Last Few Weeks of School 2016

The month of May was overflowing with fun school activities.

STEM
I finished up the STEM semester with a field trip to a new trampoline jumping zone to reinforce free fall and rebounding principles from the previous lesson.  That unit held one of my favorite life applications, but these kids were too young to appreciate the life lessons given that the only "free fall" they've ever experienced this far in life is not getting the sugar cereal they wanted for breakfast. Ugh!  My lessons are obviously geared toward older students.  But while there we did at least get to practice free fall and rebounding.  One important demonstration I wanted them to try came from the experiment we did in class in which you place two or three balls on top of each other in this order from bottom to top, basketball, bouncy ball (optional), tennis ball.  If you drop the tennis ball by itself, it will only bounce back less than half as high as the height from which it was dropped due to energy losses from gravity, air resistance, heat, etc.  But if you put a bouncy ball or both a bouncy ball and a basketball ball underneath it, the combined potential energy is much greater. Then if all three land at the same time together (a smidge of glue helps keep them together), then the tennis ball will bounce up 40-80 times higher than the original drop height as the potential energy from the other two balls is transferred to the ball on top.  Similarly, if we go through life on our own, without relying on anyone or on God, our free falls (hardships) will never bounce us back to where we started.  But if we cling to Jesus (the basketball) who goes with us, catching us when we fall, His power will loft us up higher than we ever were before. That's the process of sanctification.  A similar effect can be experienced on trampolines if one person sets the trampoline by lifting off right before another person lands.  The preset will cause the second jumper to jump higher than he would go jumping alone. I bounced all over the place presetting the trampoline for my students.  If only getting students to soar high in life could be that easy!

As I was driving a van full of boys (and one quiet girl) to the field trip, I discovered that if you want to know which girl each 3rd grade boy likes at school, what each kid (or his family) thinks about current events & politics and how much 9-year-olds can comprehend about tax reform, the economy, gun control, and foreign policy, all you have to do is volunteer to drive for a field trip. It was like I was never there. I expected them to talk about Poke'mon or Legos, but wow, they are articulate and insightful about the world.

I also discovered while there that teachers develop super human hovering powers by the last month of school. It is a handy superpower to have because supervising energetic kids on a field trip the week before summer break leaves no time for a teacher's feet to touch the ground. ‪#‎STEM‬

Last Week of Middle School
The middle school year ended a day before grammar school finished for the year, so I'll start with our daughter.  I could not be more proud of her.  She took on a lot of extra responsibilities this year at home.  She cooked breakfast and packed her lunch every single day of school.  During over half of the year, she was involved in both school sports and the school's competitive middle school drama team, so she arrived at school before 7am several days a week and stayed after school for several hours after school every day of the week for sports practice, games, or to wait on me to finish teaching/tutoring/working.  She had more chores than most (or all) of her peers, spent the year reaching out to new students or less popular students to make sure every student had a friend, completed the final year of our mother/daughter coming of age Bible study, served in special needs ministry at church, sought the Lord through personal quiet times and Bible study, learned how to win and lose with integrity, faced giants on the basketball court (girls over 16" taller than she is at AAU basketball tournaments) without fear while busting limbs and joints in the process, loved her family and her friends well, and received top grades at school.  She was one of only a few students who made straight A's all year long, and she received the second highest score in the entire school on the national Latin exam, Level 2.  She only missed two questions, with the one student who scored higher missing one question.  Her Latin teacher this year does not believe in standardized testing and did not prep the students for the exam at all. They mainly just read books in Latin and learned Latin history. So, I we all expected her to bomb the exam.  That score was a huge surprise.


I can remember lamenting on this blog over how challenging she is to parent because she is strong-willed, high-energy, and independent like her mom but extraordinarily creative and right-brained unlike me.  But now, I am reaping so many benefits of those characteristics that once seemed difficult.  Now they are such a blessing.  This summer she has started cooking dinner, which is a good thing given how slack I had become with meals.  I think what I love best about this transition phase she is in is our talks.  She can now understand why I make the decisions I do for her and empathizes with the complexity and sheer exhaustion of parenting in this deceptive, digital, immoral, and entitlement minded culture.  She has spiritual wisdom and insight that challenges me, and she is becoming a very good friend. What a gift she is, and we love her with all our heart!

She hasn't done any gymnastics in over a year, but when I let her skip school (her retiring teacher skipped too and the subs did not care) to attend her brother's pool party, I could still see hints of gymnast lingering in her as she flipped off the diving board.

This afternoon, my girl played hooky.
Soon she'll no longer be a rookie.

Sixth grade ends in two more days.
Then on to the next adolescent phase.

Her teacher also decided to skip,
So into the pool our daughter did flip.

She flew like a bird with such finesse.
Soon I'll get to sleep in and get some rest.

I loved the lake and golf course view from this pool where both of our kids' end-of-year parties were held. I'm thankful that the homeowner's share their facilities with us.

At her 6th grade class pool party (same beautiful venue overlooking the lake in a gorgeous golf course community), she reminded me of myself at her age, preferring to hang out with the guys so as to avoid all the girl drama and playing games against the guys to increase her competitiveness and athleticism.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
No sunbathing at the pool for her or me.
We're not prissy or flashy, but we like to move.
We compete against guys, so our game will improve.

