This Week: Semester's End

Our homeschooling semester is drawing to a close.  All of the children have written reflections on the semester (or will).  But we also want to share a bit about this past week.  Here is what they have to say about it:

Over the weekend, we (the kids) went to a church retreat.  It was fun.  We did a community service in which we volunteered at a party for kids whose parents were incarcerated.  At the party, there was a bingo game where every kid won at some point, got on the stage, and picked a present.  We stayed overnight at church and on Sunday we led the first half of the church service.

Yesterday we had a field trip to Grass Valley.  We went to Empire Mine State Park.  They had a display that showed how much gold was mined there in about 100 years.  It was big for gold, but only about a cube with sides as long as a person (worth about 10 billion dollars with present gold prices).   We also went on man skip (human elevator into the mine shaft).  From Eli's journal:

"Today we went to Empire Mine.  There we got a tour of the mine.  We got to see many of the different ores found all over the world.  We then were allowed to do a simulation of going down to the mines.  We also saw a huge model of the mine.  It was incredible.  There were hundreds of tunnels covering 5 square miles.  Something unique about the mine was it was shored up with steel [editor's note: rails taken from cable car tracks broken in the 1906 SF earthquake] letting the tunnel last longer."

In addition, yesterday we Christmas-caroled and gave out presents at in an elder home.  We also went bowling with our fellow charter school homeschoolers.

The next couple of weeks are vacation, though we will continue to read, do PE (skiing), and learn.  [editor's note: Learning is all around us whether we try or not, which is pretty cool].

Next semester we are looking forward to: skiing, going to New York to see Uncle Ben, going to Boston and Providence, spending time with people we like, going to Southern California, our birthdays, Eli's Bar Mitzvah, finishing the school year (and this blog, says Eli), starting our Semester 2 math books, and taking care of our animals.

Sophia, Grace, and Eli [and Joey on keyboard/editing]