The President's Challenge

My son and I are competing with each other. We have been since February of 2005. That was when we started taking part in "The President's challenge". It is a great physical fitness challenge that encourages children and adults to be active. We keep track of our activity and are given points based upon the intensity of the exercise. Everything from household tasks to swimming is fair game.

We started by earning the active lifestyle award. That is where you are active consistently for six weeks. Then we went on to earn the bronze award. For that you must earn 20,000 points. We then earned the silver by attaining 45,000 points. That took a while. Our latest accomplishment was attaining the gold award by earning 80,000 points. At each level you can order a medal. They are of great quality and it's a fun achievement. We are also going to reward ourselves with a special t-shirt for this gold award.

After the gold I assumed we would be done, but NO. There is another level that is not publicized. It's the platnium level! It takes 500,000 points to earn that. Fortunately you continue to roll over your points from the gold level, so we are 16% of the way there. There is a maximum amount of points you can earn a day so even at that maximum level it would take a year and a half to earn. He and I have set a goal of September 15, 2008 for this award. A special day for a few people that I know. That will give us a little less than two years, a good mid range goal. We don't know what you can earn by achieving this level, but I'm sure the journey will be the most important.

If you would like more information on The President's Challenge you can visit their website at www.presidentschallenge.org.

Are your words up to date?

My son and I recently studied about Noah Webster in History. He was very interested to learn that while Noah Webster was growing up most schools only had three books for all of the grades! I looked at the stack of books we use for school. We certainly have more than three. Between teachers edition's, test books, workbooks and others we have closer to twenty. I was shocked to find out that it took Mr. Webster that many years, twenty, to write the first American Dictionary!

My son and I took a little tour of our dictionary. The copyright date on our is 1986, exactly twenty years old. He thought it was funny that words such as ATM, internet, and web were not listed. Okay web was, but not in form in which most of think today. It made me think that we need to update our dictionary. I know the internet is readily available, but I believe there is something cool about looking up words in the text itself.

Today we looked up the word repair. It was in a quote he was writing from George Washington. In old use repair also meant "to go". It helped the quote make so much more sense. Repair also comes before replace in the dictionary. You can even find wisdom in the dictionary, it is always a good idea to try and repair something before you just replace it.

So Mr. Webster spent twenty years writing a book that currently becomes dated in way less time than that. Perhaps we should all look up diligence, persistence, and patience. As far as I know those words are still in the dictionary.

Welcome to Wakefield Academy

We would like to welcome you to Wakefield Academy's blog. Our purpose is to update family and friends regarding our son's education. Third grade has been the most exciting school year to date. We are all learning some wonderful things.

Science has been very exciting as many a creature has wandered right up to the classroom. We currently do school at the kitchen table in front of a large window. Throughout the year we have had spiders, bees, wasps, hummingbirds, lizards, and even a hawk come to look at us through the window.

I plan to blog on a regular basis so that you too can peer through the window into our classroom. Thanks for coming to visit and check back soon!