Grandparents' Day
Our son's 3rd grade class enjoyed lots of fun activities during the last quarter.  My parents came up for Grandparents' Day and took him out to eat lunch. He even let his sister join them for lunch.  I attended his recorder concert without them since it took place before my parents could get there through rush hour traffic, but the kids got to enjoy Nana and Pops over lunch all by themselves, for I was not invited. 

Bird Watching
The 3rd graders went on a field trip to a bird sanctuary to do some bird watching, but they never saw any birds.  Crazy! 

At least our boy gets to watch plenty of birds at home on the smallest parcel of land we've ever owned.  Orwell is a great bird watching guide who is always staring them down from the porch window.  The most annoying loud bird around here built a nest in the gigantic holly we just planted next to my fitness room window, so I get to watch the birds, too.

Orwell, Expert Bird Watcher

Eager, Early Entrepreneurs
Well, I found out why my offer to pay the kids extra cash for each extra chore they complete outside of their weekly chores isn't motivating my boy to do any extra work at home. Apparently, our 3rd grader is earning far more money by transcribing, editing, and helping sell comic books his classmates have been designing and writing. One kid, the son of an extremely successful dental/orthodontic practice owner in our area with offices spanning several counties, started the first comic book business, and then another student founded his own comic book company, adding some competition to the market.

My son even resigned with his former employer to take a higher paying job offered by the competitor until the competitor realized his wages were too high. Then my son had to accept mandatory pay cuts across the company which were necessary to keep the business afloat and barely profitable. (My son now has a better understanding of the minimum wage debate). The kids ran this business enterprise  all year at school during their free time, and I did not learn about it until May. I'm not sure when the teachers realized what the kids were doing, but now these comic books are available in the class library. Kudos to these boys' parents for raising entrepreneurs who are giving their classmates hands-on business management learning opportunities. They are discovering so many key strategies and factors to consider when starting and operating a successful business. They are also learning about economics and capitalism without opening a textbook. To my knowledge, this enterprise has been entirely student initiated, organized, and operated. As strict and structured as our school is, I'm surprised they even allowed it, but I love it and see it as the best kind of learning.  That's why we agreed to let our kids blow all their allowance savings on a candy store business they set up in the neighborhood.  They submitted business plans and went through each of the process steps, but they failed to consider losses on products that would not sell and ended up eating their excess inventory at a loss. They learned a number of lessons through that business, although I feared the neighbors might hate me for tempting their kids to blow money on candy that rots their teeth, but my kids knew healthy snacks that could be found at home would not sell. (Supply & Demand) 


Field Day
We returned from our trip to Oklahoma really late on Monday the last week of school.  By the time we got home and I had unpacked, it was 5am, so I too tired to help with field day at 8am. Given how little sleep our son had gotten that night (more like morning) after all that travel and how tired he must be after a whirlwind weekend in OK and given how tough the competition was last year, I wasn't expecting our son to bring home ANY ribbons for field day. He surprised me by bringing home four!

• 1st place frisbee throw
• 1st place team overall
• 2nd place sack race
• 2nd place broad jump

 

I recovered enough by lunch time to take the kids to 3rd grade pool party after field day, however. I was too busy gabbing with other moms at the 3rd grade end-of-school-year pool party to get any pictures of him swimming in the pool. All I got were these pics of him playing ping pong and splashing in the kiddie pool during the lifeguard break.  Sorry, honey, but at least I captured pics of you dumping water on that cute little girl's head. ;-)

 

 

Our boy had all A's, mostly 99's and 100s the first two quarters, but after missing so much school during our trip to Israel, he lost his motivation and got 3 B's (a 94 is a B in the grammar schools), disqualifying him from any of the honor rolls.  He just doesn't care about grades like his sister does, although he will work for prizes.  At the IMACS math enrichment course, he is in a classroom of very gifted kids, and he ranks near the top of the class. They know how to motivate him with prizes, hands on learning, fun games, and no boring busy work. Despite our kids' differences in temperament and motivation toward academics, they have consistently scored the exact same overall battery percentile on the Stanford Achievement Test (the only standardized test our kids take each year, whether home-schooled or private schooled) year after year, and their scores on individual subjects are almost identical except their math/reading scores are reversed with our boy always scoring 100% on every math section and our daughter acing the literary portions. I don't care much for testing of any kind, or don't have much faith in them, but the similarities between their scores still amuse me.   When it comes to grades, we encourage our kids to give their very best for the glory of God (emphasis here for our boy), but not for the glory of self (emphasis here for our competitive girl).   Grades may or may not reflect that, but we see their effort and God knows their hearts/motives.

Socially, I think it was the best year yet for our boy.  He is overcoming his shyness, which was the primary goal motivating my husband to enroll him in school instead of being homeschooled.  At first he did not like to get up on stage at all and was reluctant to speak in front of groups of people.  This year, he was so thrilled to get the longest speaking part in the parent assembly (and all his lines were in Latin) that he insisted we all come watch him.  That's a big change.  The kids who have been there since kindergarten are now treating him like part of the gang, and he has a very close friend who lives nearby he sees all the time. Thankfully, these kids still get lots of recess, so he's getting tougher on the basketball court and plays hard with all his new friends....at least when the girls aren't chasing him too much.