Meant To Teach

This week we learned about clouds! Surprisingly, my oldest seems to be very interested in weather and gets it very easily. When talking about how clouds form - she really understood it and seemed to think it was very cool. We started out with talking about the process and I had my own little drawing on the white board. We talked about evaporation and how we get rain, snow, sleet, and hail. We set out a cup of water outside and marked with a dry erase marker to see our line of where we filled it. Once it evaporates, we will be able to see how much and where the water originally was. We ended the week learning about the different types of clouds. After reading about the cumulus cloud and how it can turn to what's called a cumulonimbus (LATIN WORD: NIMBUS) she asked me, "Is that what can make a tornado?" Lo and behold, in the next paragraph of our unit - that's what it talked about. She thinks she can be a weather predictor now by watching the clouds! I love the...

Thought I would post pictures of what we did on election week! Our candidate didn't win, but it was great to see how involved the girls got with this election. Their father taught an election unit to them the whole week. He's very into politics, so when he came home from work - they would sit down and do their file folder on the election. They also did a "Race to the White House" file folder game. My husband played the moderator. Then of course, they voted in their own online election through currclick.com. We also went to vote as a family. 

Since its Halloween week, we've decided to conjure up a few experiments! First experiment - Acetic Acid mixed with Sodium Bicarbonate Our reaction certainly looked like a wizard's potion. We just used 1/2 a cup of vinegar as our acid and 1 teaspoon of baking soda. The result...Carbon Dioxide! The girls loved to see it bubble up. We talked about how the vinegar and baking soda were in a "duel" with one another to try to neutralize each other, resulting in the bubble reaction of carbon dioxide. Second experiment - Making a Polymer SLIME! The girls had a great time making this. It was very easy with a borax and water solution mixed with a glue and water solution. The girls have played with it all afternoon. They also love seeing it take shape to anything. They've had fun stretching it and seeing it shape itself. We got our directions from http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryactivities/ss/slimerecipe_4.htm . Now for the SCIENCE part.... This POLY...

We were doing our Mystery of History (which we love) and we learned about the Egyptians this week. The girls seemed to really have an interest in the culture and the pyramids. We were lucky that we got to do a field trip - thanks to the online VIRTUAL world. ;) We did an online virtual tour through http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/explore-ancient-egypt.html . We finished up the week with the girls going over to their Nana's house and surprising us with a cake of the map of Egypt. They also made a pyramid on the map. I couldn't be more proud of my girls.

We timed it perfectly to learn about rocks in science and Stonehenge in Mystery of History. You can find our ROCK lesson here . Its hard to imagine standing up 28 ton slabs of rock and making a perfect circle. The girls went rock collecting and tried to guess what type of rock their rocks may have been and then tried to stack up their own rocks to make a perfect circle like Stonehenge. Then we pulled out the dominoes and made our own version of Stonehenge, although dominoes aren't that easy either with falling and making a perfect circle...so imagine having 28 tons of a rock slab that's not a perfect rectangle. :)

The three types of rocks are igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. To make sure we understood how these types of rocks were formed, we used candy! Igneous rock is formed when melted rocks cool and become hard. So why not demonstrate that with some fondue chocolate (one of my favorite things)?? Sedimentary rock is formed with layers of mud, sand, and animal remains that slowly turn into rock. So we used a Snickers bar to demonstrate this. Metamorphic rock is changed by pressure and heat. So we added a little of our own pressure to some flavored Tootsie Rolls. You know the girls loved this lesson! They got to enjoy it. To finish it all off, they did their own music video with the song we all know the tune of, "We will Rock You". The words of the songs are posted below as well. We will we will rock you! We will we will rock you! Volcanos erupt with lava so hot, it cools and hardens and its igneous rock cuz rocks can change...all over this place...

