Mock Trial

Nicole just finished her Challenge B year of Classical Conversations.  This year is full of growth for the students as they begin to study formal logic, write their own short story, begin Chemistry, study astronomy and so on.  The highlight of the year, for most students, is Mock Trial.  

Mock Trial is an opportunity for the students to practice their logic, debate, and persuasive skills they have been learning.

Nicole was incredibly excited.  She is a diligent, hard working student who simply enjoys a new assignment and spends countless hours thinking about and working on her tasks.  Mock Trial was made for a kid like her :)

She was assigned two roles.  When we were defense, she was an attorney and tasks with the closing argument.  When we were prosecution, she was a witness named Lee Porter, the housekeeper.  

This was Nicole and I on a break during a Zoom session.  We had to find all of the hats in our house and put them on our head :)

Due to COVID-19, we had to do our main Mock Trial on Zoom.  There's a first time for everything...and this was one of those first times.  

This was Nicole's set up for Mock Trial.  She had everything at her fingertips, haha. 

So beautiful in her attorney attire.

Two and a half months later, part of the class gathered back together to complete a live Mock Trial against another class.  

Her classmates who did the second Mock Trial.  I'll always have a special place in my heart for these kids.  

Teri snapped this candid photo and I love it!

My favorite thing about Nicole's performance is that she really tried to integrate information from the trial into her closing argument.  This is not easy to do, nor is it easy to practice.  She had a basic outline, but then had to make adjustments in the middle of the trial to what was actually said.  

Each experience was unique, and I'm so glad Nicole had this opportunity. 

Silver Springs, Adventure Island, and CoolToday Park

This weekend we went to Ocala to see our Grammy (Valarie) and Gramps (Greg), and meet up with dad who had driven down from North Carolina where he was working this week. On Saturday we went to Silver Springs...

There we went Kayaking on a river. It was a lot of fun (it was also hard and tiring😉) Here are some pictures of us on the river...

I think Hannah might have tried to photo bomb Grammy and Gramps😉

It was a lot of fun hanging out at Silver Springs. After we ate lunch, we found an open grassed area with a few trees and Dad, Nathan, and Gramps all played Frisbee for... a long time.

Mom found some pathways where she, Grammy, Hannah, and I walked around for a little while.

On Sunday, on our way back home from Ocala, we stopped by Adventure Island for the day. I don't have a whole lot of pictures of that, but it was fun! We ended up leaving early because it started to rain and thunder. We tried to wait it out but it just got worse so we left. But it was fun nonetheless. 

Hannah, Nathan and Dad have their eyes open super wide here, because of what Nathan did in the last picture...

(I feel like I need to add that I was holding Nathan up in these photos because you could barely see him if I wasn't)

 Dad is just smiling for the picture and Nathan is pretending that he was really on the ride.

I'm squished and just smiling for mom (who is taking the pic) while Hannah is going nuts in the back. I think she was trying to make it look like she was going to drop the rock on my head. 🙄😂

After we left, Me and my siblings eventually got the impression that the day of excitement wasn't over. We all kept trying to guess what it was but mom and dad wouldn't say. 😖😄. Once we started getting super close we started to figure it out. Mom and Dad were taking us to CoolToday Park The Atlanta Braves spring training stadium!!! They were going to show the game at the field. So we went and watched the first half of the Braves game! (We didn't know that they closed the Park at 8:30. That's the only reason we didn't stay for the whole game). But the Braves ended up beating the New York Mets 14 to 1!

 This was at a practice facility for the Braves. There were a bunch of tournament games going on so we stopped to watch for a while.

We got to sit in the stands and watch the game.

So that is how our fun weekend ended.

Nathan At Brookes Burgers

Dad was out of town this week, so last night we went to Brookes Burgers for dinner. We all got a hamburger, but Nathan was funny (he's 10 now). He ordered a donut burger, which is pretty much a regular burger but instead of the bread buns, they're glazed donuts. But I think Nathan confused everyone at the table including our waiter...

"I'd like to get the kids donut burger," he said. "But could I have, like, an extra bun? Like another one I can put my burger on?" He was so confusing! The waiter tried to figure out what he meant, and mom tried to translate what he said, but neither one could figure it out quite right. So then we got our order and started eating, and Nathan got his donut burger. Then he said "Aw I didn't get the extra bun".

Sooo... when the waiter came to check on us Nathan said again "Could I have another bun?" By now mom knew that he wanted just a bread bun. He wanted to take the meat off the donut, eat the donut, then eat the burger with a regular bun. Once mom told the waiter what he meant Nathan got his extra bun. But it was still really funny to watch and listen too. 

