News & Reminders:

None this week 🙂

Projects:

The kids are all engaged in projects, of their own design, that come from their own wonderings about the world and how it works. Feeling the personal power that comes from realizing that learning can come from within you rather than just existing as a process of measuring up to objectives and goals set by someone else is a powerful way to begin to see oneself as a creator and inventor. Designing and executing a project based on their own curiosities and questions offers the kids the opportunity to experience ownership over the learning process and how it can be applied to literally anything a person wants to learn. Going through the process of designing a research question, conducting research, making a plan for experiments based on knowing what it is you are trying to figure out, and drawing conclusions that potentially lead to further research and experimentation is the project design cycle and although projects often get more sophisticated as we get older, the process essentially is the same.

Laurence and Ollie planned and carried out their fire experiments this week. Charlotte wound up joining in on the fire experiments too and she offered some background knowledge based on her own previous attempts to make a fire. On Thursday, they gathered all different types of fuel and then figured out how to put it all together in a way that resulted in a fire that could stay lit long enough to keep people warm and cook food. Wind was initially a factor they didn’t count on and they quickly realized that in order to stop lit paper and cardboard from blowing away, they would need to put heavier fuel on top. As they added fuel to their fire, they recorded the temperature it burned at, the color of the flame and whether or not it was a good source of fuel. At the end of their experiment, they recorder their conclusions that in order to get bigger logs of wood to burn, they would need to light easy to burn sources of fuel first to get enough of a fire going over time to allow the larger pieces of fuel to catch fire. They ended up realizing that paper burns very fast and is a good source of fuel to get cardboard going which burns long enough to catch small pieces of twigs on fire which can stay lit long enough to begin larger pieces of wood to burn. They also learned that fire and wind don’t mix and that things can catch on fire if light materials aren’t put on the bottom of the fire. This coming week, we will use their knowledge to construct a fire and attempt to cook food on it. They would like to cook marshmallow smores and a more “lunch” type food as well. They want to use food that can be cooked on a stick rather than use a grate to cook on.

Charlotte is growing in her capacity to see herself as a someone who can design, create and follow through with a project of her own design. This week, while she is still figuring out how she wants to get her project off the ground, I provided additional work with the research part of the design process. She ended the week by deciding that she would bring yarn and supplies to begin her test project this coming week and she added an additional project to this coming week as well! She is working on figuring out how to plan her summer time and wishes to fill it with volunteering and perhaps babysitting. This is a great project as she will have to use all the elements of the learning, project design process to create a plan that works for this summer. On Thursday, we looked at a variety of possible volunteering options including “Cornelius Animal Shelter” and decided we’d have to make a list and go or call to find out whether they take teen volunteers and in what capacity. As Charlotte is also interested in earning money, we also looked up options for babysitting courses that would offer her more credibility with parents. We found that both the YMCA and Red Cross offer these courses. It will be interesting to see what kind of summer Charlotte designs for herself.

Math…

Ollie is working on addition with larger numbers and realized as he was working on these more complex problems that sometimes it is faster and easier to take the time to carefully write down and figure out math problems rather than to try to do them all in your head. Laurence finished with his decimal unit this week and moved on to fractions review on Friday. Charlotte is working on a Functions of Linear and Nonlinear equations unit and is happy to note so far that this skill requires less complicated multi step math than her previous unit. Charlotte is a also working a little bit every day on the checkpoint for her last unit. She has discovered that working on a few problems every day is a great way to apply her math learning at the end of a unit by tackling some really challenging problems. She has shown amazing dedication to returning over and over again until she finishes a checkpoint. This dedication supports her efforts to set a larger learning goal and break it up into smaller chunks that honor her focus time and patience so that she winds up building the habit of experiencing more joy than frustration in the learning process over time.

ELA…

I have been spending a good bit of time researching how to design reading and writing learning opportunities in a way that builds ownership and enjoyment for both. Ollie enjoys reading and gets excited about books while he is building his capacity to write. He often used speaking to generate text as a way to write previously and has begun to mention that he sees the value in doing his own writing. Charlotte is a committed reader and writer whose found a variety of ways to enjoy reading including websites that offer original comics, book series and more. Charlotte doesn’t always choose writing as a first choice, but once she gets rolling, she is amazingly gifted at sharing her thoughts in written form. Laurence usually doesn’t choose reading or writing as a first choice and, in an effort, to support reframing this thought that could solidify into a belief over time, I have been trying out different ideas to show how reading and writing threads through nearly every aspect of learning. Laurence and Ollie are currently using audio books to support reading and I am researching book series with their interests in mind as a way to show how varied the possibilities are for how to find reading enjoyable. We are also using close caption on videos so that they can listen and read at the same time which especially helps when they are trying to locate information for research and write it down. Laurence and Ollie are currently reading “The Hunger Games” and Charlotte is finishing up “The Hobbit”. We are also doing lots of non -fiction reading and writing as part of our research for social studies and science connected to our projects.

Social Studies & Mindset…

Charlotte is working on researching President Trump’s cabinet and key advisor choices to make a decision as to whether or not she would approve of these choices if she were a US Senator. This week Charlotte looked at the role of a Defense Secretary and what it entails and then researched to find out whether or not Pete Hegseth is a good fit for this role. She looked at personal background, previous experience, qualifications, legal concerns and more to determine whether or not he has the character and experience needed to fill this key role. On Friday, Charlotte began researching Kristi Noem, as head of Homeland Security to determine her fitness for this role. Charlotte did a great job at rising above the details to look at the integrity and experience of both candidates to share a well thought out opinion on Pete Hegseth and a forthcoming thought on Kristi Noem.

Laurence shared that he watched a video that described how C students are often better equipped than A students to become “successful”. Laurence pointed out that C students spend less time seeking approval by trying to measure up to outside influences and so spend more time being willing to take risks on their own ideas and capacity to create. We all discussed this idea and I shared Michael McMillan’s “Paper Airplane: A Lesson for Flying Outside the Box” to expand on Laurences’s idea.

On Thursday, before reading the book to them, we did the paper airplane flying contest that the teacher in the book used with the kids. The rules of the contest state that “you will be given 10 sheets of paper, you have 10 minutes for planning and making planes and then the person or team who gets the most planes over a 10 foot distance without crossing the start line wins” The kids were all super engaged in making their planes! Ollie had the most experience with flight and making planes while Laurence hardly had any. Charlotte looked up a video and had already showed her capacity to follow directions to make small folded objects during our previous model making. The results were interesting. All 3 kids make different kinds of planes. Laurence really struggled to make a plane and I wound up asking him if it says you can’t ask for help in the rules (it didn’t, so we worked on folding a plane together). Charlotte made a tube sort of plane first and then switched to an elaborately folded plane next. She also mentioned jokingly that she should just make a paper ball and I told her to hold that thought (in the book, ,this winds up being the winning idea). In the end, Ollie and Laurence tied with 5 planes each over the line and they competed again for the win. Laurence wound up winning with 6 planes over the line.

We had a great discussion following the competition on how the person with the least experience wound up winning and how if Charlotte had followed through with constructing a paper ball, she would likely have won. We also talked about how spending time planning and “thinking outside the box” rather than automatically assuming and following the rules might have led to different results. Michale McMillan, the author of the book explains that most everything we learn in school was created/invented by someone who thought outside the box and used their curiosity and learning process to come up with a new discovery or understanding. New discovery about oneself or the world happens when we have the courage to trust ourselves enough to think beyond existing ideas 🙂

I noticed the effect competition had on all of them. They were super engaged and trying to win was very motivating yet, I noticed that it came at a great cost. Laurence spent a lot of time worrying that since he didn’t know how to make a paper airplane that he wouldn’t be successful and all 3 placed a great amount of importance on “winning” even though there was no prize or relevant outcome. All the kids were much less likely to collaborate and support each other when I called it a “competition”. We will spend more time considering Laurence’s idea of out of the box thinking versus seeking approval and more about the value of competition and collaboration in the coming weeks. As usual, my guess is that balance is the key:)

We are continuing to work on relationship building. We are setting the stage for belonging rather than fitting in by highlighting and talking about things as they come up and as they share what they may have seen/done before in school as compared to how we might do it differently in our learning environment in an effort to work more collaboratively in support of one another. We are also working to build the communication skills to work through disagreements and to build a feeling of trust with one another so that it feels ok to not know, to not understand, to have a different opinion or way of looking at the world. Creating a supportive space where everyone is seeking the opportunity to learn more about who they are and feeling safe showing it authentically to each other will allow for more creativity and self discovery!