Who knew ancient history could be fun? We're loving Mystery of History . We enjoyed this week learning about Sumerians and their Ziggurats and Cuneiform tablets and the Tower of Babel. They made their own Cuneiform writing and they loved looking at pictures of their Daddy at the ziggurat in Iraq. The kids found it very interesting that the world has about 5,000 different languages. We believe it all started from...THE TOWER OF BABEL! We did our own Tower of Babel with marshmallows all while listening to FOREIGN languages in music. We didn't have a clue to what languages we were listening to or what they were saying, but it was a great way to demonstrate confusion! We also learned about the Hebrew word "babel", which means confusion. We also get the word "babbling" from that - a toddler babbling can be so confusing! We found humor from that lesson.

This week we learned about Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney, Benjamin Franklin, Louis Braille, Alexander Graham Bell, John Deere, and Henry Ford. The girls loved the book, Louis Braille - The Boy Who Invented Books for the Blind . They never wanted me to put it down when reading it. We read it for school and for bedtime. With learning about Benjamin Franklin, we couldn't possibly put a key on the bottom of a string and fly a kite to discover that same electricity he felt. But we did experiment with static electricity by doing these experiments found here . With learning about Alexander Graham Bell we did the thing we used to do when I was a kid. :) The kids also had to come up with their own inventions to tell us about at the end of the week. They weren't allowed to tell each other what they were working on and they weren't allowed to tell me. This is a project they did totally on their own, with the exception of me or their dad having to put a nail or screw where they wa...

It's that time again!! The kids are still tucked away in their beds and I wake them up in 15 minutes. They are going to have a nice breakfast waiting for them on the dining room table to start their morning off right. Today we open up new curriculum and new subjects. They start Latin this year along with new books! They are very excited! I just wanted to show some pictures of what their first day will be looking like when we start. The "Back to School" fairy has visited them. She even left glitter on their gifts and on her note. I can't take credit for this. I got this off of pinterest.com, but feel free to follow me on there and go to my homeschooling board and you can find it, too.

Honestly, if anyone were to ask me to name a President, I would NOT have said, "President McKinley!" We were lucky to get to take a trip to Ohio to visit my sister and while we were there we went to the McKinley Presidential Library and Museum in Canton, Ohio. I was thankful for the trip with the girls, we learned a lot about a President that I knew very little about. A little education while on vacation was nice. My favorite part? We got to be at his grave site. I told the girls, "We are at a President's grave" - how often do you get to say you visited a President's grave?? I also learned that the media made his death seem like it was due to an infection, but the real truth is - he was assassinated. The bullet which shot through him became infected and that's why he died. Very interesting!

After the girls did their spelling words, I let them just draw pictures on the table. They had a lot of fun! Not to mention, it kept them occupied for a while. :)

I know I just posted a blog this week about our volcano week, but I had to post pictures of our eruptions yesterday. We had some friends over for our volcano eruptions and we also waited until my husband got home from work, because you know how men like to "blow things up". :) First volcano did its normal thing with the baking soda and vinegar. I just posted a picture with friends. Chris, my husband, took a video on his phone, but unfortunately, he has his phone so I can't retrieve it. The last pictures are of Chris doing the Diet Coke experiment with mentos. If you haven't heard of this, you are missing out. I wish we would have had more bottles and more mentos to keep trying it to see how high we could have gotten it. All you do is put a pack of mint mentos in a 2 liter of Diet Coke. Then you have an EXPLODING REACTION!

We learned about volcanoes this week and the girls LOVED IT! We did a lapbook, built a volcano, and even woke up one morning and watched the Magic School Bus Blows Its Top. You can find this video here . We still have one more day of our school week though. So we're going to erupt our volcano and then also do the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment. The girls have wanted to do this for a while and I've been waiting for the perfect occasion. You may say that a volcano doesn't really shoot up that high, but it does. A volcano can shoot up as high as 300 feet! At the end of the week, I look back and say, "Wow - I love watching the girls learn." Kylee said she wanted to be a volcanologist when she grows up. I know that could change in a couple of weeks, but I was glad to know she was so interested in what she learned this week. Today I even gave them a certificate of appreciation awarded to them for becoming an outstanding "Junior Volcanologist." Pictures are be...