A Few Things That Happened Between February and July

Hi Everyone! This is Nicole! I'm 14 years old now, and am going into Challenge 1!

Soooo... It is July, 2020. 2020 was supposed to be an awesome year. But then COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease - 2019) happened. It's a virus that originated in Wuhan city, China. I've heard a few different theories on how it actually became infectious to humans. At first it was just a virus that China had and was making a big deal over... until it got to America. Then people started "taking it more seriously". It's hard to remember how it started off here, because it only got more exaggerated. The CDC said that if you got the virus, any other sickness, or if you just don't feel well then you had to self-quarantine for 14 days to keep from spreading it to others. Oh! And America invented this new term called "Social distancing", which means you have to stay 6 feet away from everyone around you. Plus, you should wear a mask! And Gloves. And have plexiglass between cashiers and the people who are checking out. Things just got worse. AND, all the doctors and scientists are trying to scare the country with COVID! They say "The death cases are rising! 142,755 people have already died of COVID-19, and there have been almost 4 million confirmed COVID cases". Wow! Scary! But when you do the math... only 0.04% of people with COVID die. 0.04%!!! Gosh, quit exaggerating! Anyways it's only going to get worse. I keep saying that when me and my siblings have kids we're going to tell them about what life was like before 2020. How no one had to wear masks... in fact that it was illegal to cover your face in a public area. So that's what's been going on with COVID-19. (BTW me and Dad think that the family has already had it, and that we were just asymptomatic.)



 Here Are Just a Few Exciting Things That Happened Between February And July:

Literally 1 1/2 weeks before Corona invaded America... Hannah almost broke her face on a softball. She was playing around on the field after one of my games with another teammate. Our dad and another dad where throwing softballs from the outfield into the infield and Hannah and her friend would run up to them and try to hit them on the run, with their bat, back to the outfield. Well it was supposed to be Hannah's turn to run up and hit it but the friend ran in front of her and tipped the ball off the bat. It flew back and hit Hannah right under the eye. We left about an hour later and took her to the hospital. She got a CAT scan which showed that she had no broken bones. So she was fine, it just hurt. But... The next day mom and dad were going to leave for Las Vegas. They still left since Hannah was fine. But she had some bad bruising on her face. This is a picture of her a few days after the incident...
She was OK though.













My whole Challenge B class wrote a short story the last semester. It was basically a book or story that was up to ten pages long. Well mine ended up being like 16 pages long, but my teacher (Mom) said it was OK. I pretty much just made an extended version of the Nancy Drew book called The Mystery of the Lilac Inn. I used the same criminal and had her come back for revenge on Nancy. Then I created my own detective who actually solves the mystery. I've started making more books so maybe I'll have a type of series of short stories.

← This is the book of short stories that my whole class did

This is my short story in it's own hardcover case. (mom and dad did that for me for my birthday) →










I fell like I have to show you this picture. This is Molly but we like to call her a "pathetic loser" when she tries to claim our beds as hers...

There is so much more I could tell you about... birthdays, and road trips, and hanging out with friends...but this post is already pretty long so that's it for now!😁

Science Fair 2019

This year, Nicole participated in a full fledged Science Fair.  After 10 weeks of working through all stages of the scientific method, converting her research plan into a research paper, and creating a display, she and her classmates had one night to present their experiment to two groups of judges.  This is their big project for Challenge A, and one they were all prepared for.

In all honesty, there wasn't much inspiration for an experiment, so she picked something from sciencebuddies.com .  She thought it would be neat to learn about spherification. 

Spherifi- what? haha.  I'm a few months into this, and I'm still not 100% sure what it is exactly.  Basically, spherefication is taking a liquid or watery food item and adding sodium citrate to it to make the food alkaline.  Then you drop it into a bath of sodium...something, I forget...and it stays in little balls.  Maybe I should have had her write this blog! haha!  She was suppose to be testing how the pH affects the food's ability to become spheres.  Chefs use this technique quite often. 

Spherified Coca-Cola

Measuring the width of the spheres

Spherified Gatorade

Nicole shines at public presentations, and Friday was no different.  She loves this.

Giving her presentation to the first set of judges.

They were bold enough to taste her gatorade spheres.

Nathan & Hannah participated in the community's Geo/Science Fair.  Hannah studied sugar in food and learned how to measure out how much sugar is in some of her favorite foods. 

Nathan decided to learn about volcanoes.  Let's me honest....who can say they have graudated school without making a homemade volcano ?!?