We as a family enjoyed a full day visit to the California Academy of Sciences, which was completely renovated two years ago.  It was amazing.  From a lush rainforest ecosystem in a glass dome to a fully stocked aquarium, all of us were wowed by the beautiful and well-organized exhibits showing off many of the wonders of God’s creation (though, as one might expect, credit was not given where credit was due).

Here are a few photo highlights of our visit, including a photo of a rare albino American alligator and an up-close photo of a butterfly taken in the multi-level rainforest dome exhibit.

Every summer the eligible children participate in Barnes and Noble summer reading program where you get a free book when you read eight books.  Today we went to the store to redeem the boys’ books.

Boys with their free books:

Then they started making faces, which is a natural progression for every picture taking  in our household:

Upon returning home, these two boys cracked open their books and read and read.  I love my two little bookworms!

My oldest decided to be creative one morning with his pancakes.  He cut the pancakes in pieces and put them together in Chinese characters that he’s been learning in our homeschool.

Brownie points to those who can decipher these Chinese characters!

It seems like a non sequitur: polygons and God’s omnipotence.  But I assure you that these two distinctly different topics do relate, at least during our math lesson today.

For my 5 year old’s math lesson, he was asked to draw 3, 4, and 5 sided polygons.  He asked why he had to start out with a three sided polygon, and before I could answer him, my 7 year old told him that the reason is that there’s no such thing as a two-sided polygon.  Three-sided polygon is the smallest polygon.  My ever-so-knowing older son continued and said that even God can’t draw a two-sided polygon.  Hahahaha. . . he went.

Well, he was certainly right, but I decided to take a step further.  I simply couldn’t let this topic drop.  I proceeded to ask him a very difficult question.  If God is omnipotent, all-powerful, why can’t he draw a two-sided polygon?  My boy proceeded to show me that it’s impossible to draw it because in order for it to be a polygon, it has to have straight lines and they have to close up.  I concurred but pressed the question again.  Since God can’t do it, doesn’t this mean that he’s not all-powerful?  He answered no.  Whew!  I’m glad he answered no.  My boy went on to say that a two-sided polygon is impossible and God is still powerful.  I decided to drop my devil’s advocate persona and told him that he was absolutely right.  There is no such thing as a two-sided polygon because it simply doesn’t exist.  This does not prove nor demonstrate that God is not omnipotent.  Too often we set up our premises wrong and then draw the conclusion that God is not omnipotent.  Before we reject God’s attributes, we need to take a long hard look at our presuppositions and assumptions.

See? I told you polygons and God’s omnipotence relate.  I’m glad I had this conversation with my son.

We went to In-N-Out Burger for a field trip today and had a great time learning about this family owned burger joint that’s quite popular in California.  They are working to expand to other states in the near future.  I was quite impressed by their efforts in using every thing fresh from lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, buns, to beef!  We were told that they have their own cows and butchers.  Now, that’s impressive! Even their buns are better because they take 12 hours to bake.  The manager gave us a demonstration by smashing the buns hard with his hands.  Most other commercial buns would stay flat, but with the In-N-Out buns, they slowly rise up to their original shape.  That was pretty cool.

If you’re a regular In-N-Out customer, you most likely know about their secret menu like animal style burgers (grilled onions with extra lettuce and tomato) or protein style burgers (burgers wrapped with lettuce instead of buns for the Atkin diet folks), etc.  These interesting twists to these burgers came from the customers and In-N-Out is happy to accommodate and allow these customizations.

The kids had their hands in slicing potatoes:

Don’t under estimate this little beany of ours.  She may be small, but she can smash that potato masher down and hard.  She surprised the employees there.

After the tour, In-N-Out was very kind and generous in letting us order anything we wanted to eat for FREE!!!  Here are the kids enjoying their meal.  By the way, I got a burger too because I was a chaperone.

I’m a proponent of learning phonics when it comes to learning how to read.  However, there are words that don’t follow the rules of phonics.  Instead of sounding the words out, these words have to be memorized.  Such words are called “sight words.”  Fortunate for us, Dr. Edward Dolch complied a list of 220 sight words, or “Dolch words,” in 1948, based on children’s books.  Dolch words make up about 50-75% of words in children’s books, which means your child will know at least 50% of the words in a given book once he’s mastered the Dolch words.  Exciting, isn’t it?

Even though my five-year-old is already reading and knows a lot of sight words, I’m using the Dolch words for his spelling lessons.

For those who are interested in teaching your children Dolch words, you can check out Mrs. Perkins’ Dolch Words.  This website contains different forms of the Dolch words, activities, worksheets, and games.  Happy learning and reading!

Recently I implemented “Right Answer Only” grading when correcting my son’s math tests.   Problems are graded as either right or wrong, and no partial credit is given even if the mistake is tiny.  For example, if the problem asks you to take a measurement in inches and you give the correct measurement but neglected to write down “inches,”  the problem is considered wrong.

After I grade the test, I give the test back to my son and tell him to rework all the missed problems WITHOUT my help.  He is to redo the problems on his own, and if he gets the problems correct, he earns half of the point back.  If he is not able to get the problems correct second time around, I step in and help him work through it.  In this case, no additional credit is given.

In my son’s last test, he got 16 correct out of 20 problems.  I circled the 4 wrong answers and gave it back to him to rework on his own.  He got 3 correct, but couldn’t figure one.  His final score was 17.5 out of 20, and how this was calculated was based on the original 16 problems he got correct plus the three problem he reworked, which was half point each:  16 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 = 17.5.  The percentage was 88% with a grade of B+.  As for the problem he couldn’t figure out, I worked with him and explained the steps.

I really like this grading approach because it forces my son to figure out where he went wrong.  He is more careful these days because he knows that he has to rework the problem if he gets it wrong the first time.  This method works so well that I decided to use the same approach for his regular homework assignments as well.

I got this “right answer only” grading from Ask Dr. Callahan, and you can read about it in the below links:

What is Right Answer Only? (A video explanation)

Why Grade Right Answer Only?

How do I Grade Right Answer Only?

Please note, Ask Dr. Callahan’s math program is targeted towards high schoolers and not elementary students.  However, I find the “right answer only” grading is beneficial for the elementary students as well.  I follow Dr. Callahan’s grading method mostly with the exception that I don’t have my student fill out a separate sheet explaining why he missed the problem.  I believe elementary math is simple enough that if he is able to get it right second time around, he has already figured out where he went wrong, thus eliminating the step to explain why he missed it the first time around.  I think it is beneficial to explain why when math gets more complex in the high school years.