Mr. Mustard Seed is watching the Packer game, so I have a little time to share our week with you. So far, so fun! This week was pretty low key. We wrote a small report on our glider experiment, and read about habitats, instinct and extinction. We also completed a scavenger hunt which was part of our curriculum. Here's a peek at Mr. Sunshine writing his report: He wrote the first few parts. I ended up lightly writing the bottom half, because I was worried he might run out of room. He traced my letters on the second half. My cousin is in the Army, so the boys enjoy sending him special mail treats. Mr. Sunshine found this cute frog and said we "definitely need to send it!" It will be on it's way on Monday! He wrote a letter, too- excuse the folds- I had it all enveloped up: I found some pretty fabulous and pretty fun thrift store treasures, too! Here's pretty fabulous: And here's pretty fun: I saw Sequence States and Capitals online awhile ago. I thought it looked SUPER awesome. I'd never seen it in a store, though, and never expected to find it at my favorite thrift store. It's like, brand new, and probably cost me 50 cents! And Wacky Blasters- what can I say?! Have you EVER seen a more colorful and cute game?! The little trolly critters have holes on the end of their noses. You squeeze them to try to move your poof ball to the finish line. It's from 1990, and I pretty much love it! All the neighborhood kids do , too! And yikes! I almost forgot! On top of reading our textbook and filling in our notebook, we also watched/read these: The library is just bursting full of awesome resources! I LOVE putting books on hold. Mr. Mustard Seed's parents rented a German cabin in Cecil, Wisconsin. We visited them for a day and had a lot of fun! We went fishing, paddle boating, listened to funky German music, and even had our first kayaking experience. (which made me realize I'm more of a paddle boat kinda girl, hehe) It was a cloudy, but beautiful day. We kayaked all the way out to an island, where we saw a crane, osprey and their nests, and an eagle nest. The boys (especially Mr. Sunshine) thoroughly enjoyed fishing from the dock. Here they are with some of their catches: Here's a photo of Mr. Mustard Seed diving off of the dock: I had some fun taking photos of our reflections on the water. Here are a few of my favorites: A few more photos of my cuties: All in all, we had another fun week with Apologia's Zoology,
and definitely enjoyed our day at the lake, too.
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Our school year is officially underway. Our science curriculum requires birds and bugs. Because we live in the Frozen Tundra, those things are hard to come by in the winter, soooo, we decided to start science early. Our Zoology curriculum focuses on "Flying Animals of the Fifth Day." We'll spend a few weeks learning about birds. After birds, we'll learn about bats and pterosaurs. I expect to finish these studies in December/January. At that time, we'll take a vacation from science for awhile. We'll eventually start up again in May and continue through the summer. At first I was a bit unsure about "doing school" (science) over the summer, but now I'm actually pretty excited about it! It will be nice to have a "lighter" subject load during our regular school year Anyway, onto the fun stuff! This week we were introduced to the subject of zoology. This included a lot of big information- taxonomy, binomial nomenclature, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species, whewie!! Our first science experiment involved uplifting pressure. We learned about air pressure, lift, drag, thrust and aerodynamics. Big stuff- and it's totally true when I say I am learning along with the boys. LOVE it! Wanna see how air pressure works? We filled a cup with water, and cut a straw into two pieces. One straw stuck out of the water 1/2 inch. Mr. Sunshine angled the other straw and blew. The air pressure forced water to shoot out of the other straw. If you look closely, you can see it! Cool stuff! He wrote about it in his fancy shmancy notebook, too. Take a peek: I love his little doodle! He drew me (far left) with my camera. Mr. Mustard Seed is the spiky haired hottie, and Mr. Sunshine is next to him. The "experiment" is between us. After learning about all of this, we busted out our paper airplane book, and had some fun with flight in our backyard. Lemme tell ya, it's tricky business trying to "catch" a paper airplane on camera! We actually completed a second science experiment this week, too! Our second experiment involved glider design. I so wish I would have snapped a picture of each of the gliders we made, but I didn't. Boo. We