The End of the Year Recap

As you all know, in four days is Christmas and tomorrow school for my town will be done. This half of the school year has been interesting. I started off by doing Vocabulary, Logic, Writing, Science, Math, Reading, History etc. Lately we have had some changes. We started a new subject Geography, and we finished logic. We also stopped doing writing since we were doing Nanowrimo.

At school school, I did Technology and Orchestra. After the first trimester, I just did Orchestra. In the first trimester, I did cross country which improved my stamina. Now as a winter sport, I’m playing basketball. Our basketball team is 4-1.

Frankly, I think that the school year has been great. I have worked hard to get my work and I got a good beginning of the trimester.

This trimester I liked Vocabulary for its fun words. I liked History for its interesting subjects like the Black Death and China's Song Dynasty.

The Boy’s King Arthur

            I just finished up the book The Boy’s King Arthur.  The author is Sidney Lanier. Now this book is the easier version of Le Morte D'Arthur, which is French for "the death of Arthur". In the bigger book, it goes into more detail. In my book, it touches on the main stories of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  Here is a list of 10 qualities knights in the 1200s would have.

^·          Brave

^·          Help maidens

^·          Help the poor

^·          Do quests

^·          Be kind

^·          To be a knight known for his niceness

^·          To not be rude

^·          To be strong

^·          To destroy enemies

^·          To hail to the king

Knights in the 1200’s and “knights” nowadays might have some things in common, like
they both should defeat enemies. Something else that they have in common is they should
be brave.

Though many things in my list are the same, there are some differences.  Modern-day
"knights" do not always make it a duty to help women, but knights of the 1200’s made
sure that if a maiden called unto them that they were there and ready to help. Also
“knights” of today don’t take the pain. If they are hurt, they get out of battle and get
healed. Knights in the 1200s were expected to take the pain like a man. 

 Seven qualities of a modern day knights are…

^·          Brave

^·          Help people in need

^·          To destroy enemies

^·          To be kind

^·          To have an education

^·          To stay together and work as a team

^·          To get along

My Learning Environment

            My learning environment is best at home at the table or on the couch. Both are without music. Now I like the table because it is big and this allows me to put all my stuff on the table. (Although sometimes my parents get mad at me for not cleaning up my stuff. I then have to put it away.) I also like to read on the couch. See I have books that are assigned to me and I like to read at the couch because the story is somehow easier to read. It also relaxes me.

            Some of the stuff that I like to do, but should not are listening to music and dilly-dally. I like to listen to music because it is fun, but sometimes the songs get in my way of learning especially when I am reading. Perhaps it is not a good idea to read and listen to songs. I also like to dilly-dally a lot. If I just got done with a subject that took 45 minutes, then I will just play with the cat or read a book for 5- 10 minutes. I know that I should not do it, but I say to myself that I can and I just cannot help myself. I will try to stop listening to music and try to stop dilly-dallying.

My Favorite Subject

It is true that I have a lot of subjects. But my favorite is Vocabulary. Vocabulary is as you might know a time for learning new words. Every other Monday, I write my new vocabulary words. Some new words that I learn that I already know are 'agent' and 'cope'. But then there are words that I have never heard of like 'impunity' and 'bias'. I also have to do some exercises. They are things to help me out on my words. They might include stuff like this.

            1. Which of these can abate?

            A. Wind          C. Car

            B. A Kitty       D. A fire

            2. Christmas: presents: 4^th of July: ______

            3. Mail Truck: Mail: _____: garbage

            On Wednesday, I read a story and fill in questions about it. The story includes all the vocabulary words that I used on Monday. On the next Monday, I do Lincs tables. Lincs are basically writing my vocabulary words and a reminding word. Then I write a short short short story that has to include the remaining words and that word’s vocabulary definition. Now the point of Lincs tables is to sort of learn the vocabulary and it is kind of like a test.

            Vocabulary is my favorite subject because it is interesting to learn new words. It is also cool to use them in my daily language. In fact, one of my words last week was 'lax', meaning that things were not strictly enforced. And at our middle school, you can take tests on books, but it is lax.  When my mom and I were talking about this yesterday, it was a perfect time to use that word.

What Does Thanksgiving mean to me?

                                   

            The third Thursday of November is Thanksgiving. This is the day where we eat turkey and other delicious things. And after the food has been consumed, then some families watch football games. But I have a different approach on Thanksgiving.

            Now how I think and you do may be different. But I think that our Thanksgiving was a good example of how my approach is. To me, Thanksgiving is a time to have fun and socialize with family or friends. Our Thanksgiving started at lunch where we ate very delicious food. Then instead of watching football for a pointless amount of hours, we played a game where everyone laughed. We socialized and laughed. After the game of laughing, we went outside and played a couple of games. Then we had to go home, but my Thanksgiving was awesome despite having to go home.

            If you sat and watched television for a couple hours, did you actually talk very much? You probably didn’t because you were busy watching the game. What if you have family that came down from Hawaii or Alaska and they stayed only for Thanksgiving and then they left without them telling you how they were doing.  All I’m saying is that if you are going to get together, this is a perfect day to socialize and laugh together.

The First Day of the Second Trimester

     Today is the first day of the new trimester. In some ways it feels like a new school year.  It feels like a new beginning. It used to be that I would not start homeschool until 9:20, when I got home from my morning class.  Now, I start at 8:00.

      I am looking forward to vocab. It is fun learning about new words like beseech and impetuous. I also like the stories at the end of the vocab. lesson. I am happy for history because we get to learn about the Crusades, the Hundred Years War, the Mongol Empire, Knighthood, Ireland and more. I love history because it is interesting to learn about the cultures that had good war tactics or good trading. And it is interesting to learn about cultures that invented things like porcelain.

Trimester 1

     Today is the last of trimester 1. There are 3 trimesters in the course of the year. Each one of the trimester are 60 days long. I’m telling you this because this trimester has been an intersiting one.

     This trimester has had a lot of good things and bad things. Some of the good things were watching a movie on a Friday, after I got all my work done early. Also there was the day that I got to play video games because I got done early. Now my intenion is not all screens because I liked when we went out to eat ocassilly. It was a nice surprise. Another was the first day of school. I was pumped up. Even though my ”pumped up” personality dropped a bit, I still like homeschool better than public school. Even though, I have more work than at public school, I think that it is well worth the price. I think that because I have always been excited about having school. Although I like school, sometimes I wish that I didn’t have school because it got boring.    
    Although I think that public school is bad, some of the things that I did wrong in homeschool were that I could not do outlines. I just could not do outlines. But now I am doing much better. Another thing was that on my wiki, I got some stuff wrong that mom did not like. But it is fixed now.

            In this last 60 days, I felt a great joy of the learning that I was getting. It was great.