The Happenings for October

Students will embark on many academic adventures this month!

English: Students will work on creating a narrative poem; they will begin analyzing Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and many other famous poets; we will conclude our poetry unit this month with an exam where students will annotate and analyze a final piece of classical poetry.

Science: We are continuing our study of the solar system. Students learned about nuclear fusion and the development of stars, convection, and the characteristics and chemical make-up of our sun, Newton's Third Law, crater formation, tides, and so much more. They will continue studying stars and their life cycles. Students will work on a two-week long constellation project that will be presented to the class during the second week of October. Our solar system unit will be completed this month and students will be given an exam to test their knowledge. It will benefit each student to review his/her notes on a regular basis. The exam is open to ask questions related to any material shared in class.

History: We are continuing our exploration of Europe! It has been an exciting adventure to learn about cultures, regions, religions, traditions, physical characteristics, and more! Students are working on familiarizing themselves with the four hemispheres and latitude and longitude. We will complete our tour of Europe during the first week of this month, and then we will explore the African continent. Students have successfully learned the 5 themes of geography: location, region, place, human interaction, and movement. Scientists worldwide use the 5 themes of geography for their own research, educational endeavors, explorations, and the like. Each continent studied will end with an exam regarding information shared during the study of that particular place in our world.

Spanish: Students are continuing to build their Spanish vocabulary daily. Students have become familiar with animals, numbers, colors, objects, and more. We will begin simple sentence structure this month and conversation in Spanish. Each vocabulary lesson ends with a quiz.

Fine Arts: Students have just finished their first masterpieces! They produced beautiful watercolor landscapes. Pictures will be brought home during the first week of this month for you to enjoy. Our next project will allow students to get familiar with the Italian art of mosaic design. Students will design and create their own mosaic creations.

Our first month of school has been amazing! I am enjoying our informal school environment. Students are conversing and sharing what they know, asking questions, solving problems, and they're doing it all based on their own desire to learn! We are definitely getting into a wonderful groove and the students are getting to know each other and learning to adapt to different personalities and they are adjusting well. Watching them skateboard has been highly entertaining during the two days each week we share lunch together!

Our first field-trip proved to be an exciting tour of space. My Mrs. A's Academy students blew away the college teacher who gave a lecture prior to the show. Our children were the only one's in the audience answering questions about our universe! The college students were quite intimidated I was told.

I am still waiting on the calendar for the Goliad war reenactment field-trip opportunity. I will keep you posted regarding information you will need to know about this upcoming field-trip.

Calendar Update:
We will have the whole week of Thanksgiving off.