It has been awhile since I blogged. Life has been very busy and we have just been in the homestretch of school and things have been going well.
In English N. finished up Les Miserables. I was a little surprised when he told me that he really enjoyed this book. He usually is pretty indifferent about challenging lit books, but he ended up really liking several from this year. He has started Animal Farm, but so far he doesn't care for it. That is ok also. I don't expect him to like everything he reads. He was never interested in any of the utopian type literature. It just isn't his thing. I still think it is good for him to read and we discuss the symbolism and then he moves on. He asked me if next year the lit plans are done the same way and when I told him yes he was very happy to hear that. In Composition he is finishing up his research paper on personal trainers.
In Health he did a project where he drew fire escape plans for each room of our house. He is very good at anything that requires visual perceptual skills and he really enjoyed this project.
In History he has covered WWI, WWII, Korean and Vietnam war. It has been more of a survey of each of these, but he covered them in more detail in MTMM and the things he covered this time were more mature subject matter. We listened to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and it was very moving. He really was challenged with the Critical Thinking and Reading questions in this guide. I think they pushed him to think out of the box.
In Art he had a few Mr. Stebbing videos these past few weeks and those always make him happy. He has enjoyed this course and has asked to go to the Art Museum soon, because he wants to see paintings by some of the artist he studied. That to me is a successful art history class.
In Science he is finished the study of genetics, which I thought was well done and he moved on to the environment and environmental science. His dad is an environmental engineer so N. already knows some of the information being taught. He hasn't loved filling out all the fill in the blanks, but what I have noticed is that it really helps his retention. There have been many studies about actually writing down notes and information and how it helps your brain over just typing or discussing it and I definitely see this to be the case for him.
Overall this has been a good solid year. He has been challenged in some areas and others have come fairly easily which is what I would expect.
In news outside of HOD he had a big dream come true. He was able to go and watch a taping of American Ninja Warrior and while there he met 2 of his favorites from the Ninja World and saw many others. Here he is with Sam Sann and Daniel Gil(who we later found out is a homeschool graduate).
He also went to a new parkour gym and was able to try many new things for some new heights.
