Saturday, October 12, 2013

Getting in the Groove

Our school year is off to a busy start. Here is a small sample of our week . . .

This year Evelyn is doing the Cover Story curriculum which is a new middle school program from the company that made One Year Adventure Novel. She started out researching different types of magazines.
In one of the lessons she was to look at a favorite painting or drawing and write about how it made her feel using specific nouns. She chose a Stephen Huneck picture. His art is a favorite around here.



The boys are excited to start robotics. This year they will be competing with FTC  (First Tech Challenge) As part of this he is going through the RobotC tutorials to learn that programming language.

Quinn is not so excited about algebra. However we have made a switch from Video Text to Thinkwell and so far he seems more happy with it. Professor Burger is very nerdy and funny and that goes a long way with him.


Quinn is also doing the Kid Coder Beginning Web Design. He's cruising right through it. As part of the curriculum he is making a website on raptors. However I also got him his own domain so that he can use what he learns to make his own site. This is definitely one of his favorite things this year. If you want to watch his progress you can go on over to quinnsrealm.com. This past week he learned to make ordered and unordered lists and is just starting to learn some basic CSS so there's not much there yet. 

Evelyn loves projects. A school friend of hers came home with a no-sew pillow and then told Evelyn how to make it. She picked out some fleece and then went crazy making pillows. 




Evelyn is obsessed with sharks. She loves to draw them, paint them, and write about them.