Well, the week ended on an up beat. Sean has decided he likes school! This week was pretty much a roller coaster emotionally but it all ended well. The thing that impressed Sean was on Fridays you get an hour of leisure instead of a 1/2 hour. So he beat the game Contra during that time. However, his teacher said no computer time next week because apparently everybody kept forgetting to charge their laptops, so they get a week without to reinforce the idea that they need to be responsible. Sean was a little panicked about that! We'll see how that goes!
Anyway the things he did this week:
He really learned a ton about civics. Something he'd never had any interest in before and would have resisted mightily from me, he's suddenly spouting all sorts of facts about. They have finished up a unit on the three branches of government. Now they are going to make a music video about it. Sean thought this was demeaningly stupid! But they told him he could edit the video and that would be his contribution and he loved that idea.
His favorite teacher so far is his math and science teacher, though he says they are all nice. For math this week he just reviewed some basic algebra stuff. I think the teacher is trying to figure out exactly where he is. In science the kids are all starting a science project. Sean could not come up with an idea for his, so the teacher came up with one: test to see if reaction times vary according to different game controllers. So Sean has been busy brainstorming about this and how he's going to set up his experiment. He's going to ask seven people to play a certain game twice on three different controllers.
In English/History he researched about diseases during the Revolutionary/colonial era. He had to construct a poster presenting the information he'd found and then give a talk about it.
Other cool things they did: one morning they went for a 'marsh walk.' The school is really in an office park so it doesn't look like a school. Behind the office park is a park like area that is very marshy and the county has built a long boardwalk out into it. So the kids went on a nature walk one morning. Another thing Sean was talking about was how the kids all meet to decide things like what the theme of the next spirit day is going to be.
Sean regaled with funny stories about the crazy kids. There is one kid he especially likes because he is so sweet and goofy. Another kids is also into retro video games like Sean is so he is enjoying getting to talk to him.
Sean does have homework this weekend. He's still reading Water Sky and he's got more civics to do. Anyway, it was great to have things end so well for the first week.
Sounds like it's all good stuff!
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