We read a brief summary of the Trojan War in the text, then went to the computer lab for some on line research. We looked up Mycenae, Troy, Helen of Troy and Paris. We were in the process of looking for a photo of the wooden "Trojan Horse" that stands today as a tourist attraction outside the ruins of ancient Troy in Truva (Troy) which I had the good fortune to visit several times when our internet connection died.

Today, Hunter and I completed Unit 1 of his Vocabulary Workshop book and prepared for the test on Thursday. We also read Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," analyzing characterization, diction, plot movement, and important quotes.

Hunter finished the Ch. 2 test.

We continued working on Ch. 2.

We started with a text-based quiz on ancient Indian and Chinese civilizations and then moved into Ancient Greece. After a brief orientation on Phoenicia, Mesopotamia, Crete and the other Aegean islands, we went on-line for some research on Zeus, the Minoan migration from Phoenicia to Crete, their disappearance and the arrival of the Mycenaeans, who spoke Greek, an Indo-European language.

Today Hunter took his vocabulary test and cannot locate the essay. He practiced vocabulary on freerice.com.

We used the textbook to explore the Han Dynasty and the advances in Chinese politics and culture. The dynasty saw unification of a formerly feudal society, advances in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and astronomy. During its heyday, the Han Dynasty was the most advanced civilization in the world.

We read a section in the text about the development of written Chinese, a pictographic system of writing with over two thousand characters. We went on-line and explored Chinese-Mandarin in ancient times and the much more recent development (ca. 1949) of pinyin, a method of converting Mandarin to phonetic Latin characters.

Completed 4/5 of the Ch. 2 Test. Should have the rest completed tomorrow.

Continued discussion of Newton's third law, and how it applies to spacecraft propulsion.Introduced concept of conservation of momentum and related it to 3rd law topics.Introduced methods for graphing motion, and quantifying velocity and acceleration.