Foreign Language..

All the kids are working hard on learning their chosen language. This week we had a conversation about whether or not they could use what they are learning to have conversations in their chosen language. We talked about Ollie going to Paris and getting to use his French and how he can prepare to practice using French in conversations while traveling. I described that the “why” behind learning a new language in addition to other goals, is primarily to be able to communicate effectively in that language 🙂

Science …

This week, most of the science revolved around our fire building experiments as Ollie, Laurence and Charlotte experienced the results of the research Ollie and Laurence did last week on fire. Charlotte wondered why wood chars and turns black when it is burned and we found out that when the oxygen and hydrogen burns out of the wood, what is left is mostly carbon. We will continue to explore science in this way in the coming week and then head into a new focus in science soon:)

Self-Directed Learning ….

This week Ollie and Laurence made churros. They carefully read the recipe first and then worked through the recipe together. As compared to previous cooking experiences, I intentionally supported their taking the lead and jumped in only to answer questions as they asked or to redirect them back to the recipe and the directions. They successfully made delicious churros and better yet, used reading, following directions and working collaboratively to make a new recipe!

Photos from the Week…

News & Reminders

Bridges Academy will continue to grow as more families hear about what we are doing and imagine learning can be a collaborative process that begins with trust for children and their inner capacity to use the life- long process of learning to grow into understanding who they are and how they want to express themselves in the world. Please feel free to share our Bridges Academy site or pass along my phone # to families who may be wanting to explore this option further. Even though we are well into the school year, the right time for any family is not dependent on the start date of any school year 🙂

Thanks to all of you for being such supportive and amazing families. I appreciate your trust in me and love working with your kids.

Project Work:

This past week, the kids began to think through their next mini-projects! Laurence and Ollie started investigating fire and began the design process to figure out what they would like to learn. Ollie shared a video that explained how large forest fires spread and are contained while Laurence explained his prior knowledge about how fires burn in different colors. Together with my help, they made a document on Google Drive to start their mini project in motion! The research question they came up with is: How can we make the best fire that keeps people warm and cooks’ food? How can we put fire out safely? They gathered research about what fire is, the fire triangle, combustion and how to put fires out safely. They also learned that fire burns in different colors depending on the fuel that is burned and the temperature of the fire. They made a hypothesis about the temperature that water boils, cakes bake, wood burns, glass melts, matches and forest fires burn and then researched to find the actual numbers. This week, they will contintue to plan and conduct an experiment to find out what burns and what doesn’t and discover the optimal fuel to make a fire that is not too hot to sit around to keep warm and cooks food slowly without burning it. They will also make a table to show the color of the flame produces by different fuels and the temperature of the fire. Ultimately, once they have gathered all of the information they need, we will head to the park to try making their fire and cook some food so they can test their results.

Charlotte found a pattern for a sweater that she’d like to knit and began investigating this possibility for her next project. We went to the “Hearts on Fiber” Shop on Friday to conduct some research on the viability of her project. Based on the questions she asked, she concluded that it would be a good idea to make a first project using inexpensive yarn so she could begin to practice knitting before committing to a more complex project. She learned that making the sweater really requires knitting two large rectangles, two smaller, longer rectangles and then “sewing” them together to make the sweater. Charlotte wondered about adding a neckline and cuffs as well. Charlotte and I will talk more on Monday to make a final plan. On Friday, we talked about the goal that Charlotte achieved with finishing the Future City project and thought through how to use what worked and apply it to this next project. One of the judges asked the kids “what would you do differently on your Future City project if you had more time?” and both kids replied that they would perfect it and make it even more aesthetically pleasing. I shared with Charlotte how amazing I thought it was that she was able to finish the Future City Project without letting the fact that it wasn’t “perfect” get in her way. She could apply this to a knitting project! Knowing she is a beginner knitter; she can make a ” simplified or test” project and then gradually work her way up to the final project. Hearts on Fiber offers “emotional support project help” classes and this could be a great way to start her project in a great space with more experienced knitters!

Math this Week:

Ollie and I have been noticing that once he “gets in the zone” he is able to deeply focus and process math in a remarkable way! He has been working on word problems this week that involve multiplication but require careful reading to make sure the response he gives matches the questions. When he’s not “in the zone” he finds himself making quick reads that lead to errors yet when he is focused, he can quickly calculate and respond accurately. Laurence and Charlotte shared that this is true for them as well. We talked about what strategies help each of them to “get in the zone” and have the required focus and patience. I suggest possible strategies and make the strategies they are trying visible to them and love watching them feel a sense of personal power over their learning process as they discover what works best for each of them. Ollie is currently working on discovering math patterns and began working on place value for home learning on Friday. Laurence will work on word problems with money this week as well as use estimation as a strategy to assess the reasonableness of math solutions. This is a great “real life math” strategy as so often we have to quickly figure out whether we have enough money to make a purchase, assess how much we need of something etc… Charlotte began a new unit on functions this week and is busy graphing linear equations using real life problems to determine “best deals”, rate of change and how long it would be before a profit is reached.

ELA

Charlotte and I finished reading “Going Solo” by Roald Dahl this week while Ollie and Laurence listened to “Hunger Games” on Audiobook. Both boys have a copy of the book and tried different options to determine how best to enjoy the book. They decided that reading and listening separately worked best. They are both listening to a chapter a day. Charlotte decided to finish up reading “The Hobbit” this week and will likely finish up her book next week.

I created Oliie’s blog this week and he worked on setting it up to reflect his own preferences. All the kids worked on following a process to write a persuasive essay on “How to use the $250 Prize Money from Future City” Here is a copy of the template they used. Charlotte and Laurence posted their final copies on their blogs and Ollie is working on finishing his up next week. Once everyone is finished, they will share their thoughts on how to spend our $250 and then we can make a final decision together. I am working on helping each of them to see where they are in the writing process so they can each recognize their growth in writing.

Mindset:

We made a big shift this week towards all of us settling in and learning to work together with Ollie as part of our group. It has been such a great opportunity for us to think together about how we want to experience working together. This week we talked about trust and how trust is built. We began with some individual thinking and writing as each of responded to some questions: What is trust? Name someone you trust and why you trust them. Name someone who trusts you and why they trust you? How does trust get broken? How can we build trust with people? After we wrote individually, we shared what we wrote with each other. I showed them a marble jar to help illustrate that trust is built in many tiny moments over time as people you care about do little things that show you can count on them. We also talked about how fragile trust can be and how it can be broken in a moment. Trust happens when you can be yourself and tell the truth about who you are and be accepted. You don’t have to try to act a certain way just to fit in. School for most kids has typically been an exercise in fitting in rather than being able to express yourself and find belonging. Acting cool, saracasm, “jokes” that aren’t really jokes, gossip and trash talking are common things that kids have to work through every day at most schools and this practice makes it very hard to find enough safety and support to relax and be who you really are. We are aiming to create a safe space where we support one another and celebrate being who we are. It was beautiful to listen to Ollie, Charlotte and Laurence sharing their thoughts around trust and begin to shift the way they express themselves in relationship with one another. I am supporting and modeling the shifts in how we communicate with one another.

