Budgeting, an Overview of US Geography, and Avoiding Injury

November 15, 2013 saw us scrambling a bit because Sabrina had just finished hosting a wedding for Jonah’s older brother Jake and his lovely bride Leigha…in the back yard!  The chaos of wedding preparation made co-op move to a lower priority than was perhaps ideal, but we ended up with a good day of learning and discussion anyway.

Budgets were the economic focus of the day!  Instead of trying to set a cookie-cutter approach down on paper (i.e. “Everyone should spend and save THIS way to be good and productive members of society.”), we spent two hours exploring budgeting in the global sense:

* God-ordained priorities (we have been given stewardship over every area of our lives…our money, our time, our health, our relationships, and so forth)

* There are many different ways of stewarding our tangible resources well.

*Varying personalities make varied approaches to spending and saving work.

The moms took turns sharing our families’ approaches to budgeting, and even among the three of us there were marked differences in our choices, but a core agreement that being THOUGHTFUL, PRAYERFUL, AND TEACHABLE regarding our finances is vital for success.

Kendall, Jillian, Connor, Jonah and Carlie shared information they’d researched for homework about the United States in terms of

• Water
• Languages
• Topography
• Natural Resources, and
• Urban Areas.

Our Fitness Physiology DVD lecture was on Avoiding Injury, and Karen’s training as a Physical Therapist came in SUPER-handy as we learned good ways to stretch and strengthen weak joints.

Supply and Demand, Economic Systems in Other Countries, Calories and the Heart

Co-op yesterday started out a little strangely.  Jonah had sliced his thumb pretty badly a week and half ago (on a Ravioli can) and had to get stitches.  Co-op day marked the day the stitches were to come out.  So he removed them (he wanted to be Rambo and stitch his own wound in the first place, but that didn’t happen).  Connor watched, the moms oversaw the operation, and the girls hid downstairs in the family room.

Once the operating room was closed for the day, we got down to Consumer Math, Financial Literacy, and Economics.  Homework since the last meeting was all about figuring taxes on income, and understanding how sales tax is calculated.  We discussed various types of business structures and how they change the taxation of the owners, partners or shareholders.  Since all three co-op moms own or are partners in small businesses, it’s a subject we care about.

Homework for next time is to work on understanding Budgets — the principles behind having one, the many ways to structure one, the pros and cons of different types of budgets paired with different types of personalities.

Our DVD lectures for the day were on Calories and The Heart.  We learned a lot about Basal Metabolic Rates and why Carlie burns more calories than some of us because she jiggles her legs all the time when she’s sitting down. Apparently this is called Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis or some such thing.  We also learned about how it’s possible to be skinny-fat (low body weight, poor ratio of body fat to lean muscle), and how gaining lean muscle mass (increasing pounds on the scale) actually raises your BMR so that you burn more calories even at rest.

Geography time!  Everyone shared the results of their research on various countries (of their choosing) and the economic systems in place there.  We got a glimpse of Spain, New Zealand, Kazkhstan, Aregentina and Cuba.  Connor taught us about New Zealand’s unusual relationship with Great Britain’s economy….what was that system called again, Connor?

We’re spending next session on US Geography, and we divided up research for homework:

• Jillian will study languages (areas of concentration throughout the US)
• Jonah will study natural resources
• Connor will study topography
• Carlie will study urban areas
• Kendall will study water.

Pix from International Dinner – and thoughts on what we did

A packed homeschool co-op day yesterday that didn’t go exactly according to lesson plans but was probably filled with MORE real education because of that!  The moms try to be faithful in laying out a good plan, in lining up resources ahead of time, in creating a syllabus to keep everyone clear on the work assigned.  BUT…

Let me say it again:

BUT…

…some of our best learning happens when we let the students run with an idea that has captured them.

That’s what happened yesterday.  For all the type-A homeschool moms out there, this is not a slam to you.  We moms here (Kym, Karen and Sabrina) are comfortable with a lot of flexibility and spontaneity in our co-op, and we would never suggest that every co-op should look as loud and chaotic as ours sometimes does.

BUT sometimes it is important (type-A, type-B, or type-LMNOP) to recognize that students are really learning something that we did not anticipate fully when we made our lesson plans.  Especially once they are teenagers, it is important to allow them to own their education, to encourage them to press in when they are feeling intellectually, morally or spiritually challenged by an idea or piece of information, and to stop worrying about whether that means Chapter 3 didn’t get completely covered this week.

Student discussion time that quite honestly arose from what I (Sabrina) thought was an insensitive joke made by my son ended up exploring ideas of effective communication, differences among people groups, prejudices and biases, assumptions and expectations, and how all of these things combine to cause difficulties in personal relationships, communities, nations, and the world.

Is that the Cultural Geography lesson plan *I* had put together ahead of time from Chapter 3 in our book?  Nope.  But man, it was good stuff.

And then over lunch they started cracking jokes about the government shut-down, which turned into people admitting what they did and didn’t understand about the recent events in Washington, DC, and another hour of questions, answers, creative problem solving, critical thinking and (yes!) macroeconomics as we discussed what the health care situation in the U.S. means in terms of our economic system at this time.  Then we compared it to the socialized medicine systems in other countries around the world, and…DING!DING!DING! We had a blended macroeconomics and world/economic geography lesson.

