Well, I know the groundhog saw his shadow, and that means that we'll be having six more weeks of winter. However, I don't know if Indiana got that memo. Based on the weather, we can't tell what season we're in.

Regardless of all this, school continues as it has been with one twist...the play. The last period of each day has been dedicated to practicing the play for all involved. It has been a joy to watch the kids dive into it, hours of practice has been spent on it, and many prayers have been offered for it. There is about one month left until the play actually takes place, so please pray for this endeavor.

On the math front, the Algebra 1 students have been learning about solving quadratic equations by completing the square. This may sound complicated, but the idea is if you kick a ball in the air, how long will it take to reach the ground? It probably won't be a nice number, but you can find it if enough information is given to you. Anyway, the book doesn't cover this idea until the end, but the kids are tested over it. That's why we're doing it now.

The Geometry class just finished a chapter on transformations. So they looked at translating, rotating, and reflecting different objects. They also learned to create tessellations by using different transformations. This comes into play when you look at objects that repeat in a given pattern. Below are a few examples.


This is a monohedral tessellation of hexagons (six sided figures being used to create something). The honey bee creates this without knowing that they are being studied in math. How cool is that?

This is a semi-regular tessellation composed of pentagons (5 sided figures) and hexagons (6 sided figures). Again, how often have you kicked a soccer ball without realizing that the outside of it is made up of two different shapes?


In Pre-Calculus, we've begun working on conic sections. The students just finished the lesson on circles and are currently working on ellipses. They are required to find equations of ellipses along with their graphs. Then, they need to break the graph down and find the different parts (centers, vertices and foci to name a few). Below is an example of this.

This is the orbit of the moon around the earth. It's shape is elliptical, and the earth is not at it's center. It is at one of the focus points of this ellipse. Why does the moon look smaller on the right side? Because it's farther away from the earth. In reality, it is not really smaller. Anyway, knowing where the center is, how far the earth is away from the center, and how far the moon is from the center are all important when studying space.

As you can see, the students have been busy, but it's been a good kind of busy. Hopefully by the end of it all, they will be able to correctly wade through the math when it comes to the reality they are facing.