole doing schoolwork before we leave part is ;).

Science: We made a plant cell out of Jell-o, grapes, and a strawberry! My kids have actually never had Jell-o before, so this was an interesting experience in several ways. I meant to put the picture of the lab sheet together with the picture of the kids putting in the grape/chloroplasts, but I'm scared to move the pictures around, so I'll just leave it where it is.
The books I was waiting for for our state study all arrived this week. The Time book and Kids Learn America (plus the little 50 states card deck thing) I already had, but I wasn't thrilled with them, so I ordered a few more. I think we're all set now. We're doing the states in the order they became states, so we did Delaware and Pennsylvania this week. And because our week was not Jell-o intensive enough already, we made....Jellaware! This was a suggestion from Kids Learn America. Because Jell-o was first made in Delaware, you see. Kids Learn America is full of randomness. They have sort of insane suggestions for how to remember all the capitals. Like this one for Pennsyvania:

Make a movie in your mind. You're a cartoonist, and you're drawing some cartoon character hairy hamburgers with your yellow pencil. When you think of Pennsylvania think of a pencil, and when you think of the weird hairy burgers, you can remember Harrisburg which is the capital of Pennsylvania.

Alrighty, then! The kids think they're hilarious, but I'm not sure if they actually find them helpful.

Dave did the first official piano lesson of the year with Ari on Monday afternoon. Ari, as is his way, gets frustrated whenever something is hard, so he and Dave were both a little out of sorts by the end of the lesson. But I haven't had to remind him to practice at all this week, so I think he's enjoying it.
Gus insists on doing copywork whenever Milo does any, and this week he insisted on lined paper as well. So I pulled out a pad and gave him something to copy. His handwriting is at least as good as Milo's, I think.
The aforementioned lab sheet re: Jello cells. We were supposed to make a round animal cell, too, but I didn't read carefully enough and didn't buy enough Jello.
Here's the form Dave made for me to keep a record of everything. Not much on it this week except for Wednesday and Thursday.

And we finished up the week with a long trip to the new "Sprayground" at a park in Roswell with friends on Friday.