'13/14 Week 6 Day 4

There! Our last day done. Not for the year, of course, but before our fall break. 

As it was our last day, we took it easy. That is not the same as lazy by far. It just means, we got all the necessary work done with plenty of break time in-between.

Andrew's science was a twirling time of fun! We learned about our ears and how they help us balance. The kids got dizzy (all for science!) while spinning around, but now they know why it happens. We demonstrated it also with some glitter in a jar. That was Saara's favorite part to watch the glitter specks go round and round. 

Andrew also learned the value of using reference materials. During his writing practice, I told him, if he does not know how to write a certain word, he needs to find the book that talks about the subject. Like for the word 'zebra', Andrew pulled out his science book. We need to keep it up and very soon Andrew will get his very own dictionary.

But now - break time!

'13/14 Week 6 Day 3

To start off, here is a little green guy we met in my rosebush yesterday afternoon. It took a while for Andrew to spot it in the foliage. It had a perfect camouflage.

The things we did today that the children repeated in chorus "let's do it again!" 

First, critical thinking exercise (Saara) called for reading a fable about a crow and how he brought the water level up in a pitcher by adding one pebble at a time. We tried it too and looked for the moral of the story (not in the water, in the story). I must say, it is one of my favorite fables: little by little a task can be accomplished, mile after mile we will reach our destination, one math exercise after another we will get the workbook lesson finished, etc.

Second, outside, we played a few ball games - 'the bossy ball', 'the roman ball', and dribbling around cones. I played along, and it was a lot of fun. Truly!

PE. I taped pieces of tape onto Saara's ball and wrote some commands on them, like throw/catch the ball standing on one leg or throw/catch while singing, etc. I got the idea from internet.

The other idea from the internet was the 'roman ball': the ball bounces once in the circle and whoever catches it before it bounces again gets to bounce the ball next.

'13/14 Week 6 Day 2

What do you say about days that go well, but without any bells and whistles? 'A good day' sounds so boring. And yet, it was a good day. We worked on all our subjects except Language Arts. That class was taken up by Saara's ballet. She is truly loving all the leaping and prancing and twirling and the positions they are learning. Meanwhile, Andrew is working on his math and making friends with other 'big brothers' waiting for their ballerina sisters to get out of their class. 

'13/14 Week 6 Day 1

This is our last week before our first serious fall break. Four more days of studying and then two weeks of vacation. 

Keeping that in mind, we did a lot of good work today in all the subjects. 

It is becoming more and more clear to me that Andrew is good at reading, but slow at writing. I have also seen that practice makes Andrew better and better. So, that's our plan of action when it comes to writing. 

Bible. Constructing houses for the Israelites.

The children used grass blades to add red paint (lamb's blood) over and around the doors.

Saara's Science. Saara learned today about the plants sucking up water and what happens to the leftover water. I think, we have done the celery experiment at least three times. It never gets old. The kids are still full of wonder when they see the celery leaves turn blue.

Saara's third plant project was creating a self-watering terrarium. We got the pebbles from our creek bed, the charcoal from an old fire pit, and the compost from my compost pile. The hardest part was to find some small enough plants to live in the terrarium. But we found those as well.

2/3s of  Saara's science project. The plastic over one of my potted plants was supposed to show the excess water escaping through the leaves. It did. But I almost killed the plant because I forgot it outside.

Andrew's Science. Andrew had some noisy experiments demonstrating the works of our vocal cords. Here's the balloon making a terribly loud sound. I am 'horrified' because now Andrew can give an absolutely valid excuse for the screeching balloon 'screams': "But, Mom, this is science!"

Andrew was trying to strike up a one-man-band with all the different vibrating 'things'.

'13/14 Week 5 Day 6

First day of fall. I had planned to go to a park and have a breakfast-picnic with the kids to celebrate the new season. However, it rained all day yesterday, so the idea of going to a soaked playground in town was not appealing at all. 
Nevertheless, it was nice to be outside today. The morning was even chilly enough to put on long sleeves. After we did our school work, we pulled on our boots and went for a long nature walk looking for signs of fall. We found many. Saara spotted a lot of green berries on trees and bushes. In a few weeks all those berries should show off their pretty colors and we have another excuse to go round and enjoy nature. Happy fall!

Bible. Andrew is coloring pictures illustrating the ten plagues.

We turned the pictures into finger puppets. The printouts are from theshiksa.com

Math for Saara.

History. Saara's history story was about the precious gospel of Lindisfarne and how it got saved during the Viking raid at the end of the 700s. We all watched a 5-minute episode about the raid. It fit so perfectly with everything both kids have been learning about - the Vikings, their travels, raids, boat building, etc.

On the nature trail. We found some pretty strong evidence of fall having arrived.

'13/14 Week 5 Day 5

Today was a brave new day with rain and lots of school work and a malfunctioning computer. (Sad face) My laptop is done for now. (Happy face) I have a plan B and important files saved elsewhere.
(Another happy face). Children were fantastic today. They worked hard and behaved close to getting an angel's halo as a reward. We did a lot of hands-on projects. The only thing Andrew was not able to do today due to my computer giving up its ghost last night, was his writing practice. But never fear, the plan B is here and we will be printing out new writing practice sheets in no time.