Foreign Language

Ollie, Laurence and Charlotte are all working on their respective language studies and all of them have shared their Duo Lingo accounts with one another so they can see and support each other’s learning streaks. Ollie’s family is planning a trip to Paris in April and we are working on a plan to support his practicing common phrases, questions and every day words in preparation for his trip. I shared with Charlotte the 80/20 model for learning language that suggests if you learn the top 20% of the most commonly used words and phrases in a language, you can learn to use the language more efficiently. I am busy gathering the most commonly used words/phrases in Spanish so Charlotte can consider learning these to help build her language skills. Laurence has been very dedicated to his study of Japanese and many days goes beyond his daily streak to do extra lessons.

Self-Directed Learning this week…

The kids made tempura shrimp sushi on Wednesday! Thanks to everyone for sending ingredients for our cooking! Laurence is working on a couple of new songs on piano and Ollie has wandered down a few times to check out the piano as well. We all spent a little time outside this week at the pond behind my house and Ollie discovered that the fish are starting to lay eggs. As spring draws closer, we will begin to notice many more signs of life around this area. Laurence and Charlotte are continuing with their homeschool art class. Ollie and I researched the testing process the military goes through in order to make something “stringently tested to military grade durability standards” after he noticed this sticker on my computer. We compared my computer to his Apple computer to see if his was also military grade tested. We both learned that the US military does some very intense tests including shock tests, vibration testing, crash tests etc.

Photos From the Week..

News and Reminders:

• We are heading up to Raleigh today to bring our Future City model to get an introduction to what the Future City Competition is like. If the kids enjoy it, we could choose to fully engage next year!
• No extra home-learning for Charlotte or Laurence this Friday as they will have a full day of learning at NC State on Saturday. Ollie and I agreed on his home-learning for Friday and I sent it to him by text message.

Project Work:

It was quite a rush to maintain focus and finish our model in time to go to Raleigh today and so big congratulations to the kids for using their stamina to engage till the finish of the project. This was our first long term, big project and both kids described that they found it hard to maintain interest and finish projects in the past and expressed concern about finishing this one, yet they set “finishing the project:” as an official goal on Part 1 of the Future City Project goal setting sheet. The other concern they had was around collaboration and teamwork. We wound up making project decisions together and then each took on different aspects of the project to work on, which worked well. Finishing the project and working through having the self-discipline to stick with something through preferred and non-preferred tasks is a life skill that builds self-efficacy or the belief in one’s ability to succeed through to meeting long range goals and challenges. I was excited to see that even though it was challenging for them, the kids each grew in their capacity to finish what they started 🙂

In the Week Ahead: I found this project and so this round, we are planning to choose our own smaller projects to work on. I will take the kids though the project design process this week and help them to create a short-term project that they want to work on.

Math This Week

Laurence and Charlotte continued with their IXL Math goals around decimals for Laurence and graphing linear equations for Charlotte. Ollie and I played card games to practice multiplication facts and he also worked on his IXL math goals for finding the factors of numbers. I have been researching to find out what math at Ollie’s DK-8 School was like and how it was organized in order of math units, and I shared this with Ollie. All three kids worked on math problems that require a lot of steps before arriving at a complete solution and I highlighted for them that they are building stamina every time they maintain the focus and patience to work through all the steps of a complex math problem. Laurence and I had a conversation about why he finds that he has the stamina to do this with math yet at times, struggles to do this with reading or larger project work. We all wound up sharing that although we each have passions that we find it easier to engage in naturally, it is important to develop the self-discipline to maintain focus in a wide range of tasks as this can help lead us to achieving larger goals in our areas of passion.

In the Week Ahead: Charlotte and Laurence are both almost finished with their respective math units. Laurence will work on a fractions unit ahead while Charlotte will begin a unit in Functions next. Ollie will continue to work through factoring and practicing multiplication and we will move math units as needed based on the new information about what he’s already completed at DK-8.

ELA

Ollie enjoys listening to podcasts and shared that this is a calming way to work on tasks like, cutting out photos for our model or making tiny boat models that don’t require active figuring out kind of thinking. Ollie’s idea inspired the possibility that we may look into podcasts that we’d all enjoy so we can listen together or separately based on our interests. Ollie is busy choosing a chapter book that he would enjoy reading and he will bring it to school on Monday to share. We are one chapter away from finishing “Going Solo” so I will do book talks on a few books next week to see if we can find a new book to enjoy either together, individually or in pairs.

We did lots of reading and writing this week to research various aspects of our project including how a desalinator works and how BioRock is made. Laurence and Ollie worked together to make a poster about Santa Cruz Del Islote with words and photos so that people enjoying our model at the competition will have a sense for what this island is like. Laurence, Charlotte and I reviewed the facts of our project and practiced speaking to get ready for people at the competition to ask us questions about our model. Ollie and I also did a paired short story together while Laurence was at art class. We used the short story starter “Suddenly the lights went out” to get us started and then we each took turns writing for 2 minutes, reading what the other person wrote and then adding on to it to make a story. We will plan to try this out with Charlotte and Laurence too in coming weeks.

Social Studies this week..

We talked about Rule of Law this week. Unfortunately, Charlotte was out at the beginning part of this day, but we reviewed it together quickly to catch her up later in the day. Ollie described a situation at school where the class has a “no candy” rule yet the teacher had candy on her desk as well as another situation where a student brought a lollipop and was told to put it away while other students were able to eat Nutella and other things that had a lot of sugar. I turned this into a lesson to share what Rule of Law is and we connected it to President Trump’s recent decision to pardon people involved in the January 6th Capital Riots. I first asked them to write what they thought Rule of Law was, they shared their ideas and then we added to them. We decided that Rule of Law, in simple terms, means that a leader has to follow the laws that are set because everyone is equal under the law and that everyone is entitled to a process to determine whether or not they broke a law before receiving consequences. I asked them to write to share how they saw Ollie’s classroom situation….Did the teacher break Rule of Law? (we acknowledged that Ollie’s teacher had a rule and how it is different than a law) We discussed President Trump’s Executive Pardon and they wrote to share whether they thought President Trump violated Rule of Law. It was an interesting discussion to hear their perspective and work through deepening their capacity to consider a variety of perspectives and logic. Schools in general don’t function democratically and to prepare kids as citizens who can participate fully in democracy, we think it is important to work through problems and make rules and logical consequences together to practice thinking democratically.

Science This Week…

Our most exciting science discovery this week was how to make Bio Rock. Laurence and Ollie built a simple circuit that could send small currents of electricity through salt water to simulate the process of making Bio Rock after we watched a video about how the process works. Once they set it up, we were excited to notice bubbles forming in the salt water and then it began to turn a yellowish green. We researched to find out why the bubbles were forming and learned that it is the electrolysis reaction occurring where molecules of oxygen and hydrogen in water split and release a hydrogen gas that allows dissolved material in seawater to form Bio Rock. We built a metal structure and attached pieces of “coral” to it to complete our simulation of how Bio Rock is formed for our model. Charlotte arrived late that morning. She’d already watched the video to find out how BioRock is formed and so Ollie and Laurence set up the experiment again to show Charlotte how the process actually works 🙂

Mindset This Week…

As Ollie has been with us for just over a week now, it has changed the dynamic of our group. This has offered us lots of opportunities to talk about how our group is growing and how we want our group to feel and be. As I notice things working or not working, I bring it up with the kids so we can have conversations and share ideas that can help us to form a high functioning group where we all walk away each day feeling a sense of safety and belonging.

