Third Term Review for Donna : Reducing the Books

We feel that the books Donna chose to use in this academic year were a bit too many. The books themselves are good. However, she needs more time to read other good books and deepen her interest (philosophy, flute, piano etc). So she decided to remove two of them from her list. They are:

  

         and

For Geography she still has Geog 1 and for Science she has Science Checkpoint.

Philosophy

Donna showed her interest in Philosophy a few years ago, when she was about 8 or 9 years old. I didn't pay much attention to it,  for I thought it was only her curiosity of something new. Philosophy is a strange thing for my husband and I.
And  several days ago she joined one of the Coursera's course : "Introduction to Philosophy"
A friend of mine asked her, why does she like Philosophy.
And this is what my 12 years old girl says:
They "asks" us to observe and give attention to the things that are usually aren't observed well by other people, confusing, ignored, and usually unpaid attention by the people now. It teaches us to understand our world in a new view, other than the one that usually other people don't.

Discipline and Self Control

This is one of 20 Charlotte Mason's principles in education. I'm not a Charlotte Masoner, but somehow, I agree with this principle. Well, not only this one, but many of them.

"We train a child to have a good habits and self-control." 

For Donna, this means that she has to control herself in using her cellphone. So, we have an agreement. If she couldn't control her time in using her gadget, she could use her cellphone only once a week (on Saturdays). The better self-control,  the more days she could use her cellphone (2 days in a week, then 3 days a week and so on).  If her habit back to uncontrolled, she will back to once a week again.

So far this way help her much. However, without her cellphone, she still can use her desk computer to learn , connect to the world and have fun. The special thing about this desk computer compare to her cellphone is, that this tool stay in a specific place, so it won't be anytime anywhere stay besides her. 

And of course as her parents, my husband and I show a good example for her. We show her that a cellphone is only a tool that help us, so we are not under cellphone addiction.