Exam Time

We're just now finishing up our final term of the school year, so we'll be doing exams next week. I've come up with exam questions based on Charlotte Mason's exams, except that I'm only assigning ten questions per student. It's summer and we're all ready for a break, I didn't want to tack on a grueling week of exams to a vacation that's only starting in the middle of July. Summer's going to be short enough as it is.

Kahoa - Year 3.5

Bible
1. Tell about Gideon and his three hundred. (Judges)
2. How is Jesus better than the angels? (Hebrews)

3. Writing/Dictation (poem by Christina Rosetti)
Look over first, then write:
The city mouse lives in a house;--
The garden mouse lives in a bower,
He's friendly with the frogs and toads,
And sees the pretty plants in flower.

History (A Child's History of the World)
4. Tell about "Bibles made of stone and glass."
5. What do you know about Napoleon?

Literature
6. How did Myles help his father? (Men of Iron by Howard Pyle)
7. What happened to Gobo? (Bambi by Felix Salton)

Geography (Elementary Geography by Charlotte Mason)
8. What do you know about the surface of the earth? Name some continents.

Science (All About Famous Inventors and Their Inventions by Fletcher Pratt)
9. Tell about the invention of the cotton gin and who invented it, OR the airplane.

Math
10. 232 x 34
6x + 4 = 40
Write three ways of dividing 28 by 4. How much is that?

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Keola - Year 6

Bible
1. Tell about Gideon and his three hundred. (Judges)
2. How is Jesus better than the angels? (Hebrews)

3. Writing/Dictation
So Gandalf went on with the tale until he came to the fight in the dark the discovery of the lower gate, and their horror that Mr. Baggins had been mislaid. (The Hobbit)

History
4. How/why did Augustus get his title, and what was his name before? (Augustus Caesar's World by G. Foster)
5. Describe a Roman triumphal procession. OR tell what you know of Cleopatra.
6. Tell what you admire about Churchill OR Galileo's contributions to science/math. (Never Give in OR Galileo and the Magic Numbers)

Geography (A Child's Geography of the World by Hillyer)
7. Tell about "the land of the new moon" OR the place where there are "man made mountains."

Natural History/Science (The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson)
8. What do you know about waves or currents?

Citizenship (Plutarch's Lives)
9. What good did Romulus do for Rome?

Picture Study
10. Describe Waterhouse's painting "The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius"

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Kekoa - Year 10

Bible
1. Tell about some of Israel's judges (Judges)
2. Compare Jesus with the angels. (Hebrews)

History (Churchill The Great Democracies)
3. Tell about American Reconstruction after the Civil War.
4. What do you know of the rise of Germany OR the struggle for home rule in Ireland?
5. Why was Victoria so beloved by her people? (Queen Victoria by Sarah Tytler) OR Describe Frederick Douglass's "escape from slavery." (Essays)

Government
6. What is the role of government in a free state? (On Liberty by John Stuart Mill)

Geography
7. Describe the terrain of Scotland (In Search of Scotland by H.V. Morton)

Citizenship (Plutarch's Lives or Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin)
8. Contrast the leadership of Theseus and Romulus. OR explain "all literature and all education are only useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, and THEREFORE kingly, power--first, over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over
all around us."

Science
9. Tell about "winter animals" (Walden by Henry David Thoreau) OR How does physics relate to biology, astronomy, geology, or psychology? (Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman)

Literature (Silas Marner by George Eliot)
10. Describe the character of your favorite person in Silas Marner OR compare the characters of brothers Godfrey and Dunstan.

Years 7-11

Tim and I went through Ambleside Online's booklist and picked our top choices for if we needed to pare down the booklists for years 7-10 (he hasn't done Year 11 yet!) This is what we would pick for each Year if we had to whittle it down. (Not everyone would agree with our choices!)

I'm calling it "Plan B."

This post was too long. So I moved it. Now each year has a page of its own.
Year 7
Year 8
Year 9
Year 10

Dishes

I love dishes. I love looking at patterns. The dishes I have are Corelle because I wanted one set I could use every day that would look good twenty years later, and something nice enough that I could make them look more formal when I wanted to. The pattern I settled on is called English Breakfast. I love them - they're pink and blue (my favorite colors) and they have a nice border with ribbons and roses. They're simple and plain enough that I don't get tired of them. I plan to have these dishes for the rest of my life.

But I started noticing that all my plates and bowls are getting shaved around the edges. I wondered if it was my dishwasher, so I called the company and they said "your washing arm is cracked, we can send someone out to replace it for $200." I took a close look at the arms of the dishwasher, top and bottom, no cracks. I decided not to spend the money to replace something that doesn't seem broken. A friend suggested that maybe my water is too hot. So I switched the water setting. It didn't help. In fact, my glasses were starting to have nicks and slivers missing on the edges. That's dangerous, but not a huge deal, I'm not in love with my glasses.

