Science, Spelling and Pill Bugs

We are having all kinds of homeschool fun today! Dids' science lesson today is streaming from Yahoo Kidstudy via K12  It sounds like a 1970 something movie day in my living room. I love this kind of lesson. It requires the minimum from me and Dids enjoys just sitting there passively acquiring knowledge too. 

I found an app for my iPad that lets me enter a spelling list with words, sentences, synonyms and antonyms and has practice each day and tests him too! Princess Beans played it this morning with the levels 1, 2, and 3 Dolch sight words. She knows them to see them, but if you ask her to spell them she has some difficulty saying the spelling without looking. She was so proud of herself when she could spell a word and  even more proud when she could write it on the whiteboard in the app. The app is called SpellBoard by Palaware. If you home school and your kids hate the normal spelling activities it's worth a look. 

PB spent some time outside looking for Pill Bugs. Did you know that Pill Bugs (we always called them Roly Polies) are not insects? Kirsten has to to an oral report, complete with presentation board and book with references, that she can read at her level. She's in KINDERGARTEN! This is one of the sort of projects that makes me hate sending my kids to public school. She didn't get to pick her animal because it's virtually impossible to find a book at the Kindergarten reading level about a very specific animal. She got the only book that was suitable at Barnes and Noble for the price of $7.99. We couldn't find anything suitable in our home library or at the used bookstore. This is a parent project. One that tests how resourceful the parents are at finding the things expected for the project, and how pretty the parents can make the board. It annoys me to no end. The sheet explains that for every day the project is late, 5 points will be taken off. Really? In Kindergarten? Is this going to affect her ability to get into Brown when she's a Senior? Okay, yes...she needs to learn the responsibility of turning in a project, but not a project her parents did. Stupid public school. Why don't they ever get it?

The last thing of the day...where did the phrase, "Mad as a wet hen," come from? Jordan left the chicken coop open today and our hens are happy as pigs in poop cruising the back yard for every sprout of new grass they might find. They certainly don't look mad, I couldn't force them back into that coop if I wanted to!

To Spring Break, or Not to Spring Break?

Princess has spring break this week. Dids...does not. Although in practice he is home schooled, in reality his "school" is a public school, so we have to loosely follow their schedule. They do not have a spring break scheduled other than Good Friday and the Monday after Easter Sunday off. Dids is NOT happy about this. Jordan is resigned to doing schoolwork every weekday, so he's not seeming too bothered. It's causing strife for Dids, who wants to sleep all day and goof off and play with his sister, or even spend the night at a friends. Poor kid. He'll be the happy one at the end of May though, when he's done with all the year's curricula and Princess has to go to school until July to make up for all these snow days we've had this year. It will all even out in the end. Mwhahahahahaha!

Please keep your fingers crossed for Jordan. I've applied for him to school through K12 and Connections Academy next year, with the hope that he will get into one or the other. Both schools have an enrollment cap of 400 that is mandated by the state. Last year both schools ended up with extensive wait lists. I got an email from Connections Academy today basically telling me not to hold my breath as there will be very few empty slots, possibly only one or two. He should have an edge with K12 as it is Payton's school already and I think siblings get first preference before a lottery. I'd rather he do Connections Academy though, I think they have it all pulled together better and have more teacher "face" time one on one. Both have the video game design classes Jordan wants to take. Both would keep him more accountable to a teacher for his grade instead of to me, which is what he needs right now to prepare for college, and the distance learning model seems to be the wave of the future. I'd be happy with either one, but probably happier with Connections Academy.