I noticed the kids figuring out the new dynamic and worrying about how to be accepted and enjoyed by one another. We talked about how at schools and in other places, often kids experience a dynamic of “in” and “out” groups. We talked about how these groups can form around having the latest outfit, being especially talented at a sport, trash talking, “know it all” behavior etc. and how this usually sets up a lack of safety for everyone as the kids in power are always challenged to maintain it while lots of other kids walk around always feeling like they have to measure up to be accepted by the group while making choices they might not otherwise make just to feel a part of the group. We each shared some moments when we experienced this in the past at school.

I noticed some of these behaviors happening with our group with the jokes they were making and conversations they were having to kind of prove their “cool factor” and gage acceptance with one another. I pointed these out and asked what we are really trying to create together. I reinforced that what I think we all want is to feel safe to be who we are. I shared that we can build trust that people will like us for who we are not because we say the coolest things, know the latest trends etc. We all want to feel like we walk away every day with our insides matching our outsides. We can express who we are knowing that the others like us just for being ourselves and that we can trust others will listen to us if our feelings get hurt by something that happened or was said. It will take time to build this trust, yet I think it is a hugely important learning moment for all the kids.

In the Week Ahead: I will introduce the idea of fitting in versus belonging by threading it through what we do each day. I will share how trust builds in many tiny moments of being together over time and how we can build this trust. In the past, I’ve used a marble jar moments story to illustrate how building trust works and I will consider sharing this one with the kids 🙂

Photos from the Week…

News and Reminders:

• This Friday, Bridges Academy will head up to NC State to bring our floating city model to the Future City Competition. This year, we are just dipping our toe into experiencing what the competition is like and so we are sharing our model and enjoying the competition without fully competing. I have been sending information on hotel, competition site details by text but if anyone has any questions, please feel free to text or call me.
• On Wednesday, we officially welcomed Ollie and his family to Bridges Academy. Ollie, Brooklyn and Nate live in Davidson and it has been an amazing process this week to get to know them and integrate Ollie and his family into our learning program.
• We had our first homeschool art class this week. The kids shared mixed feelings about our new class. As this is the first time we’ve ventured outside our own group to add additional options for learning, we will continue to explore and venture out to find options that work. Some things they mentioned so far: The art class is a group of 8 students so this gives our kids an opportunity to connect with other kids who are homeschooling to hear about their experiences and make connections, it is fun to explore our community as an extension of our classroom, the art materials weren’t as high standard as may have been expected, it isn’t yet clear to them how the class will progress and how directed/self-directed it will be as it unfolds.
• Bridges Academy will continue to grow as more families hear about what we are doing and imagine that learning is a collaborative process that begins with trust for children and their inner capacity to use the life long process of learning to grow into understanding who they are and how they want to express themselves in the world. Please feel free to share our Bridges Academy site or pass along my phone # to families who may be wanting to explore this option further. Even though we are well into the school year, the right time for any family is not dependent on the start date of any school year 🙂

Project Learning This week:

Our model is really coming together this week! We decided to construct a piece of Santa Cruz Del Islote and we added three, 1/2 acre floating pads to share our idea for our floating city. Santa Cruz Del Islote, an island off the coast of Columbia, South America is considered to be the most densely packed places on Earth with 861 people living on just over two and half acres of land. Here is a link to learning more about this island.

We chose this island for our project as we felt it represented the beauty of what happens when people live simply and connect together peacefully in community. There is no police force needed on the island as people work together in community to solve problems as they arise. People usually live their whole lives on the island and the average life span is considerably higher than average. Problems on the island include a lack of water, limited electricity and waste management as well as concerns for rising ocean levels that would compromise the island’s viability as a place to live. We set about designing our floating city model in support of celebrating and sharing the beautiful mindset of living in community while proposing solutions to the problems they are experiencing so they can continue to sustain and teach others the value of living in a more small community based, sustainable way.

Ollie, Charlotte and Laurence each added the scaled down pads to each of our floating islands to represent the hollowed out concrete, hexagonal structures that allow the city to float, yet are strong enough to sustain a category 5 hurricane while being mobile if the storm is too strong to withstand weather conditions. We are using recyclable materials to build our model and to represent the sustainable building materials that would actually be used to construct the city. Charlotte began designing and building the community floating pad that would allow the citizens of Santa Cruz del Islote to enjoy more space to gather to play soccer, grow food, bike, run, picnic or sell/shop for goods in our re-purposed recyclable materials shop. Laurence is working on the energy/services pad which will have a solar powered desalinator to provide more clean water to the island, a solar system to provide more electricity and a waste management facility that will sort and provide uses for waste. To build these pads, we had to figure out which scale to use to represent different aspect of our model and develop ideas for how to use our recyclable materials to showcase our ideas effectively. We have also had to work on figuring out who is best suited to do each aspect of our model. It turns out Charlotte has had previous experience with model building and so she has been a real leader in helping the rest of us to figure out how to make models of houses, trees, machines and people so that our model will be clear to those who view it. Laurence and Ollie worked on figuring out how to construct electronic circuits and moving parts using a design kit and together they made an alarm, a light bulb light up, a spinning wheel take off and more. We have to include at least one moving part on our model, so their exploration should hopefully help us to arrive at how to build our moving part.

Week Ahead: This week we will be finishing up the construction of our model and practicing how to describe what we built for the students, parents and competition goers that come to view our model in at NC State on Saturday.

Math This Week:

Laurence, Charlotte and Ollie each worked on their own math learning goals this week. Ollie took his math diagnostic so that IXL could best support his math learning. Laurence continued working with multiplying decimals. Laurence’s math is becoming more complex as he moves forward and this complexity means many steps and possibilities for making small mistakes that can add up to a wrong answer. Laurence is doing an amazing job at growing the patience and self-discipline to sustain working through these complex problems and noticing errors and revising ideas as needed until he reaches his end goal. Charlotte is moving from solving linear equations to graphing solutions to linear equations using slope intercept form. She too is working on very complex math that requires self-discipline and patience to arrive at a solution.

Beyond being useful for developing math skills, this kind of self-discipline, patience and delaying gratification as one works towards a larger goal is a life skill that is useful to everyone over the course of a whole lifetime.

Science This Week:

This past week we explored the Ocean Global Conveyor Belt as a sort of world circulatory system that moves slowly around our planet. We did experiments to see the role density, temperature and salinity plays in moving the ocean currents. We also watched a TEd Ed video to help us visualize how the ocean currents on Earth work and why they are important to sustaining life on Earth. We are exploring ocean currents and learning how the movement of water in the Ocean Global Conveyor Belt is changing as a way to understand why we need to protect our oceans, what problems we may be facing if we don’t and to feel empowered with knowledge so we can make choices that fit with our values and the realities of life on our planet. This knowledge is key to understanding why floating city models are being designed and why this is a focus for the Future City Competition this year.

Social Studies:

This week we explored making decisions for how to design and build our model with respect for the people living on Santa Cruz del Islote. As Columbia is the source of governance for the island, why would they fund a floating island project for this island? What benefits does this island offer for our larger world community? How do we support this island by collaborating with the people living there and show respect for their way of living while offering solutions that may improve their capacity to share their powerful way of living? We considered our thoughts on these questions as we made model decisions like: moving the tourist part of this island to one of the floating pads, adding to the school on the island that for now only educations kids at an elementary level, what to do with the aquarium on the island that would encourage sharing respect for animals to the many tourists who may visit this island. Thinking with multiple perspective is a skill that develops over time as kids begin to encounter this way of approaching decision making over and over again. Ollie and Laurence are often listening to and participating in this decision making process when we make choices about how to work together with each other and in making choices about how to build our model. Charlotte, at 14, is able to think even more abstractly and so she and I are having richer, more complex discussions about what choices to make with the people living on Santa Cruz Del Islote.

