the allen's: An Apple a Day

Things are moving along well here at Arrow Academy. Believe it or not, even with the addition of Tacy Mae, we are right on schedule with school.

Here’s a sample of what Ty’s been studying in school:

Math – Fractions, fractions, fractions! Adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers, making equivalent fractions, and reducing fractions. So far so good. Thankfully, Ty seems to have no trouble understanding the ins and outs of fractions.

Language – Parts of Speech. We’ve been hitting subjects, verbs, and nouns for quite some time now. In fact, both student and teacher are beginning to get bored with them. This week Ty started diagramming sentences. (Now there’s a skill no adult can live without, right??) Up next are pronouns and adjectives.

Spelling – Spelling, spelling, spelling. What can I say? He ain’t got it. As an excellent speller myself, I am perplexed as to how to help him. We trudge through the weekly lists, but I feel like it’s a waste of time. Alas! There’s got to be a better way out there.

Reading – Ty received Si Robertson’s book Si-chology 101 for Christmas, so we’ve been using that instead of the aBeka textbooks for our reading material. (The aBeka books tend to be pretty lame and outdated.) Switching books has Ty more excited about reading time. He actually requests to do reading first every morning.

History – I’m excited about this one. This week Ty began a study of Louisiana. We are learning about our state’s history, culture, land, and government. I’m planning to work in some fun activities like making Mardi Gras masks and cooking gumbo. We are also going to do an art lesson based on the Blue Dog paintings by Louisiana native George Rodrigue. To wrap things up, I plan to have Ty create a display board featuring some of the things he’s learned about Louisiana. And I really, really would like to take a weekend fieldtrip down to Baton Rouge or New Orleans, but that would have to wait until after basketball season.

Science – Hands down, science is Ty’s favorite subject. Currently Ty is studying geology. One lesson last week discussed the difference between the earth’s diameter and circumference. To help make this concept a little more clear, we did a demonstration in the kitchen with an apple. Here are a couple of pictures I took of our little experiment.

First, measuring the circumference…

What you don’t see in these picture is that before we could get started, Ty took a giant bite out of one side of the apple. This boy and his fruit! I’ve never seen a human being who could ingest as much fruit as Ty. He’ll eat an entire pint of strawberries in under a minute if you don’t ration them out to him. And the more sour the fruit the better. He actually prefers under-ripe strawberries, green apples, and green grapes.

Anyway, once he measured around the apple, he cut the string and set it aside.

Then the fun part.

Yes, I let him use a big knife to cut the apple in half. Yes, grandmothers, I gave him a lesson on how to properly and safely use the knife. Notice his fingers are clearly out of the way of the blade…