Rivendell Update

On Tuesday we finished our 12th week of the jr. high co-op. Since we only have 33 weeks of academics, we are already over 1/3 of the way for the year! We are taking a break next week for Thanksgiving, and then we'll have 3 more weeks to go until Christmas break.

I think all of us moms are still pinching ourselves each week, as far as how well it is all going! Theresa has the boys reading interesting books, writing tons of papers, and doing lots of 20 minutes essays (which Nathan hates, but I keep telling him how grateful he'll be for the practice when SAT time rolls around). Siri is definitely teaching a Spanish 1 class. Nathan is going to be WAY more competant in Spanish than I ever was in French after my 2 years of high school French. Languages are definitely not his first love, but he is having a fun time. Now history with Christine--he loves that! They have lots of interesting discussions and books to read there. I would say that is his favorite class. In science, we are finally past all the botany chapters, which are definitely not my strongest interest, and into some genetics chapters. I LOVE genetics, so that is a welcome change! Right before Christmas we finally get into more zoology stuff, and we start doing dissections, beginning with the earthworm. I remember doing the earthworm in high school as my first dissection! I can't wait!

The last few weeks we've had some fun lab activities, many of which involved various candies, so you know they were a hit with the boys, LOL. We modeled DNA with Twizzlers, gum drops, and toothpicks.
Here in a non-candy activity, Nathan is putting yarn chromosomes through the stages of mitosis. As I am sure you can tell, these chromosomes are clearly in metaphase.

Last week I cut up these labeled genes, and the boys picked one of each allele from each parent. Then they had to put together this "spudoodle" based on the genetic code they picked out. So their alleles determined eye color (purple or white spice drops), ear type (popcorn or puffed wheat), hair or no hair (toothpicks), dorsal spines (3 different colors of marshmallows, as that one demonstrated incomplete dominance), leg color (push pins), curly or straight tail (pipecleaners), and either a 1 or 2 "hole" nostril (more pushpins). Nathan was the proud papa of this fine creation, LOL.

In the afternoon, after we pick up the younger kids from their co-op, Luke and the other 5th/6th graders have a writing class also with Theresa. She is really challenging them with writing assignments and books to read, and it has been so good for Luke! Christine is teaching a little writing class for Caleb and the other 3rd graders. It's a gentle introduction to IEW-style writing, and Caleb's writing is coming right along. He's working on a 3-paragraph paper on Pecos Bill right now. Jonathan often tags along in this class. He is my only one who really WANTS to write, LOL.

The younger kids are doing so well with their memory work time in the afternoon. They have memorized Heb. 11: 1-13 so far, as well as a science fact from each chapter of the older boys' life science book. This week's fact was "DNA segments called genes are arranged on chromosomes, and chromosomes are found in the nucleus. Human cells have 46 chromosomes." (I didn't really touch on the fact that gamete cells only have 23 chromosomes, LOL.) We've memorized 2 complete poems so far--"The Owl and the Pussycat" by Lear, which was a real kid-pleaser, as well as "True Nobility" by Guest. Now we are in the middle of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day", which I thought would be good leading up to Christmas. We're memorizing it like the hymn, not as Longfellow originally wrote it. We've also memorized 12 points in my 32 point timeline, complete with dates. The last point we memorized was "Charles Martel and the Battle of Tours--732 AD". A very important date in history!

We also do mapwork each week, usually relating to something the older boys are doing in history. One week we all made salt maps of Israel, so they could be more familiar with the geographic features of the country. We've memorized locations in Egypt and all over the Fertile Crescent, as well as India, China, and Greece. We're back in Israel for a few more weeks, and then we'll move back into the world of ancient Greece. I've tried to work on modern neighbors of these countries too, because I think that is so important.

Lastly, this picture doesn't have anything to do with Rivendell, but I thought it was too cute. The co-op for the younger kids had their Civil War 5th week activity Tuesday morning. They had some great speakers come in--re-enactment soldiers and ladies in period dress. Most of the kids dressed up as well. I think this dress is another hand-me-down from Aunt Rose's girls, and it is still a little bit big, but Anna looked so cute as a little girl in the Civil War time! All the kids got either bonnets or army caps, as well as a little haversack filled with a sample johnnycake, hardtack, and 2 pieces of taffy. Anna's class also made these little drums. So it was a really fun day, ending a really fun and interesting unit.