Then a couple weeks ago another friend happened to mention in passing that Cascade Complete is the worst detergent because it eats away your dishes. Hmmm. When my dishwasher was new, I did a little research online and a few sites raved about Cascade Complete, that it was the best detergent. No other detergent was named by name on any other site. So, naturally, that's what I've been using.

So, I've switched detergents - and now I'm working on replacing my damaged dishes piece by piece. My pattern is discontinued, so I'm having to slowly rebuild via ebay.

Raw Pasta

The family had pasta with parmesan cheese and garlic bread - hard to pass up being on a raw diet. I have one of those saladdaccio thingies that cuts zucchini into angel hair pasta, but I haven't had much luck making a satisfactory pasta sauce. The conventional way is to use sun-dried tomatoes and regular tomatoes, but it's always too thin and too bland, and the "pasta" is watery by itself.

I decided I needed pasta after smelling the family dinner. I sliced the zucchini into strands first and then let them sit in a dish lined with a paper towel to hopefully absorb some water while I made the sauce.

But I had no dried tomatoes. So I used two plum tomatoes, half an avocado and a small handful of sunflower seeds to thicken it up. and oregano, basil and some salted sun-dried tomato flakes in a spice jar (dh must have picked those up for his pizza?) and a dash of onion powder. Then I whizzed it in the blender. It turned out the color of sunflower seeds, but it was nice and thick, and it smelled like pasta sauce - the oregano and basil, no doubt.

I read that you can mix ground up sesame seeds and salt to make parmesan cheese, so I did that. It sure looks like parmesan cheese!

The result was perfect! Well, except for the color. The spices and salt, and the thickness of the sauce hit the spot. I will definitely do this again! (I posted the recipe on my blog so I won't lose it!) Next time I'll remember to add garlic!

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I made this again this evening, but instead of mixing the avocado in the blender with the tomatoes, I cut it by hand and added it after. I hoped that it would help keep the sauce more red. It did help, but as everything slowly mingled on the plate, it all turned brownish anyway. Here's a photo of tonight's pasta:

Cat Herding

We loved this ad -- the blog we found it on says this is what their life is like "on the bad days."

Court Rules Against Sanitizing Films

This is disappointing. Hollywood is determined to decide what the public should see, and the courts have ruled that it's illegal to edit objectionable content from movies. (article here) Never mind my right to see a movie without the garbage that the director feels I need to see.

"Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor."

They make it sound like audiences have been duped and getting edited movies unwittingly and against their will - but those who go out of their way to rent or purchase edited movies obviously don't want the entire "vision" of the filmmakers. What's so bad about letting consumers have a choice?

There is a Forbidden Word...

According to this article, "the Church of England is considering rejecting England's patron saint St George on the grounds that his image is too warlike and may offend Muslims."

James Kushiner at Mere Comments thinks the Scots should get rid of the St. Andrew's Cross, too (he was Scottish, after all...). And didn't Robin Hood go on the Crusades too? But perhaps he wasn't a good Englishman either.

"There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England." - Sir Winston Churchill

Look Closely...

Each of these photos is a close-up of something I've found in the yard. Make your best guesses at what they are; I'll post the full pictures in a couple days.

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Because they are interesting, if trivial

I saw this on Athena's blog, and then the Common Room, but I decided to do it after I saw it at Dewey's Tree House.

A - Accent: none
B - Breakfast Item: green smoothie
C - Chore you hate: (only one?) cooking
D - Dad's Name: Mr. B
E - Essential everyday item: Blender
F - Flavor ice cream: vanilla (with peanut butter on top, it's even better!) OR coconut (over the years, I've given this question waaaayyy too much thought!)
G - Gold or Silver?: gold
H - Happy Place: In front of my computer (pathetic, I know)
I - Insomnia: no, not once I actually go to bed
J - Job - Love or want to leave: Love!
K - Kids: Yes.
L - Living arrangements: 3 bedroom; no discernible decor
M - Mom's birthplace: My mom? Hawaii.
N - Number of houses you've lived in: 10-ish (do barracks count?)
O - Overnight hospital stays: three (all pregnancies, and I didn't sleep at all)
P - Phobia: Making phone calls
Q - Question: Where is everybody?
R - Religious Affiliation: Calvary Chapel
S - Siblings: Two sisters, one brother
T - Time you wake up: 9-ish
U - Unnatural hair colors you've had: None
V - Vegetable you refuse to eat: green bell peppers and slimy okra
W - Worst habit: Mr. B could probably answer that better than I could (but please don't ask him!)
X - X-rays you've had: dental.
Y - Yummy: Pre-raw - baked salmon, iced cake, sandwich cookies, dark chocolate, peanut butter, sweetened coconut flakes, just about anything vanilla
Currently - Thai coconut, banana/blueberry smoothie, coconut/pineapple smoothie, "raw" cashews, mangos
Z - Zealous about? (I changed another one!): CM's educational vision

Modern Paraphrase of the Declaration of Independence

I found this online last year, and it's still there:
MODERN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Happy Fourth!