Day 27 / 103 - Bridge Day 2013

On Saturday my husband and son journeyed out to Fayette County for their annual Bridge Day festival.  This has been one event we wanted to experience in West Virginia during our time here.

In case you are unfamiliar, Bridge Day is the one day a year where people are allowed to BASE jump off the New River Bridge into the Gorge 876 feet below.  This year over 400 jumpers participated successfully completing 934 jumps.  The bridge is closed to traffic for the day and is open for pedestrian spectators.

To make it more exciting, my husband and son wanted to enjoy the festivities from the bottom of the Gorge, which included a 12 mile round trip hike down and back.

People are also allowed to rappel off the bridge that day which I think sounds like The. Worst. Thing. Ever.  You can vaguely see that happening in the picture below.

Day 26 / 103 - Mini Card Game Boards

Using two file folders, and about half a deck of mini playing cards, I quickly constructed this game board last week.  I made several in order for us to practice our multiplication facts.  With Lego mini figures as our playing pieces, we roll a die and then multiply the number rolled by the value of the card we land on.

This is my fifth year homeschooling, and I'm convinced that anything including Legos, cards, or a game board will increase a student's productivity by at least 50%!

Day 25 / 103 - All's Well That Ends Well

Yesterday my children and I traveled to Staunton, Virgina to experience The American Shakespeare Center.  It was most definitely an experience.

The American Shakespeare Center hosts an internationally acclaimed theatre company that performs Shakespeare's works under their original staging conditions -- on a simple stage, without elaborate sets, and with the audience sharing the same light as the actors.  They perform in the Blackfriars Playhouse, the world's only recreation of Shakespeare's original London indoor theater.  The actors sing, dance, perform, entertain and bring Shakespeare to life.  Shakespeare's works are timeless, and The American Shakespeare Center proves that.

My children sat through 150 minutes of All's Well Thant Ends Well yesterday.  We knew nothing about the play before we arrived.  (I meant to read something ahead of time but simply forgot.)  However, after we returned home several hours later, they were able to retell the story to my husband, including some enjoyable moments they vividly remembered.  I'm reminded that Shakespeare is meant to be seen in order to connect the text to modern audiences.  I simply cannot wait to experience it again!

Day 24 / 103 - Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty

My daughter and I made a quick trip up to Cleveland to see the New Adventures Dance Company (out of London) perform the classic tale, Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty.  It was worth the trip.

The phenomenal dancers and the impressive sets only enhanced the modern day telling of this fairy tale.  We enjoyed every moment of the show.

My daughter loves to visit Playhouse Square, because (you may remember) two years ago she performed in The Nutcracker at the Cleveland landmark (here).  Here she is standing in front of her rehearsal room where she spent most of the month of November in 2011.

Day 23 / 103 - Chart A Reconstruction

I've posted before about the importance of Chart A in our Essentials program (here).  My children have written, and rewritten, and rewritten this chart countless times in order to memorize the various parts of a sentence; a sentence's structure, purpose and pattern; as well as the eight parts of speech.  We have written it on page protectors, notebook paper, dry erase boards, windows, chalk boards, construction paper, and more.  This week, I challenged my children, and their Essentials class, to reconstruct Chart A however they wanted to, they just needed to include the five core components.  I loved their results.

The reconstructions belonging to my children are posted above, but you can view most of the rest of the class below.  My personal favorite is the one drawn on a t-shirt.  Brilliant.