Homeschooling

J+M+J

I’m doing biology this year, and so have been going to a dissection class with Landon and a bunch of other homeschoolers. There are three classes, and the first time we did the classic frog. This week, the second class, we did a cow’s eye and a sheep brain. (I made the pictures really small so you only have to see them if you want to. Click them to see full size.)

The cow’s eye was a little intimidating at first, looking at me right there on the plate, but once we got into it, it was really interesting. We took off the cornea first (protects the eye), and then the iris, (gives the eye it’s color and controls the amount of light entering) and then the lens (focuses light). The cornea was a thin and clear layer covering the entire eye and I was thinking of it as I took out my contacts at night.  Next we found the optic nerve, which carries messages from eye to brain.

The white circle in the center of this picture is the optic nerve, which sends images to the brain. It is cushioned by many layers of fat and muscles for protection because if you damage it you can’t see.

The retina, where the colors and details of the picture is detected, was especially interesting. It was shiny and looked like the inside of a mother of pearl shell, which I never expected.

The sheep brain wasn’t quite as interesting as the eye because pretty much the only thing to see is the cerebrum (the front half that controls most voluntary movement) and the cerebellum (the back half that holds memory and small motor skills).

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As a freshman, I went to the annual homeschool high school dinner and dance for the first time. Brand new shoes (Mom and I had gone shopping for them that very day), dress, and hair that mom had spent a half hour with the curling iron on (I still haven’t figured out how to not put kinks in my hair) all added to the excitement and special feeling of the dinner.

I really like this dress, which was a surprise find at Kohls!™

Dinner was very interesting, as we ordered off a menu where everything was called by a code name. The theme of the code names were the last names of people attending the party, and each name had a connection to something associated with it. For example, Frederes was an egg, due to the parrot eggs I’m raising. There was no telling what you were going to get, and this was my first of the four courses:

After we finished eating, there was ballroom dancing. This picture is so grainy because I had to mess with it on the computer because the camera flash can’t reach very far across the room.

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We took home the 2nd place trophy!

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At 2:30, I am leaving for a quiz bowl, so I am currently checking the clock every five minutes. Since this is my freshman year,  it’s only my third high school quiz bowl, and the questions are quite a bit harder than middle school quiz bowls have been. I am the youngest on a homeschool team of two junior  girls and a sophomore girls; the same team that I played with at a special Quiz bowl on Nov. 7 called a NAQT (National Academic Quiz Tournament) and won third place, qualifying to go to the nationals in Chicago in May.

It is now 1:15, only an hour and fifteen minutes left to go. I’m going to go do my hair, and I’ll let you know the results later  tonight.

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This is another quiz bowl I played in as captain of my team on Monday. We had six more points than our last game with 113 points!

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Tuesday I was the captain of a quiz bowl team, and for the first time we got into third!

This is me and my quiz bowl team. We are all homeschoolers.

My trophy.

Brandon Valley is the name of the school that was hosting the quiz bowl.

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