U.S. History Test Today

Aya brought to my attention that she had to prepare for her History Quiz today, it was on the States their capitol cities.

I snickered at the ease of it or so I thought. I had helped her study by use of some flash cards which had more information on each state and the geography each etc. However, I quickly realized I don't even know all the capital cities of all the 50 States, though I bet any 5Th Grader would since it most likely would be fresh in their minds.

She did fairly well, though she had not budgeted her time to studying these as intensely as she could have (she had 2 days for wrote memorization). I think in her mind, she was done with school in Japan and this was more of a visit/site-seeing than an earnest attempt to work hard in a U.S. High School.

I am sure her attitude will change, but for now she is looking forward to going to Boston, New York and other attractive cities if possible. During the studying of the states, she mentioned to me that she had hoped for a stay in some of the mid-western states (Nevada, Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska).

Aya told me at 13, she had visited Hawaii for a 3 week "Home stay" in Honolulu and hope to get a chance to visit there again soon. She had stayed with another Japanese student who was 18 at the time. (I can only imagine it was like a real nice vacation: Beach, Surf, Clubs, and Sightseeing).

She also has some math homework to do and something as simple as "the square root of 10" stumped me without the use of a calculator as I forgot the most efficient way of doing this. She is required a Scientific Calculator, which I couldn't not remember where I stashed it from college days; so she had gone out to purchase a cheap on at Wal-mart "Casio". I can remember these things used to cost more than $40.00, it is now $19.99 and have more to offer including solar power.

I stumbled across something I never knew Google to be able to do, in the search I just typed
"Square root of 10" and it displayed like a calculator. Other information such as dealing with squares, was helpful for finding the Square of 10 the without the a calculator . Amazing what kids have access to these days. Even something like "convert 10 miles to feet" produces answers.