ELA:

Last week Charlotte and Laurence added to their blogs with their description of Santa Cruz del Islote and our plans for model building. This week, we worked more on the discussion side of ELA by talking through understanding what we know about this island and making collaborative decisions about how to design and build our model. We also worked on researching as we needed to understand ideas that would help us make model design decisions. For example, Laurence is constructing the desalinator. We had to research to figure out what a simple desalinator could look like, how big it had to be to service the island etc. Charlotte and Ollie went back to our video about Santa Cruz del Islote several times to figure out how things looked on the island or to see how the island was organized to help us to organize and construct our model realistically.

We also continued to read chapters of “Going Solo” book club style. We will finish up our book next week and make decisions about what to read next and how we will read. Ollie has shared that he enjoys audio books and so he’s choosing an audio book to begin reading for home learning. Laurence may try this option out as well. On Thursday, Charlotte and I read a chapter of “Going Solo” on our own while Ollie and Laurence worked on model building. It will be interesting to see where our reading journey takes us next and in what form. The point is for the kids to feel like learning is a collaborative process that we construct together. The teacher doesn’t own the learning process and learning doesn’t just exist in school. Kids of any age are capable of sharing how they learn best, describing what they like and don’t like and experimenting to find what works best for them. I am hoping we will find a way to read and write that feels good to the kids so that they wind up seeing learning in this way as a bit of a pleasure.

Foreign Language:

Laurence and Charlotte continued with their respective Duo Lingo work on Japanese and Spanish while Ollie began working on Duo Lingo French. It is exciting to have 3 different languages all being learned in the same space. This week, I asked each of the kids to share how many different languages they could say “hello” in. Laurence said “English counts” which helped us to put English in perspective as one of the many ways people communicate around the world.

Mindset :

Please see the bolded areas throughout this post as examples of how we are building a unique view of ourselves as individual learners coming together to construct our own unique learning process that we collaborate and share with each other.

Self-Directed Learning:

Ollie added basketball playing and flight simulation to his self-directed learning goals for home learning this week. Laurence and Charlotte continued with the self directed goals they’ve been working on. Laurence began working on how to play “Moonlight Sonata” and it was wonderful to sit with him and listen to the process he uses for how to begin to learn such a complex song. Charlotte has also been sharing and coming to understanding of her learning process and how breaking big projects down into little projects may help her to finish projects. One of our main goals for our Future City Project was just to finish the project as both Laurence and Charlotte described that sticking with a big project to completion is a hard thing for them. Laurence cited “getting bored, maintaining focus through preferred and not preferred aspects of a big project” as an obstacle and Charlotte cited “getting caught up in wanting it to be a certain way, realistic goals” as an obstacle. We will finish our model so this is definitely a success for both Laurence and Charlotte and a good point of reflection for how we approach future projects.

Photos From Our Week:

News/Reminders:

It was great to be back together this past week 🙂 A few reminders and some news below:

• On Monday, Ollie, a potential new student will join us for a day so he and his family can check out our learning program to see if it is a good fit for Ollie and his family.

• Tuesday will be our first Homeschool ArtRageous Art Class from 1-2:30. I will drop the kids off after, but of course they will be later than usual as class doesn’t end till 2:30.

• The Future City Competition will be on January 25th. The kids, Michelle and I will head up on Friday the 24th to spend the night at the Holiday Inn Express in the University Area near NC State so we can be ready for the competition on Saturday. There will be nearly 1000 people in attendance so it will be an exciting day.

Project Learning this Week: 

This week we completed parts 3 and 4 of the Future City project which were due on Friday the 10th of January. We also measured and painted the base of our project board this week to resemble the ocean. This was our starting point to actually building the model and we had to work on some strategies for collaboration that would work for all of us for the remainder of the project. We decided on twelve, 1/2 acre sized hexagonal, interconnected shapes for our floating city and learned how to draw a hexagon using a compass and a ruler. Charlotte is busy making us a pattern of a 14.66 inch diameter hexagon so we can use it to make the scaled floating city pads for our model. We have decided to build a model to benefit the people of Santa Cruz del Islote. This island is located off the coast of Columbia, South America and it is the most densely populated place in the world. Please see Charlotte’s and Laurence’s individual posts for more information about Santa Cruz del Islote and our plans to expand the living space for the people living there.

Week Ahead: This week we will construct the floating island pads and begin to figure how to design and scale the houses for the 861 people who live on this island. We will also begin to figure out and construct other aspects of the model using the rubric designed by the Future City Competition. Although we are competing on Project Plans and the model itself this year, it is possible that we could aim to win one of the special category awards so I will go over the possibilities this week.

Math: Both Charlotte and Laurence are close to finishing their 2nd of 5 math units for this year. Laurence has been working on multiplying numbers with decimals this week and showing lots of patience in completing multi-step problems. Some of the work he did this week included 7 step problems and so lots of chances to make a tiny mistake that would mean getting a 10 minute long problem wrong and having to restart. He was amazingly patient and focused! I loved how he noticed the uptick in the number of minutes he could stick with it and stay focused as compared to previous work. Charlotte has been working on linear equations with fractional coefficients and these too require lots of focus and commitment as each problem has so many little steps that one minor mistake can mean a set back. Charlotte uses her strategies to take breaks when she needs them, she tries doing 3 problems at a time and then revisiting or the latest …trying to spread doing math over two sessions during the day rather than trying to do it all at once. I am super impressed by their commitment to learning math and even more impressed by how well they honor and understand their individual ways of approaching learning.

Science: We are busy learning why the ocean is essential to life on Earth. This past week we learned that the ocean produces 50% of the oxygen on Earth and absorbs 50 X more carbon dioxide than the land. We learned that the interconnected system of oceans acts like a circulatory system that regulates the weather and climate on Earth and more! We chose to learn about the ocean while we are working on the Future City Project as it helps us to understand the impact of a city that is constructed on the ocean.

Social Studies: We learned all about Santa Cruz del Islote and how the people live on the most densely populated island on Earth. We learned about the positive and the challenging things they face. The people on this island live closely packed together in simple living conditions. Most people live on the island their whole lives. There is no police force as they are most often peaceful and able to resolve conflicts on their own. Their life span of 85-90 years is more than the average even though they live with very little material wealth. The island has no electricity available at night and they gather rain water for a source of fresh water. Most people entertain themselves by playing games together, dancing and just enjoying the company of one another. This is a very different lifestyle than most of us have in the US and so it offers us an alternative perspective to think about what makes a good life and the variety of choices that are possible.

ELA: We are reading “Going Solo” by Roald Dahl. We will finish up this book next week. It has been fascinating to learn about WWII from the perspective of someone who was on the ground during the war. Roald Dahl was an RAF pilot and he describes his personal experience of being a pilot during the war. Shockingly, the pilots during the war received very little training before facing combat situations and also, the British air fleet in Egypt and Greece often were vastly outnumbered by the German air fleet.

Foreign Language: Charlotte is working on learning Spanish daily through Duo Lingo while Laurence is learning Japanese. Both have linked their Duo Lingo accounts so they can see each other’s progress.

Mindset: We have been thinking a lot about collaboration and how we can achieve a model of collaboration that works for us. What has worked best so far is for us to talk about ideas until we come up with one we agree on and then dividing up the work to achieve our idea so that we have a balance of working individually and working together. We have also been working on thinking about who learning is for. Learning is a lifelong process that we engage in over and over again throughout our whole lives. Understanding ourselves as learners and making a process that is a good fit for us so that we enjoy learning is key and so we are thinking about strategies that work for each of us as we move closer and closer to honoring our unique ways of being and learning.

Self – Directed Learning: Charlotte has added swimming and personal training to her learning goals. She is also working on enjoying the learning process and completing projects she starts by breaking down bigger projects into tiny projects so they feel less daunting. Charlotte is getting excited about learning more about crocheting so she can make a sweater pattern she found and she’s continuing the quilt making she’s been doing for some time. Laurence is progressing on learning new songs on the piano and he most often chooses piano playing for breaks between academic learning. He continues to work on his skateboarding and he has an upcoming competition in Columbia, SC! This week, Laurence and I made homemade macaroni and cheese to investigate the main components to achieving a great dish. He and his family made a version they weren’t happy with the week before and so we were trying to get to the root cause of what makes a great macaroni and cheese so Laurence can use this base recipe as a source to create his own unique versions.