One that the moms never expected.  But one that the moms could have shut down because it was distracting us from the syllabus assignment.

And wouldn’t that have been a shame?

Okay, so the title of this post says pix, so here you go:

Our Fitness Physiology DVD lecture was on relaxation.

They were VERY involved in the subject.

As you can see.

🙂

Time to cook dinner.  Greek food to go with the movie choice, “My Big, Fat Greek Wedding.”  Kendall and Jillian set to work layering the phyllo dough in the baking dish, and painting it with loads of olive oil between layers.  We’re makin’ spanikopita!  Opa!!

Connor and Carlie were our sautee chefs.  Connor’s got the spinach cooking down in a bit of olive oil, and Carlie’s in charge of the onions, scallions and garlic.  It’s beginning to smell delightful in the kitchen!

(Well, Carlie thinks it’s delightful…Connor?  Maybe not so much!)

Jonah was put to work beating eggs, ricotta, feta and parsley.  That, combined with Connor’s spinach and Carlie’s onions will make the filling for Kendall and Jillian’s phyllo crust — and our spinach pie will be ready to go into the oven for 45 minutes.

While the spanikopita was baking, the sushi bar was put together.  We slivered baby carrots, cut up avocado, cubed imitation crab, and scooped tiny blobs of cream cheese.  Sticky white rice and kelp wrappers, bamboo rolling mats and a bowl of water to keep the rice from sticking to our fingers — playing with food, baby!

 

 

 

Eating the sushi was not as much fun as making it for some of our co-op members.

Sabrina loves the stuff.  With soy sauce, wasabi (horseradish paste — clear those sinuses!), and a little piece of pickled ginger.

Jonah was game to try it, and declared it “Not bad.  I really WANT to like this.”

Whatever that means!!  🙂

Next to try it:  Connor.  Who was not a fan.  But he gets huge points for his bravery in the attempt!

Kendall took a full minute to get the sushi from the plate into her mouth.  She kept chickening out and putting it down, only to announce again, “Okay, okay…I’m going to do this.”

Let’s just say that the trash can got to finish Kendall’s piece of sushi.

Somehow we failed to get pix of Carlie and Jillian — ladies, did you try the sushi, or not? 

At last the spanikopita came out of the oven, and it was simply delightful in the moms’ opinion.

Students, what did you decide about it?

Income, Freakish Weather, Hydration, Weird Customs, and Recovery

Since our last co-op meeting, we’ve been doing follow-up on a wide range of topics!

Economics:  On the micro-level (personal finance), we learned about different kinds of income….salary, wages, self-employment, & commissions.  On the macro-level, we learned about economic systems traditional/barter, free market/capital, and command.

Fitness Physiology and Nutrition made us thirsty — ’cause hydration is what it’s all about!  “Is everything Claritin-clear???” (when you visit the bathroom???)  Recovery after a workout is important so your muscles can repair themselves.  Did you know that you should ideally drink 1/2 – 1 oz. of water for each pound of body weight every day?

Geography focused on Physical Geography, and we learned about the most common types of maps — climate, topographical, political/economic, and road.  Homework this week had us researching freak weather:  monsoons, cyclones and tornadoes, typhoons, hurricanes, dirt devils and waterspouts.

And today we are all together for a full day of co-op stuff —

Classes, food, lecture dvd’s, activities, more food, money, cooking international food, and watching a Geography movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” while we eat spanikopita.

Don’t you wish you were here?

Setting Goals, Laying a Foundation

091313 –

We started with a little technology time, choosing, resizing and compressing the file size on our bio pictures for the blog.

Consumer Math found us sharing answers to the following questions from last week’s homework:

A Nutrition lecture (DVD series from The Great Courses) followed, and we were delighted to learn about our often-under-appreciated digestive tract.  Dumping Syndrome and Constipation were highlights of the topic.  Oh, my.  Lunch followed (naturally!).

After lunch we covered Geography sharing our findings about definitions for Geography and Economics, sharing cool facts about Physical Geography and Climate, and sharing a custom from another country.

The bulk of our time this week was spent on our personal fitness evaluations.  Each of us (moms, too) shared personal fitness and nutrition goals for the coming year, and we completed a comprehensive fitness evaluation (from the DVD lecture materials we’re using from The Great Courses).  Cardio test on the step in the back yard, push-ups and sit-ups, flexibility test, skin calipers to measure percentage of body fat….OY!  We charted our results to form a base line.  Let’s see how much we can all improve our wellness over this school year!

Okay, y’all:

What part of the Fitness Evaluation was the most challenging to you?

What part of Co-op did you most enjoy this week?

Click “Leave a Reply” at the top of this post!

Welcome to our Co-op!

This year in our homeschool co-op, our high school students are studying Geography and Economics, with a little Consumer Math thrown in there (that’s personal microeconomics, you know!).

We are also studying Fitness and Nutrition Science using a DVD lecture series and lots of personal application.

We’ve decided to use a collaborative blog to track our learning, our projects, resources we found helpful, our own observations and the like.  Visit our “About Us” page to learn more about the students and the moms in our co-op.

Feel free to sit in, won’t you?