Semester 1: Getting Ready for Challenge III

Grace-filled greetings, Challenge III parents,
Our first day of class is Tuesday, August 20th. I look forward to all the Lord has in store for us this coming year!

Our Parent-Student Orientation will be one of two days. Please RSVP via email on which date you will attend.
Both parents and students are to attend these sessions together. I look forward to getting off to a great start together!
Please mark your calendars:

Thursday, August 15th at 7pn

Thursday, August 22th at 7pm

We'll be covering lots of information as we prepare for the year.
Language and Truth
American History/Debate, Rhetoric/Philosophy/Logic, Literature/Persuasive Essay; lesson layout,  persuasive essay lessons, essay and presentation calendar, assessment, transcripts, goals, etc.

• Canons of rhetoric: thinking, ordering, expressing, memorizing, presenting
• Invention and unified thinking
• Literature as a mirror
• The power of the persuasive essay
• Ideas, history, and philosophy - glass walls and stained glass windows that shape our lives, priorities, values, and decisions; as well as families and societies and nations.

Parent role, student role, tutor role
College prep questions and conversation
Other events and calendar items

1. You will receive your Challenge III Guide the first full week of August assuming I have your semester tuition payment and feeds.
1. American History/Debate: Encourage your student to begin bonding with their A Patriot’s History of the United States book! Reading more sooner will pay off greatly in the weeks to come.
2. Literature/Poetry/Exposition: Students should read through Much Ado About Nothing before they come week 1. Watch the movie too!
3. Chemistry/research: Students should begin looking over Module 1.
4. Math/Logic Conversation: Look over your first few lessons and have the first few complete before you come to the first week. Bring your questions to class as these will direct the conversation and activities for this hour together.
   
5. Philosophy/Logic/Rhetoric: Students should begin reading Chapter 1 of Consequences of ideas.
6. Latin/Grammar: Students should have Henle II and begin reviewing lesson 20-25. I have a special surprise for students as we study Ceasar and Cicero this year. Stay tuned!

Not sure what books you need? View Challenge III books here and purchase:

http://www.stallionpublishers.com/publication.aspx?pid=1203&pkey=idvoxdeus&pageid=61

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The Ants and the Grasshopper ~ Aesop’s Fable

THE ANTS were spending a fine winter's day drying grain collected in the summertime. A Grasshopper, perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food. The Ants inquired of him, Why did you not treasure up food during the summer?' He replied, I had not leisure enough. I passed the days in singing. They then said in derision: If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter.

It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow

History and Debate Notebook

Our history and debate notebook will serve as a concrete tool  attending to the higher purpose of structuring and organizing our thoughts for this coming year. An ever-expanding timeline, notes from weekly readings, and presentation research will be organized and kept in this notebook.

Below are some notes and suggestions for organizing your notebook:

• Timeline from weekly reading
• Notes from weekly reading
• Presentation and debate research

Here are details on each section to help you as you structure your history and debate notebook.

Timeline:

Building a comprehensive timeline!

Timelines aren’t just for Foundations age students! Challenge students continually expand their understanding of history through this year’s readings and by building (or continuing to add to) their own timeline.

Consider keeping your timeline in Excel for maximum flexibility of inserting and moving around events and people as you progress through the year. The core of this year’s timeline focus will be taken from A Patriot’s History of the United States study. Those students that took Challenge II last year should add these dates, peoples, and events to the timeline they began last year.

Timeline - integration note: Expand your timeline to include philosophers from Consequences of Ideas, Shakespeare’s plays, events and people from our Latin this year, Caesar and Cicero. This allows students to see the bigger picture of history, language, literature, and ideas that shape culture and respond to culture.

Each Challenge level has an inspired “logos”, or governing idea or truth, that integrates our studies and readings for the program year.  Challenge I tends to revolved around the idea of freedom; Challenge II around choices; Challenge III around consequences. In Challenge III, we’ll explore the idea of consequences through our studies of literature, language, philosophy, logic, chemistry, math, and more. Through our discussions, we’ll be examining consequences and its relationship to the virtues of understanding and wisdom.

Notes:

In this section of your notebook, these notes are primarily from the American History readings. These notes will be a great reference for you as you write you essays and prepare your presentations this semester.

Presentation and Debate research:

Every five weeks students are to prepare a presentation or debate. Extra research for your presentations can go into this section of your notebook.

Chemistry Notebooks, Lab Reports, and Testing

Chemistry is all about matter!

What is matter?

Well, we’ll talk more about that in the weeks to come, but for now let’s turn our attention to what really matters – getting ready for the year and the matter of your Chemistry Notebook!

As students read Module 1, they should note the structure of a module. Each module follows a similar structure and I recommend organizing your Chemistry Notebook to reflect this structure.

Each module contains:

• Vocabulary, rules, conversions, formulas throughout the module
• ON YOUR OWN Problems sprinkled throughout the module
• REVIEW Questions at the end of the module
• PRACTICE Problems at the end of the module.
• Experiments sprinkled throughout the module
• A test located in the Solutions and Tests book.

Experiments: Each module provides several experiments. Some will be done at home and some in class. Students will record notes in their lab journal and choose ONE experiment from EACH module and write up a formal lab report for that experiment. This formal lab report will be put into their Chemistry Notebook.

Tests: These are found in a the separate Solutions and Tests book. There is one test provided for each of the sixteen modules that you can administer each week. There are also quarterly tests you can administer every four modules if you’d prefer that schedule.

So think about organizing your binder something like this:

Enjoy organizing your notebook. A little preparation and organization now, will serve you well in the busy days ahead.

In community, we will be focusing our time on lab experiments and working through any On Your Own or Practice problems that the students may need additional help with.

A note about testing, scheduling and grading of tests should be completed at home. Parents may choose a weekly testing schedule or a quarterly testing schedule. Parents may choose to have students complete quarterly tests and turn them into me on weeks 7 and 14.