Snapshot Summary, January 2018

We had a lovely first day of the New Year, complete with Hoppin' John stuffed peppers.

 On Twelfth Night, we had our traditional party, which includes finding the pickle ornament...

 and receiving the "pickle prize" of the last gift of Christmas. 

It was a chess set this year, which inspired many games of chess.

I got this lovely set of soup bowls, and so I just had to make each of the soups. The recipes for the soups are on the backs of the bowls.

 The kids have been enjoying their Christmas presents.

I have been enjoying painting. I did most of these during the really cold spell. Our furnace went out for the downstairs and so we were all confined mostly to the upstairs until it was fixed, so I did a lot of painting. I decided that I didn't want to paint on canvases for the most part as I did not have the wall space for them, so I bought a painting sketchbook to paint in. Overall it has worked well, but it is much harder to paint on paper as opposed to canvas. 

(top left) Decorating the Christmas Tree, (top right) Saint Nicholas Day, (bottom left), Decorating the House, (bottom right) Shopping for Secret Santa Gifts

Another project I have been working on is making a permanent Advent Calendar to use beginning next year. My plan is to have a board with 24 spots in which to hang miniature canvases which depict the various advent traditions we have. I then can arrange them in any order each year. These are the first four paintings I have done for it. Most of them are based off of The Art Sherpa's video tutorials, but I did Saint Nicholas by myself. The canvases are about 2 inches square.

Our 22nd Year of Homeschooling, January 2018

In January we struggled to get back on our feet from the Christmas holiday. We had a few days (during the coldest of temperatures) when our furnace needed work and we were confined to the upstairs of the house, which had heat. We also had a bout or two of illness, which kept us from completing consistent school work.

Quentin continued with Voice lessons but he did not pick Fencing up this month.

Quentin

In Physical Science, we studied the properties of air and humidity. In Biology, we studied the basics of organic chemistry, starting with carbohydrates.

In Math, he is still working on fractions.

He is plugging away with his Latin workbook, working on 
Second declension (-us and -ius) nouns.

In History, he is notebooking on American History in World Context, which means that his work focuses about half the time on American History and half the time on what is happening around the world during the time of the various events we are studying in American History.

James

I am finding, now that I have a curriculum that James can easily do, that he already knows most of the material that we are going through. We are advancing him now to 10th grade and giving him a whole new set of material to work with. He will be keeping his science, Integrated Physics and Chemistry and Basic Math Skills.
For English, we are concentrating on Composition Skills, beginning this minth with the Key topics: word tone, denotation, connotation; how to alphabetize, use a dictionary, synonyms and antonyms, analogies with homonyms; how to use a thesaurus; idioms, nouns—singular, plural, possessive; pronouns—antecedents, gender, person, number, case, exceptions, personal, indefinite, demonstrative, relative, declination, interrogative and reflexive and for Social Studies, we will be using People, Places, and Principles of America II.
We picked up World Geography, beginning with North America Canada, United States, Mexico, Greenland, Caribbean islands, Cuba, Canadian Archipelago, Rocky Mountains, Yucatan Peninsula, Appalachian Mountains, Brooks Range, Yukon River, Kuskokwim Mountains, Mt. McKinley, Aleutian Islands, Mackenzie Mountains, Arctic Cordillera Mountains.
We began the second year of Integrated Physics and Chemistry with these key topics: exploring the Periodic Table, elements, fingerprints, noble gases, argon, chemical bonds, atom, electron, chemical bonding, fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, astatine, halogens, acids, bases, salts, covalent compounds, water, ice, solutions, aquifers.

A picture Katie took on one of their trips over the Bay Bridge, coming home from their day at college.

The Graduates

Sam

One day we received this in the mail, which was a nice little treat. Sam seems to be enjoying this semester's classes and is getting good grades on his work so far. For his International Politics class, he will have to work one day calling people for a political poll.

Katie

Katie is the happiest I have ever seen her. She absolutely loves her Ceramics II class and bubbles over every evening talking about the various technicalities of various slips and methods of ceramics making. She is so happy that she has found her calling.
She also likes her Sculpting class, but as she is doing a bust of one of her classmates, I cannot show it to you until she gets permission from the student. I can only tell you that it is amazingly wonderful. She is enjoying the fact that some of the things she is learning in Sculpture can carry over to ceramics. She is even enjoying her Small Business Marketing class as it relates to starting her own ceramics business. The class she is struggling with the most is Statistics, but Sam is helping her, and hopefully she will be able to complete it this semester so that she can take Genetics next semester.

Alex

Alex has been enjoying playing with the gifts he received for Christmas. He especially likes anything to do with art.

How was your January?