Shoebox Scientist - Challenge B

Flower's Shoebox on Einstein - complete with Nobel Peace prize medal, tons of great quotes, a warped clock, representing "special relativity," etc.

We are finishing up our first 10 weeks of Scientists and moving on to Science Fair projects. To wrap up this phenomenal study, the kids did "Shoebox Scientists." Each student was assigned a Scientist and had to fill their shoebox with clues- without using a picture of him/her or their name. Their class mates then guessed who they were representing. 

This activity was really fun- fun to put together and fun to evaluate. We invited the Challenge A class to come and guess the scientists, too! 

This was represented Linneaus

Archimedes and "Pi." 

Another favorite of mine was "Morse"- the box contained candy "dots" and a bottle of "Mrs. Dash." (get it- dots and dashes for Morse Code?).

We invited Challenge A to guess alongside of us, as they heard some of our presentations each week. 

Another GREAT project, that was a ton of Fun, brought to you by Challenge B!

@Golden Grasses 2008-2013. All photographs, artwork and text are the property of the owner unless otherwise stated. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to Golden Grasses and get our articles right to your inbox!

Blue Ribbon LIst of Homeschool High School Extra-Curriculars

Middle of the year and we are thinking about what's working and what could be switched up. This is our second year of Classical Conversations Challenge program, which we love. It is also full of projects, like Debate, Shoe-box Scientists, Science Fair, Art Grant Proposals and more so it's not like we are necessarily looking for more. But, you know, it's mid-year, right. 'Nuff said, right there.
Will we make big changes mid-year? No, we love CC and both kids are being challenged academically and in other ways. We are also loving our Morning Symposium. We've recently finished The Story of Christianity and will continue our Church History elective with the Acts of the Apostles. But, just 'cause it was a good time to look around the web and brainstorm a bit, here's some terrific articles on High School Electives.
There are several ways to count credits; with a log- 60 hours =1/2 Carnegie Unit (which is 1/2 High School credit); by finishing a typical High School text (Apologia's High School Marine Biology = 1 credit, not including Lab); by doing a compilation of things; like counting a Spine (like the "Joy of Cooking") along with hours in "Lab" preparing, in conjunction with presentation that would add up to 1/2 or full credit in Cooking/Home Ec, etc. You can find out more about Carnegie Units here.

Here's our list of Electives A-Z that we've done over the past quarter century of homeschooling:

Awanas; Apologetics; Animal Care (we have had Guinea Pigs, Fish, Goats, Sheep and a Horse); Art
Boy Scouts; Ballroom Dancing; Blogging; Baking. Brick-laying; Building furniture
Challenge, Church History, Child-development, Church Camp; Chorale; Cooking; Clay Crafts; Campaigning
Drama, Debate; Dry-walling; Duct-tape art
Event Planning; Etiquette
First Form Latin; felting; Farm Helper; Flower Gardening
Girl Scouts (back before it was too weird); Grouting; German
Horseback Riding; Houseplants; Health & Nutrition; History, history and more history
Instagram; Internships (Above Rubies, TeenPact)
Journalism
Knitting; Karate; Keyboarding
Labs- Chem, Bio, Adv. Bio, Latin National Exam; Landscaping; Lego League; Leadership Institute Workshop
Myths and Legends Lit class; Marine Biology; Musicals; Mission Trips
NASA/NOAA Web-site watching, Novel Writing (check-out NaNoWriMo)
Operation Christmas Child
Piano; Poetry Outloud; Public Speaking; Pottery
Quilting
Riflery;
Spinning, Soccer, Shakespeare; Singing; Straw-bale gardening
TeenPact; Traveling; Test Prep
Unicycling (not much, actually, but we own one); Ultimate Frisbee (the official sport of TeenPact)
Volleyball; Violin; Voice Lesson;Vegetable Gardening
Web-Design; Woodworking; WWI and WWII studies
Xerxes acumen (Yeah, I could not find a good "X" word, but my kids have done extension Ancient History studies).
Yoga; Youth Group
Zoology

BJ's list of High School Electives

High School Electives- includes a list of several other bloggers writing on high school electives!

