Meant To Teach

The best part at the end of this history lesson was our dessert! We learned about Archimedes and all his inventions, as well as his jumping out of the bathtub naked and running to the king yelling "Eureka" after he realized the displacement of water. But who can forget the great mathematician's discovery to estimate the value of pi. Before my girls could eat our dessert of apple pie, we proved Archimedes' point by measuring the circumference of our pie (circle) and realizing it was a little over 3 times the diameter of our pie (circle). I'm sure it was 3.1416 to be exact! All I could say after this lesson was, "I wish my high school teacher did this to help me understand." My 10 year old got it! She now realizes the easiest way to measure a circle is to measure the diameter and then multiply it with π. So, we had a little math lesson with our history today, along with a great treat at the end!

We learned about the Peloponnesian War this week. The girls really didn't like the Spartans. Their opinion of them was that they were very mean and had nothing to live for in their lives. However, they really enjoyed designing their own war helmet. This was such an easy, fun project for them. All it takes is a bicycle helmet, toothpicks, and play dough.

We started Chemistry this school year! The kids seem to be excited about it. We are using Bright Ideas Press Christian Kids Explore Chemistry . I already love it - its so Elementary, and if I'm honest with myself - I need that, too. Chemistry was never my strong subject. We did our first lesson today, but before we started off with the hands on activity that's at the end of each lesson - we decorated our own lab coats. This is such an inexpensive lab coat, because its made with one of the hubby's white t-shirts from his closet. We just cut it down the middle, made a name on the side along with a pretend pocket, and the girls decorated the back of their coat however they wanted. This will be our lab coat! They are very cute and I think the girls did very well at decorating. We'll put these on a little coat hanger in our school room.

This is a fun way to learn spelling! The girls wrote their spelling words with a white crayon. Then they took water color paint and painted over the words for their words to be revealed. They loved it. Its a pretty cool activity! Pictures below!

My youngest daughter decided to do her own leaf collection. She decided to do this on her own and we are done with school so I'm proud of her for always learning. Anyways, we found this pretty cool app where you take a picture of the leaf and it tells you what it is or could be (choices). Its called LEAFSNAP. Very cool app! Just wanted to share! :)

This has been one of my favorite projects I think, just because it not only fascinated my girls, but they were very responsible in making sure the task of watering their seed everyday got finished. We decided to do a CD case green house. You heard me right. I said a CD case. We simply planted a green bean seed in some potting soil in an old CD case. Make sure to put the potting soil at the bottom of the CD case where the opening is at the top of the case. I did put a little tape around the bottom to keep the case closed and to make sure that water didn't get out so easily when we watered it. We used a small dropper to fill water and put the water through the opening at the top of the CD case. We found an observation sheet to fill out here so they could record the changes everyday. And just watch it grow! We aren't totally finished watching ours, but when we are finished we plan on taking a sharpie and labeling our plant on the CD case starting with the roots and going up...

So my 7 year old already finished her 2nd grade math book and we have plenty of time until summer - so we decided to go ahead and start learning those multiplication tables. Its going rather well! She seems to be getting it easily. My oldest already knows her's, but this is a fun game that they got to play together. They have to draw two cards and multiply them together and if they get it right, they can color in the state once they say the capital of the state. At the end, whoever gets the most WINS! I can't really take credit for it - I got the idea from this site . But you can put your own variations to it. The girls had fun doing this.

We've started this week off with an Easter project or craft. Our first craft, an Easter wreath, is below. This is really so easy. You only need eggs, a ribbon, and maybe some super glue (just in case the eggs have a hard time staying together). All you do is clip the Easter eggs together by using two eggs and putting the bottom on the other egg's top and then vice versa. You keep doing this all the way around until you finally want to stop and clip the ends together. Then just wrap some ribbon around it of your choice and viola!

Well - this picture below is exactly what it looks like! We painted like Michelangelo. We had a lesson on how he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We talked about the famous painting of The Creation of Adam. I had the girls paint a different portrait of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon because we had just learned about that from our Mystery of History lesson. They said their backs hurt, so I gave them pillows to lay on the floor. After they were done, they were glad they did it - even though their neck was hurting from looking back so much. I then asked how they thought Michelangelo must have felt having to paint SO much?? I think they got a sense of what he felt.

My oldest daughter is in the Homeschool 4-H club in our area and I required her to write a speech. She whined and complained because she didn't want to do it. She is not too keen on writing. But its one of those things - she needs to learn and this mama knows it. After writing her speech and saying it, she told me, "I'm glad I did it now. This may be fun." That was the first of the proud moments in pushing her to do something she didn't want to do. When it was time to say her speech to the homeschool group - there were kids of all ages in the room. She said her speech with kids of all ages in this group. She did a fantastic job. Lo and behold, she surprised herself and won 1st place and got a ribbon to move onto the Sub-County round. This picture is taken of her before that moment of winning first among homeschoolers. Then we were off to the Sub-County round at a local community college. She was nervous, the crowd was much bigger this time. She went from bei...