Oh, The Places We Go!

We visited the Coral Reef.

We learned about rituals in Ancient Egypt
(with some fried plantains).

We went back to Khan,

and I think Lu is ready this time.

As I mentioned in a recent post, we're going to slow down on the math front - as far as learning new concepts goes. Lu had already used Khan, but he reached a point where it suddenly got too difficult, and the videos just went right over his head. But with everything he's learned in the last seven months - since he last tried Khan - and with a stronger grasp on English, he was ready to try again and has already earned several badges this week.

I'm not a big fan of the scratch pad, and would rather Lu used paper, 

but... whatever... he likes it because it's all hi-techy I guess.

At first he was kind of annoyed at having to do all the "easy stuff" again, but we talked about mastery, and he agreed that practice was necessary. 

Now, I'm no math expert, but I think Khan is best to start using after a person already understands negative numbers. So, around 5th grade. But that's just our experience, I've heard of people using it successfully with younger children. We started last year when Lu was 8, and it seemed perfect for a while, but like I said - it suddenly got way too difficult for him.

Back to the places we go...

We also went out to the backyard 

to practice poetry recitation 

with a friend from Youth Group.

They are going to recite a poem together

in a couple of weeks.

 It's a very sweet poem in Spanish

about the wind and a cloud playing together.

We went all over the world to look at different birds

with BBC's The Life of Birds series,

and we took a basket of jocotes with us -

our local fruit that is now ripe for the picking.

(I'll get some pics of the actual picking next week)

We went to the jungle

with Human Planet: Jungles

a series we are very much enjoying.

We finished up our tour of Europe.

Lu now knows the location and capital of each country, and has these self-made posters with all the flags and information on language and population for easy reference (the flags were his idea btw - it's not something I would have him do), as well as Europe's rivers and mountains.

We got on a slave ship and landed in Jamaica

where we learned the words to Bob Marley's

Redemption Song,

which gave us lots to think about

and talk about.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our mind. 

*    *    *    *    *

So, as you can see, we get around.