Back to School

We began the 2009-10 school year on Monday, August 17. It's been a thrill ride every day since!

With the older kids, that meant the beginning of a lot of coursework. JDS is taking 4 of his classes at a drop-&-pay co-op on Thursdays near our house and he, so far, is really enjoying it...socially, that is. Economics class seems to be his favorite, but he is also taking Government, Shakespeare and Physics. In the spring semester when Economics is over, he will take Art History and he is most looking forward to that. Both of them are taking an SAT Prep Class and JDS will be taking that a few times this year. AMS is taking 100% of her classes at home, including her first science with a lab. She is, so far, doing pretty alright with a B average. :)

With the younger kids, our year is starting out in KONOS focusing on Inquisitiveness. The first two weeks focused on the stars and planets.

Here are some highlights from these first two weeks.

Baking and decorating star cookies

for our "Star Party" at G'ma &

G'pa's house on Friday night. :)

I discovered that a "Star Party" isn't the ideal

setting for photo-taking. If I don't use the flash,

I get blackness. If I use the flash, well, I get the

following (and a lot of complaining)...

JSS and COS camped out in G'ma & G'pa's living

room when it was time to hit the hay. Unfortunately,

I didn't think to get more photos other than

this poorly arranged one. G'ma & G'pa camped

out with them and made it all the more FUN!

A little "Star Game" that the younger ones

and Mom came up with for G'ma & G'pa to

"earn" their star treats for dessert.

We settled down to watch our two firstborn

"star" in a video back from 1995, I believe.

We got a LOT of laughs!

Fast forward to 6 AM. We were

hoping to get up before the sun to

see how the constellations had

moved across the sky, but alas

the sun beat us to it!

Beautiful time of day out in the

country, though!

JSS practicing with his bb gun & target.

Just something to remember the

morning by...(sigh)...just takes my breath

away remembering it.

What's a trip to the farm without

some good ol' hay bale jumping?

COS and Elanor decided to join in the fun.

This is an "accidental" shot. I heard her

laughing as she was racing Elanor,

turned around and shot two frames.

This was the second and I LOVE it!

The little kids were VERY tired

these first two weeks, mainly because

my Mother's Day kitties were rambunctious

all night! Here's a shot where even one

of THEM was tuckered out. (Peter)

Learning about some constellations

Can you guess which constellation this is?

What about this one?

This one?

And these???

We made a sort of "light bright"

version of constellations with black

construction paper, flashlight and a

2 liter bottle wrapped in foil. It was hard

to get clean shots, but here are two.

Can you guess which constellations these are?

JSS and COS went to their first planetarium.

Here are some activities outside the theater.

(JSS looks like a little person here.)

Do YOU know how much you weigh

on the sun? the moon? venus?

Jupiter? Pluto? WE DO, thanks to

this wayyyyy cool scale.

During these first two weeks, our home

school association had their Kick Off Meeting for

this school year. Here is my field trip

table all set up and ready for visitors. We made

it interactive this year. We listed the 26 field

trips we have coordinated for the Fall on the table

with "representations" of 11 of them and 2 more

representations of "sneak peeks" from the

spring semester. If you could match 3x5 cards with

the correct representation within 60 seconds, you

won a sweet treat! It was a lot of fun, generated a

lot of visits to our table and was a good way

to get people to remember some of our trips.

Special thanks to Candi & Julie for manning the

table with me all night. They were STELLAR!

(Get it? STELLAR? With all the star studying?)

Friday Night Family Date:

Biology lab!

This is a shot when AMS opened

her 6-day-old pond sample...

P-stinkin-U!!!!

We had to burn matches in every room

to get that funky smell out of the house!

A future doctor? Lab assistant?

Researcher?

This is not staged...

we really did have fun doing this!

Last activity of the study:

Make your own planetarium using

a garbage bag, a fan and a flashlight.

They got 30 minutes to try and figure out

how to do it. After 6 attempts...

(some photo'd here)

...I suggested that when we visited

the planetarium, we were INSIDE

the domed theater. The lights came on...

...and they figured it out.

(Photos aren't all that great because my

back is trying to give out on me and I

couldn't really lean over to get the

shots. These are from just holding the

camera down there, not lining up the shot.)