News/Reminders:

This week the kids and I will make Christmas cookies together on Thursday to enjoy being together in celebration of the coming holiday. Please feel free to send in any ingredients they’d like to use to make their selection of cookie:)

Thanks for signing up for Homeschool Art-Rageous! Both Charlotte and Laurence are signed up and our first class is on Tuesday, January 14th from 1:00-2:30. Classes are every Tuesday, with the exception of March 11th. Classes finish on Tuesday April 8th. I will bring the kids to class each week and then home afterwards.

Please see my upcoming message to share Michelle’s night of “Activate the Awesome” on Thursday, January 16th from 6:30-8:30 at the Hurt Hub in Davidson. This evening is all about celebrating the brilliance you brought to 2024, crafting an unstoppable vision for 2025 and giving back in a way that truly makes an impact. Please see Michelle’s site for more details on Activate the Awesome.

Our Future City Competition is on January 25th in Raleigh. We will be heading up on January 24th, spending the night and then heading back after the competition. There is a stipend for the hotel cost so we won’t have to pay for hotels for the kids.

We will need to fill out the honor code and media release ahead of going to the Future City competition. These are both online documents and I will find a way to help both families complete them.

Our holiday break starts at the end of this week and we meet back up again for our first day of the new year on Monday, January 6th. Wishing everyone has a great holiday!

Project Learning this Week:  We will be heading up to Raleigh for the Future City Competition on January 25th. The coordinator for NC, Mary Beth has graciously reserved rooms for the kids and I for January 24th so that we can be there and ready for the event on Saturday. As this is our first year doing this project, we have been invited to participate by bringing our future city model and get a sense for the event and what it is like.

This project has the kids following the design cycle to complete a creative project with a directed goal and due date. The challenge for this year’s competition is to create a model Future City that floats with at least two innovations to help keep residents healthy and safe. Our model has to include one moving part. This week, while Charlotte was off site learning, Laurence and I worked on and turned in part 1 and 2 of our project plan. This included: setting goals for our project, listing needed materials, imagining possible obstacles/assumptions we’ve made that would hinder completion and creating a schedule for how we’ll complete all the elements of our project. Charlotte shared her Part 1/2 planning prior to her trip and Laurence and I finished it all up and turned it in to Future City electronically on Thursday, ahead of the Friday deadline. Additionally, Laurence and I looked at the rules and rubric for our project so that we could begin designing our model. We also learned about Archimedes and the story of how he discovered that density could be measured using water displacement as a way to begin thinking about how to make our city float. I introduced how to convert measurements to scale using measurements of a table in our learning space as we will use this skill to create our model.

Math: Laurence has been working on learning how to add and subtract with decimals this week and on Thursday, he worked on solving real life problems using this concept. He will continue learning how to multiply and divide with decimals this coming week. Charlotte will continue this week with learning how to solve linear algebraic equations.

Science: Laurence and I did some experiments to help us visualize the water cycle in action this week by making clouds in a jar. The experiments were Laurence’s idea and we compared two different approaches to the experiment to figure out which approach gave us better results. We also made ooblek this week to explore the properties of matter. We documented our learning in video and photos.

ELA: Laurence and I took a break from reading “Going Solo” this week while Charlotte was away and read “Phantom Tollbooth” by Juster Norton. Laurence shared Tyler the Creator’s new album, Chromakopia, with me a couple of weeks ago and we discovered that the album’s title and inspiration is from the novel “Phantom Tollbooth.” Chromakopia is a character in the novel who colors the world with music.

Foreign Language: Laurence continued with his daily Duo Lingo Japanese lessons. 

Mindset: The greater purpose of our lives arises out of the small choices and things that we honor and care for everyday. Over the past many weeks, we have been thinking about balance and how to achieve it. Balancing directed learning with self-directed learning. Balancing instant gratification with finding joy in the daily tasks of life so we can work towards achieving longer term goals. Balancing taking a share of responsibility in our communities with enjoying the rewards.

This learning comes in all the small choices and tasks we engage in everyday as part of learning together. For example, this week, Laurence helped design his home learning plan and agreed to text me upon completion as part of taking responsibility and finding enjoyment in the learning process. He also shared responsibility for cleaning up the kitchen with me after we finished doing our science experiments. Committing to completing our long term Future City Project and following through with completing and turning in Part 1 and 2 this week also contributed towards our learning our larger goal of achieving balance.

Self – Directed Learning: Laurence continues to self motivate learning the piano, skate board and working on his drawing. This week, his questions led to reading “Phantom Tollbooth”, doing science experiments to make a cloud in a jar, exploring the properties of matter using ooblek and making bao buns together. Charlotte was off to Disney this week and we will hear all about the things she explored while there.

News/Reminders:

Please sign up for Art-Rageous Homeschool Arts Class through Mooresville Parks and Recreation if you haven’t yet. This class will start in January on Tuesdays from 1-2:30 and give us a chance to meet other middle years kids who are also choosing an alternative way of learning 🙂 We’ve got a full week of learning this week and next and then a holiday break beginning Monday December 23rd – Friday, January 3rd. We will meet back up again on Monday, January 6th.

Project Learning this Week:  This we looked at the breakdown of the schedule for due dates for the Future City Competition. We are signed up to complete two out of four aspects of the Future City Project this year including the project plan and the model build. The project plan is delivered in four parts, the first of which is due this week by December 13th. Charlotte completed her portion of Part 1 last week (see details in next week preview, just below) while Laurence and I worked on understanding and exploring why using magnetism to float his city above the Earth’s surface wouldn’t, so far, be a realistic possibility based on all the learning we’ve done so far. We also shared our research with Charlotte and began to consider other ways of how to make our city float. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: Completing Project Part 1 includes setting at least 3 goals for our project, identifying needed supplies, and considering assumptions we’ve made that may become barriers to project completion down the road. Laurence and I will work on merging Charlotte’s thoughts with his and mine and turning in Project Part 1 by this Thursday. Mary Beth Lyles, the organizer of the NC Future City Project, let me know this week that it is a possibility that our team could come to Raleigh with our project and so we will need to make some decisions as to whether we want to do this. Coming to Raleigh with our project will likely mean that Charlotte and Laurence would have to present their project to the judges, so once I talk to them to see if they are up for that, I will share more with all of you :).

Math: Laurence completed his math unit on division this week after a challenging checkpoint using multiple operations to apply his knowledge to real life problems. After an initial figuring out time where we drew the scenarios in the math problems, he got the hang of them and brilliantly solved them. Charlotte completed her diagnostic update this week and continued with her unit on linear equations which focused on working with fractional coefficients in algebraic equations. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: Laurence began previewing his new math unit on decimals last week and will continue working on addition and subtraction using decimals this week.

Social Studies: Both Laurence and Charlotte began a more linear study of US History this week by learning about what led the American colonies to declare independence from Britain and how the American Revolution unfolded. I shared with them that, at the time, America was thinking independently and “out of the box” in imagining they could create a different kind of government where people could be integral to making decisions about governance and engage directly with making the rules and rights of a government for the people and by the people.  NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: Laurence and I will begin thinking and wondering about how and when change happens and how small moments over time can develop into big changes or revolutions, or a completely new way of doing something.

