Missions to Modern Marvels
Wyatt has hit his stride in MTMM now! We are in week 7, and he now has a good grasp with what he is doing. He is absolutely loving the Reading about History "All American History" book he is reading. The colored photographs, pictures of actual documents/letters, etc. are fascinating, and the text itself is actually very living. I think it is somewhat difficult to know WHAT is important enough to focus on for history within the Modern Times. I don't envy the task that author had ahead of her. It is so much easier to see what was important looking back many, many years in history, as opposed to determining what constitutes as truly important history in more of the here and now. Well, "All American History" along with HOD's other book selections manages to know just what to focus on and for just how long to achieve an excellent balance. The History Student Notebooking pages are fascinating, and the photographs of famous people, primary source documents, and period memorabilia only work to enhance the learning. I snapped a bunch of Wyatt's notebooking pages this week, as I have not done that yet. Though some of these are from units past, I thought they would be fun for you all to see anyway to get a glimpse into MTMM...
This week in Unit 7, Wyatt got to design his own World's Fair ride. This was a blast!
I thought it was pretty creative when he described it to me. (BTW, I always have him describe his artwork to me, as his oral descriptive abilities outweigh his artistic abilities, and prove to me that he truly did put a lot of thought and effort into it, though the actual drawing may not show that.
) So, here is his ride where you ride in the cars and must shoot the targets that pop up with the hope that you shoot enough targets to actually pay for your ride, making it a free ride.
Fits nicely with the economics focus in MTMM, don't you think?
A ride like that could even make me want to work on being a good 'shot.'
...
Wyatt's written narrations are starting to show more and more personality with better use of descriptive words. He also has begun to work on having a variety of sentence lengths, which helps his writing to flow better than it did before when they were often all quite short in length. This written narration is about the Chicago Fire, and how Dwight Moody was preaching there when it started. I liked his opening sentences...
"The town of Chicago was abuzz with the news that Dwight Moody was preaching there. Little did they know the horror that was coming. 3000 people filled the church that night..." I also liked these descriptive words/phrases he used...
powerful sermon, perished, acres of ground had been consumed by the fiery inferno, though the fire was a disaster hope shined through it... as well as his happier closing sentence...
The city rebuilt and has a high population of churches to this day. Take courage those of you with dc just starting to do written narrations - great things comes to those who wait!!!
Wyatt's progress in this area has been slow and steady through the years. I am happy with where he is in this skill set now.
We are really enjoying the "Snapshot in Time" skill in the plans. It has photographs of journals, newspapers, events, people, etc., and then Wyatt gets to write a synopsis or compare/contrast two things. He really enjoys it!
On the bottom of this picture, you can see my typing of Wyatt's narration too, which is something we do off and on in the plans in MTMM. I used Carrie's idea of having him say it as a voice memo on his IPod, and that helped me be able to 'keep up' better as I typed rather than him saying it to me and me trying to type fast enough.
I'm a fast typer, but he's a faster talker.
The IPod worked well.
I have liked the "Economics Principles" Wyatt has been learning, and he really enjoys reading his economics books -they are very living!
In today's economy, this kind of practical instruction about economics is very important. I can see the wheels turning...
Love, love, love the science! The new lab sheet is very mature - Wyatt is loving chemistry. PTL, I sure didn't in school. Nice to have him enjoying it so much!
I think I'll make a post on the main board for our DITHOR project, as this is getting long!
We are really loving MTMM. Hope you all had a super week!
In Christ,
Julie