Day 90 / 103 - Piano Recital

My children performed beautifully in an annual piano recital on Sunday.

We made many sacrifices upon moving to Beckley two years ago.  However, a quality piano teacher was not one of them.  Their current teacher has encouraged them and enabled them to becoming young, budding pianists.  She has truly taken them to the next level musically.  I love to listen to them play.

Day 89 / 103 - Byzantine Empress Theodora

My children ended their 24 week Essentials (Language Arts) class with a Faces of History project.  Over the course of three weeks they wrote a paper on a prominent Middle Ages figure.  On the fourth week they presented this figure to the class.  Their papers and presentations were phenomenal.

Here is my daughter as Empress Theodora, wife of Justinian the Great who ruled the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) empire from 527 - 565.

Day 88 / 103 - Genghis Khan Rules the Mongols

My children ended their 24 week Essentials (Language Arts) class with a Faces of History project.  Over the course of three weeks they wrote a paper on a prominent Middle Ages figure.  On the fourth week they presented this figure to the class.  Their papers and presentations were phenomenal.

Here is my son as Genghis Khan.

Day 87 / 103 - Memory Masters !!

Yesterday my children achieved the rank of Memory Master.  Memory Master is a honor bestowed on Classical Conversation Foundations students who have mastered all of the memory work during the 24 weeks of Foundations classes.  We have done this before (here and here), and we will strive to do it again.  It is a new wealth of information they have memorized this year in Cycle 2 including:  Middle Ages and European history; Astronomy, Biology, and Physics facts; lists of pronouns and definitions for the parts of speech; conjugations for Latin verb endings, geographical locations and features in Europe and Asia; Math laws, facts and formulas; and a historical, chronological timeline.  It's over 500 pieces of information!  Most learning and enrichment activities that I post on this blog I have done with my children to help them memorize all this information and retain it for a lifetime.

I truly believe children's minds are primed and equipped to learn and retain information when they are young.  I've seen it work.  Without even thinking, children can remember and describe all their Pokemon cards, or identify all their Lego mini-figures, or know all the lyrics to a song on the radio after hearing it only once or twice.  I have capitalized on those primary years of learning by teaching them how to memorize dates, facts, definitions, locations, and more.  I have learned right along with them.  It takes very little time each week over the course of an academic year, and the rest of their time they are free to learn, play, explore, imagine, dream, invent, create, read, and enjoy.  In time, they will begin to process and understand the information they memorized during their childhood.  I've seen my son begin to make that transition this year.

On Wednesday, I was reviewing one last time with my 10-year-old daughter.  (My son finished up a few weeks ago.)  We were sitting in a crowded Chick-Fil-A restaurant, and I was drilling her by asking questions such as:  What is Newton's second law of motion?  Tell me about the French Revolution?  Count by cubes to 1000.  What are the coordinating conjunctions?  Show me the major European mountain ranges.  Without hesitation, she could quickly respond with: Force equals mass times acceleration .... In 1789, the French Revolution began when citizens stormed the Bastille and fought for the .... 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216 .... for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so .... Pyrennes, Alps, Carpathians, Caucasus, Ural ....  It is ridiculously impressive, and I wanted everyone in the restaurant to hear her.  I truly wish I had been taught to learn this way.

Clearly, the above picture is not a new one.  It is from Christmas 2005.  My son was four, and my daughter had just turned two.  It is framed and hanging on a wall in our basement.  I walked past it on Wednesday afternoon, stopped, and stared at it for a moment.  I love these children.  I love who they have become.  I am so honored and humbled to be their mother and their teacher.  It is a fabulous role.  Words cannot express how incredibly proud of them I am.

Day 86 / 103 - Dropbox 2048

We've recently discovered the internet game Dropbox 2048, and as a result, the children and I have spent a significant amount of time trying to master the puzzle.

2048 is a puzzle game with the goal being to attain a 2048 tile within a 4x4 grid by moving tiles up, down, left, and right. Each time you make a move, another tile spawns. When two tiles with the same number touch, they merge into one.  It takes some spacial relations skills as well as strategy.  None of us have progressed past the 512 tile, although as I was reading about it this morning, it even seems possible to  move past the 2048.

Try out the game here.  Fair warning:  it is kind of addicting.  If you are a player, and are aware of some tips, please let us know !!

Day 85 / 103 - Essentials Graffiti Wall

Yesterday, my Essentials class worked in teams to identify every word I had written on the white board.  The teams would take turns sending one member to the board, and that student needed to either define the term on the board or give an example of the word.  If they answered correctly, we would erase the word from the board.  We continued until every word was erased.

I was actually quite impressed with my class and their knowledge of the material as well as their participation in the game.

Day 84 / 103 - Timeline

Every year my children memorize a History Timeline that includes 161 people, places, and events that have shaped history.  In the past, I've posted some enrichment activities that we've completed with these cards (here and here).  However, today I wanted to mention briefly how impressed I am that my children have this Timeline memorized.  Once again, they are gearing up to prove they have memorized all their Classical Conversations memory work for this year.  As a result, we've been reviewing this Timeline in full for the past couple weeks.

There is a song they can sing, and the recording takes about 14 minutes.  My children figured out long ago they can move much faster than the recording and finish the Timeline in its entirety in about seven minutes.  They both have the ability to start at any point in the Timeline and proceed onward.  This morning's activity consisted of sorting out the 161 jumbled cards into proper order.  After sorting out the entire Timeline, we then located and pulled the two dozen cards that correspond with this year's History memory work.

Day 83 / 103 - Advanced Coloring Pages

I'll be honest -- I find these pretty amusing also.

Day 82 / 103 - Parts of Speech Anchor Charts

My children turned two of their Essentials charts into poster board displays for our recent CC community night.  Everything is more fun with sharpies.

 

Day 81 / 103 - Straw Bridge Construction

For the past two weeks my children have been constructing bridges out of straws as our related Science project during our Classical Conversations campus day.   Students were to to use straws, rubber bands, and Play-Doh as struts, straps, and cement.  The goal was to make a bridge that would support weight, and we tested that by piling books on top.

In addition, we discussed the four types of bridges: Beam, Truss, Arch, and Suspension.