ELA: We continued to read “Going Solo” by Roald Dahl aloud, book club style. We are reading about how Roald Dahl entered WWI as a pilot flying for the British Royal Air Force while he was stationed in Kenya working for the Shell company. It has been interesting to hear about how WWI looked from the perspective of 23 year old Road Dahl, an untrained civilian, who along with local Africans wound up becoming part of the war. Both kids published on their blogs this week. Laurence wrote about Factory Farming to share research we did to make choices around how we’d like our food systems to work in our Floating City while Charlotte wrote about Monocropping for the same purpose. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: Laurence and I will wait to continue reading “Going Solo” when Charlotte returns next week. This week, we may read “Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster. This book is the basis for Tyler the Creator’s new album, Chromakopia which Laurence shared with me. I thought it would be interesting to read the book to consider why he chose this as his album title and how it plays in to the lyrics in the songs on the album.

Foreign Language: Laurence continued with his daily Duo Lingo Japanese lessons.

Self – Directed Learning: We had an amazing opportunity for a snow day this week and all of us had fun making maple syrup snow candy while Laurence especially loved making a snowman and saving snowballs in the freezer knowing this round of snow would soon be gone :).Laurence has been working lots on playing the piano and exploring new songs as well as exploring how the scale works on a piano and thinking about how to read music. We talked about how the lines on the staff can be remembered as “Every Good Boy Does Fine (EGBDF)” while the spaces in between can be remembered as “FACE”. Laurence played these and noticed how the notes sound melodic when played together. He also shared “Miles the Music Kid” with me and how he approaches playing music. Charlotte found a new comic called “Marionetta” and was deeply engaged in reading as well as sharing with me how the story unfolded, the comic style itself and the artwork. Both kids tried to explain the concept of “Memes” to me and in doing so, we recognized how difficult it can be to explain something clearly enough to be understood by someone who has no connection to the concept you are trying to convey. I often ask the kids to explain an idea like you are sharing it with an alien from outer space and this often helps to get them outside of the assumptions we make about perspective and imagining that everyone is coming from the same place in understanding something.

News/Reminders:

We have a short week this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday. No classes Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Wishing everyone a great holiday 🙂 Please call, text or chat with me to arrange a meeting time in December so I can share current learning plans and set goals going forward. I am able to meet most any days after the kids leave.

Project Learning this Week: This week we looked at why Future City chose “floating cities” as the theme of this year’s competition. Climate change and rising ocean levels mean that more than 500 ++ cities globally could be under water by 2050. We looked at some of the models of floating cities that are currently being designed as a way to begin to think about our city model and how it will look. We also used John Hopkins University “Food Systems Primer and Food Span” resources to look at our US food systems, including the factory farming of animals to produce meat and other animal-based products as well as monocropping (or monoculture) to produce our main US crops to help us make decisions about how we will produce food in our future city. We are participating in this year’s competition as new team auditing the competition using the resources/guidance available to produce a project plan and a model of our city. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: The first part of our project plan is due December 13th so I will go over it with the kids and help them to get started. We will do our grocery store investigation field trip on Monday to research the kinds of meat/animal products available and compare the cost and labeling of factory farmed versus family farmed/free range products. We will also analyze labels on products to note how many items include by-products of our main US crops with a focus on how much corn and corn byproducts are in our food. We are also challenging ourselves to make a meatless meal this week by making vegetable dumplings to begin to think about what it would be like to create a city where meat/animal product consumption is lower knowing our current US consumptions levels and agricultural practices are unsustainable based on the research we did last week.

Math: Laurence continued with his unit on long division while Charlotte began a new unit on linear equations. Laurence also took a math diagnostic to update how his math skills are progressing. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: Both kids will continue with the math units they are currently working on. Charlotte is due for a diagnostic update this week.

Social Studies: Both Laurence and Charlotte played the “Three Branches of Government Game” with ICivics to see how our US government is organized to make a plan for our country and pass relevant laws to achieve the plan we set using a checks and balance system so no branch gets more powerful, and all must work collectively to get things done (ideally :)). Following the game, the kids demonstrated their knowledge by categorizing who belongs to each branch and who does which kind of work as well as analyze decisions to see if they would be considered constitutional or not and why. Finally, they played a game of “Blookit” to test and review what they learned. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: We won’t begin new SS during our short week next week.

ELA: We are continuing to read “Going Solo” by Roald Dahl aloud, book club style and will continue into next week. The kids read non-fiction articles through the Food Span Program this week to research and understand of our US food systems. Laurence completed a new post this week to reflect his understanding of our water systems and Charlotte posted this same blog topic last week. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: Both will publish blog posts about what they learned about US food systems using the research we did last week and we will begin to work on our project plan for Future City. All of these reading/writing activities meet NC ELA learning goals.

Foreign Language: Laurence continued with his daily Duo Lingo Japanese lessons.

Self – Directed Learning: Charlotte and Laurence both worked on their drawing skills this week. Charlotte also continued work on the patterns for her string project while Laurence spent time learning a song on the piano. Laurence cooked dumplings from scratch on Thursday and also made dumplings for his family as part of the self-directed portion of his home learning on Friday. Charlotte will have this same opportunity next week 🙂 We are also measuring and collecting rainwater and researched to find out best ways to begin collecting and using rainwater at home. We learned that NC has laws in place for the collection of rainwater and the why behind these laws.

No pictures of Charlotte this week as she was sick on Thursday and so didn’t have a chance to make dumplings with us. She will get to make dumplings together with us on Monday so more photos to come 🙂

Happy Weekend! I’m tweaking the blog a little bit to make it more convenient for those who want a quicker read on what we’ve been up to on a given week and a preview of the week ahead. Photos of our week are posted at the end 🙂

Quick Read: Our Week 11/11-11/15

Project Learning: This Week: Laurence, Charlotte and I watched the video introduction for our Future City project to help us envision what a future city might look like. We also spent the week learning about the water cycle, understanding global concerns around water scarcity and new technology aimed at creating solutions. We learned where Charlotte sources water for our use and how the water we use daily cycles through treatment plants to become wastewater. We went to Jetton Park on Thursday to conduct science experiments to learn how groundwater is filtered and we tested a variety of water sources to understand what is in our water and how we can determine if our water source is of good quality for use. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: We will be looking at industrial food production, main US crops and how this process impacts food health, availability and environmental costs to create unique solutions for our own future city. We are waiting on confirmation of our visit to the McDowell Water Treatment plant and hoping for a visit this Thursday.

Math: Laurence worked on long division IXL Skills and increasing his automatic recall of math facts while Charlotte was finishing up her learning on scientific notation. She is about to finish the unit on this topic and completed Checkpoint #1. Checkpoints take what was learned and applies it to challenging, rigorous world problems and applications of the learning during the unit. It is meant to mimic the rigor of NC State Testing Standards. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: Laurence will continue with the long division unit next week and Charlotte will begin a new unit on analyzing and solving linear equations. She will also slowly work through the checkpoints #2 and #3 from the scientific notation unit until completion.

Social Studies: We continued our study of US government, and this week explored the three branches of government, the role of each branch and who serves in each branch. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW: The kids will play “Three Branches Game” to see how the three branches work together using checks and balances to create and pass new laws that shape how our country functions.

ELA: We finished reading “Boy” by Roald Dahl this week. Lots of great open- ended questions and book club style discussions resulted from our reading of this book! Charlotte is working on a literary essay to reflect themes in “Boy” and wrote/posted an essay to show her learning about the water cycle/water scarcity/solution for our future city. NEXT WEEK PREVIEW:The kids voted to read the sequel “Going Solo” next. Charlotte is working on a literary essay to explore the themes in “Boy”. Laurence will write/post his essay on water cycle/water scarcity/solution for future city essay and Charlotte will finish/post her essay on “Boy”

Foreign Language: Laurence continued his daily learning of Japanese on Duo Lingo and is also working on learning how to write Japanese characters. Charlotte is showing readiness to add Spanish to her weekly study based on our discussion this week.

