The Last Week of October - Fossils, Studying, the Martyr's Mirror, and the Newspaper

The Last Week of October

It is now November, the auction was held and the honor roll party went well, and it is back to school as normal.  But, normal shouldn’t be boring!  Here are a few highlights of the last week.  

More interesting science has been brought in.  The fall flowers are blooming and the last of the roses are still fragrant.  

My personal favorite, fossils!  On the left is a gyrophae.  These particular fossils are found in amazingly good condition on two families’ properties.   On the right is an ammonite, which my son and I found fossil hunting about three hours north of here.  It was embedded in a lump of clay which eventually fell off in chunks, leaving a hard-earned fossil.  (We hiked, sweated, climbed, and chipped away at boulders to find this one.)

We are studying world history and reading a few accounts of stories from the Martyr’s Mirror.  Here is one student who picked up that big ‘ol book and was reading it on his own. 

Students quizzing each other in preparation for a test.  

This is a fourth grader explaining his science to a third grader while studying for a test.  They are using hand motions to remember a few vocabulary words.

And. . . the first copy of our school newspaper is out!  This year we are making it more community oriented, naming it the Cotton Caboose (our area has always been a cotton-raising one, and the town was founded when the railroad came through in the late 1800’s) with articles on farming, gardening, history, and native Texas critters along with a few school related articles. 

Here they are folding nine hundred sheets of 11 x 17 paper. 

And here is the newspaper staff outside of Parson’s Office Systems where they gave us a very reasonable price for copying (our copier doesn’t do 11 x 17). 

And, of course, we have to reward all our hard work with food.  We headed off to Cheddar’s for a fabulous meal.