made them out of cardboard, straws, tape and clay. One had long, narrow wings, and the other had short, wide wings. We had to determine which would fly further. We flew each glider 8 times, measured their distances, and then found their average. Which glider do YOU think went the furthest? Here are the gliders in action: (I thought taking pictures of flying airplanes was tricky business- gliders = even trickier business!) Our hypothesis was that the skinny, narrow glider would go further. I read ahead in the book, and knew that our hypothesis was correct, BUT.... the experiment scared me a bit! Short, wide glider was actually a pretty decent flyer! In the end, it was very, very close! Skinny narrow glider ended up winning with an average 155" compared to 148". We also enjoyed some time exploring our local nature center. We hadn't been there in a very long time. It was nice to walk the trails. The boys had fun with a scavenger hunt. Here they are, working together: Take only memories, leave only footprints. (I love that!) A train went by, which scared a few deer. If you look closely, you might be able to see them, too. Here are a few of my favorite shots: BW has been keeping busy, too. He enjoyed doing the experiments with us, and has been getting artsy with his new desk. And, since we're talking about desks, lemme show you some new desk bling! BW loves California and buses, so I was excited to find these little treasures! Who doesn't love the California raisins, right?! Mr. Sunshine loves the Eiffel Tower and France, so we added this little treasure to his desk, along with a few more Cali Raisins to BW's: I'm quite excited about our school year. So far, I'm very impressed with Apologia's Zoology, and the science lab kit has been amaaaaazing! Some of you may have heard about the gigantic mess I made in my planner. "Ah." Okay,let me fix that- it was more like this- "AHHHHHHH!!!" I am NOT a list-making-planner-planning person. Putting my lesson plans together for the year was quite the task. In case you're wondering what two bottles of white out look like... Take this, and... Multiply it by, like, 17.
But! My planning is 85% done, and I'm feeling accomplished, excited and hopeful for our school year! The good times are already rollin'! Thanks for stopping by! Friends! I'm back! Next week, I will begin planning my 2014/2015 school year. A lot of you have asked me questions about my curriculum, so I thought I'd give you a front row seat to my choices this year. The most common question I'm asked is, "Do you have to buy your own curriculum?" The answer to that is, yes. I have to buy everything, and nothing is reimbursed. And, because I don't teach the same grade every year, each year is a new (relatively large) financial investment. But it's totally worth it because I am able to teach, train and love on my boys. I have a few other things to share, too- my big desk makeover projects, some thrifty treasures and maybe a random photo or two along the way. Have ya'll been having a nice summer? I hope so. I'd love to know your favorite summer memory so far... Leave me a comment and let me know. My summer has been unusually busy. I'm not a busy person, so it's been a new challenge for me. Of course, my favorite memories so far have been time spent with my family. We recently drove to a park in a nearby city to watch airplanes fly at EAA. The classic two-headed monster pose... watching planes! Check out the back drop, eek! Some fun stuff we happened to see: Restored Treasures- "New" Desks!Next, I'd like to show you my boy's new desks! I think they're kinda fun, and show the boy's personalities. Here is The Fantastic Okapi's fancy new desk: ("Before" photo missing!) And some of his desk bling: Here is the Green Owl's "before" photo: And here's the after photo, still a little wet: ...and desk bling: I found the desks at thrift stores/craigslist (SUPER cheap!) The boys picked out their favorite color spray paints, and I got busy... Hand sanding, spray painting, and "antiquing" (aka: making the desks "dirty.") The neighborhood boys found that part especially cool! We let the boys pick a few "fancy" drawer knobs at Hobby Lobby (thank you, 50% off sale!!) The rest of the handles were like, 10 cent thrift store finds! Not too shabby! And, all of the desk bling = thrift store treasures, too! Oh, and I almost forgot- here's the Fantastic Okapi's thrifty-fun desk chair- a vintage chair from Chicago, $1.99. Seriously! I painted the legs to add some color. You know me- I've gotta have color! Paris wanted to make her modeling debut, so, here you go! Our Curriculum Choices 2014-2015 |
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