Self-Directed Learning: Charlotte brought her string project this week and Laurence continued with learning how to play the piano. Both kids worked on perfecting their sushi making skills 🙂 Many thanks to Laurence’s parents for providing the ingredients!

Home learning: The goal of home learning is to help the kids see learning as a life long process that doesn’t just exist at school. The capacity to learn and “figure things out” exists in every facet of life and it continues over the course of our whole life journey. Home learning for both Charlotte and Laurence is divided up into “directed learning” and “self-directed” learning so they can envision that learning can come from within them and also be assigned by someone outside of them to help them achieve a larger goal. Both kinds of learning are important and all learning requires self-discipline and agency. Laurence is working independently on his home learning and sending me texts to let me know when it is completed while Charlotte is working her way to independence by meeting me at the library on Fridays to complete learning tasks.

Social Learning: Both families received the Mooresville Parks and Recreation offerings that include learning/social options for homeschool and non-homeschooled kids. I talked with the kids this week about adding social opportunities to our learning program. Both expressed feeling satisfied with how we do things now and with learning together, but agreed on trying a once a month, free, drop- in art class for homeschoolers so we could begin to see who else is out there learning like we are. There are options on this list that fall outside of school hours as well, so please take a look at the link if you are interested. I am also chatting with another homeschool family about the possibility of meeting to learn together on occasion. We get a lot accomplished in our learning week and so decisions about adding extra social time or learning opportunities are made with the kids and with our overall individual and combined goals in mind. Please feel free to send along any suggestions for social opportunities that you all may find as well:)

Individual Learning Plans: Both kids have individual learning plans designed to meet their learning needs. Meeting their goals may include social learning, academic learning, mentoring, counseling specific topics, one on one support to meet goals and more.

We began our week together brainstorming all of the systems we could think of that are designed and organized to meet the needs of people living together in a place. Our list, of systems so far, include: healthcare, food, water, education, government, art/music/culture, air/climate/pollution, safety (police, military, international relations), criminal justice, and housing/construction). This is a great chance to have a conversation at home about the systems that exist in our larger world, but also in our smaller communities and families and how these systems can be both beneficial and limiting.

We will continue to add systems to our list as we think about and explore them on our path towards envisioning what a future city could look like. In coming weeks, both Charlotte and Laurence will have a chance to envision their own versions of a future city and then we will begin to come together to create our collaborative team version. The Future City Project asks us to imagine and create a city that makes the world an even better place by innovating at least 2 of our systems. Exploring and building an understanding of our current systems and how they function, will give us the foundation for our creative minds to imagine new possibilities.

We are currently investigating our food systems. Studying the change from creating goods to meet the needs of people in one’s community to building factories to produce mass quantities of goods as part of Charlotte’s history provided the foundation to learning how this factory model of production has impacted our food systems. During our Charlotte Regional Farmer’s Market visit, Aime shared with us that NC is a major producer of soybeans and how different areas focus on producing large amounts of one kind of food. Through Farm Link webinar, we learned that 30% – 40% of food produced in the US is wasted and thought about how we could envision food differently so that we have a higher level of connection and appreciation for the food we produce in the US. See Charlotte’s individual post about the amazing squash casserole she made with food that might otherwise have been wasted. Laurence made a beautiful caramel sauce to turn apples that may have been wasted into a dish we all enjoyed eating together. I shared the apple butter I made out of bruised apples that may otherwise have been wasted. We will use these as a jumping off points, after fall break, to research how mono-cropping and factory production of food has impacted the quality, quantity and availability of our food.

This week we also dived into understanding our US government system by learning the process of how a US president is elected. We began with a basic vocabulary list and a pre-assessment to see what Charlotte and Laurence knew about this system already and then they each played the “Win the White House” Game by I-Civics as a way to participate as a candidate in the process of how a US president is elected. Laurence’s family is playing the “Win the White House” Game this weekend as part of home learning and I can’t wait to hear more from Laurence about their perspectives following the game as both Simon and Michelle are coming from the UK, with a very different process for electing leaders. Charlotte had a chance to play a little to get a sense for the game on Monday, and will continue to play for home learning this weekend to perfect her strategy for winning the election. Following game play, both kids read “The Electoral Process” and completed an activity to check understanding and round out their knowledge. Laurence has a draft post in progress that will appear soon on his blog to show his understanding of the election process and Charlotte is working on hers this weekend. This coming week, we will have a chance to look through campaign ads and build an understanding of how candidates and points of view are funded and shared through various media.

Math this week included work with decimals and multiplication for Laurence and scientific and standard notation for Charlotte. Laurence earned a certificate of recognition for 1,000 math questions completed on IXL this week. Charlotte earned this same recognition on October 22nd. Laurence practiced using graph paper to help him line up his numbers while adding and multiplying so that he’d avoid making mistakes based on misreading number placement. While working through scientific and standard notation, Charlotte and I got to have a great conversation on how overwhelming it can be when too many new expectations for learning are presented at once and the need to break learning down into smaller steps that we can achieve it over time. IXL lumped converting both negative and positive exponents back and forth between standard and scientific notation into one exercise and it was just too overwhelming to practice all of these different skills all at once. I printed a consolidated, step by step process that separated each skill and then printed practice sheets so Charlotte could learn each step and skill separately before trying to mix them all together on IXL. Life can be like this too…sometimes, we can have unrealistic expectations for how long it takes to become skilled at anything we try that is new. We also sometimes unfairly evaluate ourselves and our own capacity to learn when we categorize ourselves or others as “smart” or “not smart” rather than using a growth mindset to see ourselves as having the capacity to learn when we are patient with ourselves, take small, realistic steps towards and refrain from comparing ourselves to anyone else. We are each our own person, with our own unique gifts and purpose. None of us is good at everything and things that come easily to one, take more time to learn for another. We support ourselves better when we feel our value and see our strengths.

We continued reading “Boy” on Monday and Tuesday, but postponed reading on Wednesday and Thursday because Charlotte was sick and we didn’t want to read without her. Reading together has been one of the most relaxed, joyful and open parts of our learning together and it just wouldn’t be as good without Charlotte there too. We will pick up reading again when Charlotte is back on Monday. Both Charlotte and Laurence are regularly writing and posting on their individual blogs, so please be sure to check and see what they’ve posted each week. If you scroll to the bottom of their posts, you’ll see a place that says, “leave a reply”. This is the place where you are welcome to leave a comment or a question. Sometimes, it may feel more comfortable to read a comment and have a chance to process it rather than be faced with an impromptu conversation about something we wrote or created 🙂 After the kids write, they share their writing with me and we process through editing and revising together. Charlotte worked on citing sources this week to add credibility to her claims while Laurence worked on ordering the information in his paragraphs in a way that will make the most sense for a reader. Laurence is much more able to notice his own grammatical errors related to punctuation and capitalization. He reads his writing out loud and this really helps him to notice the need for a comma or full stop when it is missing.

In addition to directed learning, both kids are engaged in their own self-directed learning. Laurence made pasta this week and also continues to make amazing progress on his self-directed learning to play the piano! Charlotte is working on a bead project and has amazing ideas for sewing projects. Both kids are regularly working on self-directed drawing and animating work. They are always welcome to bring any project they are working on. Home learning on Fridays also offers an amazing opportunity for the kids to expand on the self-directed learning projects that come naturally from their individual interests and passions. During our Fall Break, Laurence and family will head to Washington DC and this exploration will represent Laurence’s home learning. Please keep me posted on any travels that include home learning days so that I can incorporate these into our learning and record them as learning days in their record books. Any days that are posted as “home learning days” on our calendar are an opportunity to develop the self-discipline needed to reach long term and life-long learning goals.

Following our fall break, we will explore our water systems and learn more about the water cycle. I am scheduling a trip to Charlotte’s wastewater and water treatment plant as this is an 8th grade science goal and it will help us understand this system for our Future City Project.