I cannot believe our first week of school is already over! It was rather intense, as I expected. This year, both children have to do a lot more individual work, and they will spend less instructional time with me. The first five days showed that they are ready to tackle a number of assignments on their own. Moreover, they are wanting to do it on their own.
I also found it very encouraging when the children woke up much earlier than they did during the summer and started their studies early. We developed a sort of a pattern - in the morning, we spend time together and I work with them on their lessons or reading and writing assignments, and the afternoon is there for the kids to work on their own. We all seem to like this arrangement. It will help tremendously once the multitude of after-school activities begin.
This semester, Andrew has decided to try karate, Saara will try it too, but in addition, she will also be involved in volleyball and continue her ballet class. Both kids will still be part of their choirs and hand bell groups, and the piano class. It obviously will be a whirlwind of a school year.
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| Evaluation tryouts fro volleyball. |
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| An afternoon surprise. We have not seen deer close to our house in a long time. |
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| First taekwondo class. |
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| Science. Saara had a lesson about bridges. We took a short walk to the bridge by our property and studied how it was build and what keeps it up. |
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| The creek is dry now, but it has risen and flown over the bridge a time or two. Sticks and driftwood caught in the underbelly of the bridge from those floods. |
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| The abutment. |
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| More science. Saara's first TOPS experiments with electric flow. |
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| Andrew's science focuses on chemistry. He had so much fun doing experiments with the red cabbage water. |
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| Needless to say, the unused cabbage was eaten by the 'scientist'. |
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| Andrew is ready to add an array of things into the cabbage water. |
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| We started off with a very dark, almost black liquid. |
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| Andrew took notes of everything. Some of his predictions were correct, some surprised his a lot. |
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| Adding vinegar turned the dark water into purple. |
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| Adding cream of tartar and soap flakes turned it creamy purple. |
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| Adding bleach turned it pink. |
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| Adding baking soda turned the water back dark purple, made it foam out of control. The foam turned green on us. |
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| Acids and bases turning the cabbage water into so many colors. |
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| The kids' first Spanish lesson. |
