Luminous Fire - our homeschool journal: March 2013

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Spring Break 2013

Around here, Easter Week and Spring Break are one and the same. So, Lu and I took this past week OFF! Hurray for vacations! We worked hard the first three months of this year, and a break was much needed.

We got lots of lake time.

That's a friend's tattooed foot, not mine.

I'm too chicken to get a tattoo.

But, if I ever did...

it would be a hippo with butterfly wings.

The hippo for my son,

the butterfly wings for my mom.

Long story...

Lu took advantage of the 7-day presence of people

visiting from the capital, and other places,

to sell his jewelry.

He also paid his first municipal tax

as a street vendor.

Sushi was a very big part of our break.

Sushi is, and has always been (since I tried it), my absolutely most favorite food in the whole wide world, and Lu shares my sushi passion. Recently, we've had a REAL sushi chef and his assistant/girlfriend RIGHT HERE in our TINY little town. OMG!!! How lucky is that?

So, we went as often as we could,

and Tanner even gave Lu some sushi rolling lessons.

Colleen was also homeschooled, and told us that she was very grateful to her mama for an awesome education at home. It's nice meeting homeschooled adults - I don't know many.

Mmmm.... teriyaki salmon and mango,

spicy tuna and cucumber, lots of wasabi and ginger,

lemonade for Lu, and a dark beer for mama.

¡Salud!

Breaks are nice. Very nice :)

Friday, March 22, 2013

Ancient Greece - The Poster

We've come to the end of our 3-month journey

through Ancient Greece.

We read Socrates and learned about Archimedes.

We watched Engineering an Empire - Ancient Greece , both the 1956 and the Oliver Stone versions of the life of Alexander the Great, and The Odyssey.

We learned about the earlier Greek civilizations, the wars, the great thinkers, the discoveries, and the conquests.

And finally, we came to our final project:

A Poster

Day 1

Drawing the map of Greece

Finding Images

and learning to edit them in Photoshop

Mama Helping

Lots of Cutting and Gluing

Crash

Back to Work

Day 2

Final Touches

And Done!

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Triangles, Translations, a Stool, and a Floor Plan

We continue working with triangles, and we're really starting to get into the thick of 5th grade geometry. This stuff is no joke. It's got me on my knees. I've been having to do some homework on my own time, so that Lu doesn't catch on to how clueless I am. lol. No, actually, he already knows.

Between Khan Academy videos and 5-minute tutorials from my husband, in a rush after lunch, when we weren't able to find the solution to a problem, we manage to "get" the math.

Lu's been translating for a photography workshop. The teacher doesn't speak much Spanish, so he translates for her, while learning about photography himself. I'll post some of his photos soon.

In History, he's been making a glossary of famous Ancient Greeks.

He's spent hours in the tool shed, building a little wooden stool for a friend who is celebrating his second birthday.

It's not even finished yet,

and kitty is trying to claim it for himself with his

"Don't touch my stool, fool" face on.

Back to geometry (which has been taking A LOT of our time lately)...

I was terrible at math (as I've mentioned about a million times here), and nothing much stuck after the 4th grade. But I had a special experience with geometry when I was 25 and building my first house - specifically, doing floor plans. It was a very simple house, that only cost $5,000 to build, but it still required some design and know-how. As I worked through it, it all started making sense, and the little geometry I know, I owe to that house.

So, it occurred to me today,
just as I was REALLY needing a coffee break and some ME-time...

What better than to have Lu make a floor plan of his bedroom to appreciate geometry in a more practical way?