Bible. Moses and Aron popping in at the pharaoh's palace. Looks kind of familiar, doesn't it? The nativity scene puppets have turned into Israelite salves. The only new addition is the pharaoh. Really an Egyptian princess with the homemade (not original download) crown. All puppets are from http://jacques-mylittlehouse.blogspot.com/search/label/Bible

Science. Saara was learning about some facts about mountains. We looked at all the seven peaks (the tallest elevations on every continent) and learned a number of new words. Andrew constructed a lung model. That was a pretty cool project. I have a video below.

LA. This week we have focused on the 'magic e'. Internet is full of different activities that help practice the words where vowels change because of the silent 'e' at the end. And we continue our handwriting practice.

Art. Our last class was art. I talked to them a bit about dimension and we practiced drawing and shading a few 3D shapes. We also looked at some photos of some amazing pavement art. 

'13/14 Week 5 Day 4

I think, today was the most challenging day so far. Somehow neither child had their heart on schoolwork today. It seemed, all they wanted to do was play and play and more play. 
My Mom blamed the full moon on the odd (mis)behavior. 
Dad said, it's because he was home today (as a rule, we do not have school when Dad is home, but I thought, I'd do it today anyway. Obviously, I was wrong.) 

We did get some work done, though. But I also postponed a few things till tomorrow, things I really need them to focus on and pay attention to. 

Well, then, tomorrow is a brave new day! :)

Bible. Moses and the burning bush.

"Throw down your staff!"

"Pick up the snake!"

"Pull out your hand!" And the hand was white with leprosy!

The burning bush operator.

The internet is full of all sorts of beard patterns to crochet. I made this one following instructions on madmim.com

'13/14 Week 5 Day 3

Both children worked hard today. In History, their lesson plans overlapped covering the Viking era which made the class go faster.

Yes, Andrew took his Math test today. He misunderstood the instructions to one of the tasks and lost a bit of points, but his final score was still worthy of an A-. The dude knows his math, just rushes through some things too fast.

We finished our day with the Civics class about the next American symbol - the bald eagle. The kids remembered seeing one at the Houston Zoo. They remembered it because that poor thing had only one wing.
In class we looked for some things - money and documents mainly - where the eagle has been used as a symbol. I read the kids a selection of pages from an online book at biguniverse.com 
Also, I think, one of these days we will take a special "pledge photo" of Andrew. He knows the pledge by heart now. Saara is still practicing her reciting.

A morning wake-up. I had the tin cans on the counter ready for a craft project. Andrew turned them around and made a decent ruckus.

History. Yarn crafts. Saara was reading about how the Vikings made their clothes. To illustrate the process of twisting the combed wool into yarn, I fluffed up a cotton ball and showed Saara the idea of how a ball of wool can be turned into a yarn for weaving. She liked the project so much, that I doubt we have any cotton balls left in the bathroom.

Civics. Learning about the bald eagle. Two things I know they will remember, first, that Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national symbol, and, second, that, according to the legend from the Revolutionary War, the eagles were hovering over a battle crying 'freedom!' (all this information came from the online book I read to them).

'13/14 Week 5 Day 2

It was Saara's ballet-day, which means, we had a shortened version for our school day. The bare bones. Which we did. Andrew usually works on his math workbook while we are waiting for Saara's class to finish. He was supposed to take his Test no.2 today, but I'd rather he took it at home and not while we are out and about. So, I juggled some lessons around and Andrew completed a different lesson in his workbook. Tomorrow, however, is the Test day.

'13/14 Week 5 Day 1

Weekend. A rather slithering kind. The temperatures are dropping (somewhat) and the snakes are looking for place to hibernate. We saw a snake (thankfully non-venomous) every day. Scary? Not really. But outside we do say an extra prayer and are being extra careful avoiding areas where snakes could be. Let them find their winter homes in peace. We have plenty of safe places where to play.

The Gulf Ribbon Snake. For this photo, I zoomed the camera in from about ten yards away.

Saara's Science. After 24 hours the layers of our soil had separated beautifully and our soil/plant studies can continue.

We started up the choir again!

And hand bells.

Now, after a good week end we had a good start to our school week. Our Bible class was lots of fun. We read the story of Job and I asked Saara to paint some 'painful sores' on 'Job's' face. She did a pretty job. Afterwards, I let them paint each other's faces and they enjoyed it a lot. 

Our last class was Music Appreciation. We listened to Chopin's "Raindrop" prelude and talked a bit about the pitch, high and low notes. Again, a SFSKids.org website was a great help, plus the kids were making their own music on the virtual xylophone (http://virtualinstruments.ezweb123.com/)

Bible. Face paints for sores.

Da Vinci and 3D Mona Lisa.

Math + time = math time.

'13/14 Week 4 Day 4

I woke up this morning to Andrew and Dad having their breakfast and noses in Andrew's history book. Andrew was looking at the pictures and telling Dad all the things he had learned from that book. It was nice. 

Even the corralling I had to do to keep both kids' attention on our studies today, was nice. They had so much to add and share about our subjects that it was a miracle we got our schoolwork done. 

Not really. :)

Science. Saara finished filling in her wind chart today and moved on to studying plants. First things first - we learned about the soil ...

... and what makes the soil.

Andrew continued learning about the human body. The video of the day - our blood and heart.

This was different. Watching your pulse by watching the toothpick wobble.

Art. Andrew and Saara learned about geometric and organic shapes. So, they made some honeycombs for geometric art ...

... and some leaf rubbings for the organic shape art.