Aug. 21, 2008
School Year 2008-2009 Has Begun!
|
We officially started our new school year on Monday, and things are going quite well. Because of all the time we took off last winter when Robert was born, we didn't have a real summer break this year. We continued with lessons about three days a week on a very loose, minimal schedule. Last week, I decided we'd start back with a full schedule on August 18. No more fiddling! The Old Schoolhouse Planner has been invaluable in getting my year started. I scheduled our school days using their Weekly Planner 2 page and scheduled our household cleaning tasks (some of them) using their Family Chore Chart page. I'm not a neat housekeeper by nature, I NEED some kind of schedule (prominently posted) to keep me on track. I've been off track for a long time, and the Family Chore Chart has finally gotten me back on the right path. Since I printed it out, I've cleaned both bathrooms (in the last week, it's a miracle!), the kitchen floor has been swept every day except Sunday, and I even mopped the kitchen and one bathroom. That may seem like another day at the office for many of you, but it's a big deal for me. I'm going to share my daily/weekly school schedule in another post. Having this prominently posted has made our school days go very smoothly. We all know what's coming up next, when we'll get breaks, etc. Yes that's a shameless plug for the TOS Planner....I love it! And no I don't work for them... To ease back into our school year, I bought an audio unit study on time from Homeschool Radio Shows. I've been getting the weekly free program from HRS for over a year, but in the last few months, I've begun to love them more and more. We listened to a very good program on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which had my kids sitting on the edge of their seats. When I saw that HRS was releasing a time unit study, I thought it sounded fascinating. How DID worldwide standard time come about anyway? I wanted the unit study for my own education as much as for the boys. We're nearly finished now with the main part of the study and have enjoyed working on the lap book and listening to the stories. There are several additional stories that we can listen to next week as well. After that, we're going to begin the Konos unit on Stewardship....which includes a section on time! Though I knew we'd be working on Stewardship this fall (I made our "lifetime schedule" way back in 2005), I did not realize that it contained a section on time. So buying the Homeschool Radio Shows time unit just when we're about to begin the Konos Stewardship unit was a complete coincidence (undoubtedly orchestrated by God). Another interesting thing God did regarding time studies.... I recently received a copy of the spring issue of TOS which I hadn't seen before because my subscription had lapsed. In that issue, which I just received Tuesday, there is a wonderful article called The Science of Time and Sir Sandford Fleming. Sir Fleming is the man who had the idea to place the entire world on standard time in 24 one-hour blocks. It had never occurred to me before beginning this unit study to wonder how exactly the whole world agreed on time. From the TOS article, I learned that India and the middle portion of Australia are not on standard time. They are a half hour off from the rest of the world! Can you imagine? I think it seems especially strange in the case of Australia. When it is 5:00 in eastern Australia (Sydney) and 3:00 in western Australia (Perth), it's 4:30 in the middle of Australia. Very weird! One more note on time zones: The entire country of China is on ONE time zone. I tried to figure it out, and I think that if the sun rises at 6am in Beijing, which is where I assume they base the "proper" time from, it doesn't rise until 9am in the far western part of the country. If it sets at 8pm in Beijing (in summer), it wouldn't set until 11pm or later in the western portion. We're leaving this evening to go on a trip for the weekend. We'll be going to Dayton, Ohio, hometown of the Wright Brothers, to visit the Air Museum at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base. We studied the Wright Brothers and flight in general as part of the Trust unit in Konos this summer. We're also going to spend a couple days in Jeffersonville, Indiana (just across the river from Louisville, KY) to attend a special birthday celebration for the pastor of our church headquarters there. Her name is Rev. B.R. Hicks, and she will be 90 years old a week from today! She still preaches at least one service a week and is a wonderful servant of God, a beautiful example of Jesus on earth. While there we'll go to the Louisville Zoo (our two youngest boys have never been to a zoo), to the Louisville Slugger Museum, and to the Falls of the Ohio. It'll be our first vacation in two years, and we're all very excited! |
Comments