HSLDA's list of Extreme electives

High School Electives for Tech Savvy Teens

10 Fun Electives from Weird Unsocialized Unschoolers

14 Fun (and maybe frugal) Homeschool HighSchool Electives

5 Must Include Electives Types of Electives for your Homeschool High School

Planning High School Ellectives for your Homeschool; including info on credits

Frosting on the Cake: High School Electives, Jobs and College Prepping 

Brigeway Academy- interactive, live-on-line classes, including Science Labs, test prep, Web-design and more

Certificate programs and more Certificate Programs

Khan Academy -Free, on-line courses several of which would be great high school electives.

For Service projects; check out DoSomething.org

Don't forget about Dual Enrollment and CLEP possibilities. Our local community boasts a co-op entirely dedicated to CLEP testing.

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WKRP "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly" Thanksgiving

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The Story of Christianity -Curriculum Review

I am a long-time promoter of Memoria Press everything and we've used/reviewed

Core 6, Christian Studies, Famous Men Series, Lingua Angelica,  The "Form" Series and all things related to Henle Latin. We have gone through the Christian Studies program- which is excellent and includes people, places, scripture memory work, maps, time lines and in-depth analysis. I honestly wish more Sunday School programs were as thorough in the approach to the study of Scripture. 

I've had my eye on the High School Christian Studies programs for a while and we landed on The Story of Christianity this year: The History of 2000 Years of the Christian Faith. I purchased the package comes with a text, Teacher's Manual and Student Manual. 

Every lesson is set up in the same way. There is a section in the Teacher's Manual that sets up each chapter of the book, with highlighted features and background information.  Then you read the chapter in the book by David Hart. 

Hart covers complex concepts and time periods with wit and wisdom. He has an awesome sense of humor, but is never disrespectful or anachronistic. His respect and reverence for the Christian tradition is always evident, but tempered with differentiation between faith in the Master of the Universe and His church on earth. 

At the end of each chapter there are "Questions from Your Reading" as well as "Ideas for Further Thought." The questions are thorough and comprehensive, ranging from historical, "Who called for the first Crusade?" to ecclesiastical, "What was the doctrinal dispute that was most representative of the division between the East and the West."

The "On Your Own" questions are open-ended, thought provoking queries such as,"Which scripture versus could be used to explain substitutiontary atonement?" and "Could another Great Awakening happen in our time?" There are also quizzes and tests with matching short answers.

We started our Morning Symposium with The Story of Christianity and found it to be an engaging way to begin each school day. It is an excellent over-view of Church History, tying together history in a unique way. We finished it just this last week, will continue our study of Church History with The Acts of the Apostles, also by Memoria Press. 

Don't forget to sign up for Memoria Press' free magalog: The Classical Teacher. Excellent, thought provoking articles!

@Golden Grasses 2008-2013. All photographs, artwork and text are the property of the owner unless otherwise stated. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to Golden Grasses and get our articles right to your inbox!

This Season

So, life these days has been non-stop. Work, Directing Challenge, homeschooling two, a multi-generational household that include an adorable 6 month old distraction, a college student coming and going, laundry, cooking, dishes, managing the stuff from an extra household, furniture from Grandparents and my Gram's estate. Thank-God for a big house with many bedrooms and adequate bathrooms and 4 floors because everyone of them is used- packed to the gills, actually, with people and stuff.
I am missing reading and blogging and writing and crafting and working out and creating something besides records for a data base and Transcripts. Some days desperately missing it as being this old with so little down time is pushing me hard most days.
We have just had one of the most beautiful falls ever, which gave way to a snow storm yesterday. Life is just that seasonal. And one gives way to the other fast enough.

@Golden Grasses 2008-2013. All photographs, artwork and text are the property of the owner unless otherwise stated. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to Golden Grasses and get our articles right to your inbox!

OREO Science Fair Prep

Oreos and Science? But of course! Got this great idea from an awesome Challenge B Director. 

The kids loved it! 

We are talking about the upcoming Science Fair and our in-class exercise centered on creating reproducible instructions. Each student was given a zip-lock with 2 Oreo cookies in it and told to create instructions about how to eat the cookie for a class-mate. 

The kids were allowed to eat one cookie as they created the instructions and then passed the 2nd cookie and instructions to a neighbor to see how effective their instructions actually were.

We have some kids in our Challenge class who love a good laugh! The above included eating the chocolate cookie pieces and using the cream filling to create lip gloss. Oy vey.

JR was the lucky recipient of these instructions! 

Big laughs were had by all!! 

@Golden Grasses 2008-2013. All photographs, artwork and text are the property of the owner unless otherwise stated. Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to Golden Grasses and get our articles right to your inbox!