Friday 30 April 2021

Weekly Wrap UP 4/30/21-- catching up with 11th grade, college and stain glass

 I can't believe I haven't posted  since April 2!  Things are moving along and we are rapidly wrapping up our school year for 11th grade.  Our oldest comes home from college this weekend!  She has successfully completed her first year of college.  She will be doing her final exams online at home.  Then she is job hunting.  By coming home early she should have a head start on finding a job before the high schoolers get out of school:)

Two weeks ago we did get a panic phone (at midnight) call from Firedrake telling us she spilt Ramen soup on her computer and it was no longer working.  She was in the middle of a huge project and was panicking.  The next day my husband and I met her halfway (college is about 4 hours away) and gave her our laptop and had a nice lunch with her.  Afterwards we took her computer back with us to get repaired.  Luckily we bought the extended warranty and should be able to get it repaired without it costing too much. 

MarioFan finished up his online Spanish and US government classes this week.  He will be doing tutoring over the summer weekly for Spanish with his online teacher.   The only online class he now has is Chemistry and it runs until the first week of June due to the teacher having to cancel a few classes due to being ill.   

This month he has been working on building a LED ball practicing his soldering skills.  This has been the hardest project so far and we almost gave up on it several times.  the directions were horrible and the LED kept breaking.  We preserved with the soldering knowing that it probably wouldn't work once we turned it on. 

I eventually found a video on assembling this item but even that was a bit confusing 

We starting off ok 


But as you keep building the ball up it got harder and harder to line up and the LED kept breaking when he bent them according to the directions.  It was frustrating.  Luckily the kit did come with lots of LED and we finished the project  having used every single one of them

Light cube finished 


the bottom lights turned on but not the cube .  Oh well it was good practice.  
MarioFan has one more project to complete and then he is done for the year with this subject.

Only other subjects left for MarioFan to complete with me are Literature and Mat: our goal is to be done by end of May.  

I haven't had as much time for my glass this month.  My husband is taking me to Kokomo glass shop in Indiana the end of May (a late Mother's Day gift) so I can buy more glass and visit their glass studio.  

My daughter loves HP Lovecraft Sci fi books so I made her  Cthulhu.  I am making two and selling one to someone else who is also Lovecraft fan.  It will be the third piece I have sold so far:)


This was a simple piece that I also made.  


My husband has gotten a new job!!!  He starts the end of June.  He has been working from home for almost a year.  We finally decided it was time to turn one of our unused rooms into his work space.  I also had him move all his gaming and guitar to his new Man cave.  
This old desk was found in our storage room and we pulled it out for him to use as we didn't want to purchase a new desk, since I will only be homeschooling one more year and he will be able to take over my desk soon.    The room is a little plain but we are still working on it.  Once he starts his new job he will not be working at home quite so much but he can still use it for his music room and gaming room. I am very glad  to get my living room and dining back and not have all his stuff spread out everywhere.  Why we didn't think to do this sooner I don't know.  He also has a new ergo dynamic office chair to use!

MarioFan is signed up for 3-4 camps over the summer and will continue with his Piano and Spanish tutoring.  My summer schedule is filling up fast already!

Friday 2 April 2021

Weekly Wrap Up 4/2/21 -- School Update 11th grade

 Things are going well and a few things are starting to be completed so our School schedule is lighting up just a tad. We are beginning to see the end in sight of the school year!

Mario Fan has completed his Sociology book and watched all the crash course videos on this topic.  

The sociology book we used and completed!

He has also completed his vocabulary book 11th grade worldly wise.

We just finished reading Rudyard Kiplings book 'Kim' and learning about the Great Mutiny of India and the British Raj.   We did a short unit on Lewis Carols poems and have now moved on to another Shakespeare play.


King Lear

Electronics/soldering MarioFan just completed building a car that can follow a track.  This was the hardest project so far as all the components were small and honestly the directions were very confusing.  

The directions were rather difficult and we are learning to read the schematic drawing.

He had to down load a chart on the various color codes for resistors.  I was impressed with his ability to figure them out quickly.  

We did have a small issue with the burning of the wires due to a bridge in the soldering which fried the battery pack.  Luckily we were able to fix it, but a good learning experience for not allowing solder bridges.  

assembling all the parts 
car going around the track

Chemistry part 3 is an online class and he is continuing to enjoy the experiments at home.  This class will go until the end of May.   Again we have been very happy with this teacher and will be doing her physics class next year with her on Outschool.

I manage to capture a picture of online Spanish class which is going well.


US Government class which is online with Outschool will be completed by the end of month  I have been very happy with the two classes taken with this teacher! 

We are beginning to tentatively make summer plans as by next week everyone will have had the second dose of the vaccine!