Growing Curiosity Quest – First ten days
Growing Curiosity Quest – The current quest is especially amazing, in my opinion. Each Eagle chooses a topic, which he/she wants to study further, and makes a mini-quest for himself/herself. The two younger boys need to form one meeting (they chose chemistry) and the three older girls form a series of three meetings on a topic that interests them (they chose futurism, family tree, and interior design). During last week’s and this week’s launches, we began forming their quests: Each of them chose a topic, studied it for several hours, picked a relevant project that the Eagles would have to do and then divided it into three meetings. I would like to emphasize that this is not a simple task: To take a subject, create a project from it, and then divide it into parts that will constitute a complete learning process, is not trivial work. But the Eagles are completely into it and I am very curious to see where this path will lead us.
Writer’s Workshop – This session’s writer’s workshop is about Poetry. During last week’s writer’s workshop launch, we talked about metaphors: The Eagles were divided into pairs, one Eagle had a picture and he had to describe it in words so that the other Eagle could draw it without seeing it. Then we went back to the discussion and we talked about the different metaphors they used to describe the picture: The dog’s head has the shape of an egg, his eyes are blue as the sky and not like the color of the wall, etc. Then we took a list of familiar metaphors (“Time is money” or “The world is a stage” or “He eats like a pig”) and together we understood their meaning and why they were chosen to represent the relevant phrase.
Civilization – We finished our book at the end of the previous session. At the meeting on Thursday, I asked each Eagle to choose his/her two favorite chapters and to present us with one of the characters from these chapters in order for us to guess who that character is. It was so joyful to see how much they enjoyed going back to their favorite characters from the middle ages, and how much they remembered through the activities we did during the year!
Core Skills – The year is quickly coming to its end, and it is amazing to see the progress the Eagles made from its beginning. One of the young Eagles, who started the year struggling in reading and writing, now reads and writes fluently. It is really exciting to see how he himself managed to go through his hero’s journey and conquer this summit successfully. One of the older girls struggled a lot in math, and now she moves on easily and is already in the middle of the sixth-grade material. I believe in Acton’s learning method very much, and seeing the Eagles succeed and progress, is a significant closure of a circle for me.