Week 23 Day 1

Andrew had not seen this many (two) MDs since the day he was born. Yesterday, he had two appointments and now a new bottle of medicine. This pesky cough just does not leave him alone. Nor does the runny nose. Obviously, I did not schedule any school work and so, with us taking a trip this week end we will do school only three days this week. But busy three days they will be.

Today, we started reading "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". I remember reading it as a child and thinking what a silly and boring book it was. My husband said he was scared of the characters when he was little. Well, how be! After the first chapter, the kids are liking it. Let's see what happens. They liked "My Father's Dragon" (a rather silly book, in my opinion) so much that I borrowed two following books from the library. As our Vocabulary Development, we are reading "Elmer and the Dragon" right now and hopefully will be finished before we need to return the book. I guess, silly or not, it is a healthy sort of story and has good words in it to learn and explore.

Week 22 Day 6

We had a very science centered day. First thing after the Bible reading and prayer, we talked about what scientist do and how they do it and why they do it. I had them pretend to be scientist (I wish, I had had a white lab coat for them to wear!) and go through the basic rigamarole of asking a question, coming up with a theory, conducting an experiment, observing, and drawing a conclusion. Our object was floating items in a fresh and salt water. The kids started cheering when they saw the egg in the salty water float! That was cool, both the kids screaming and the egg floating.

And we finished out school day with a number of experiments about the acidity of various foods. We also dropped some coins in a cup of cola for cleaning (the next day we checked if the acid had worked, one coin out of six looked sparkly, the other ones most likely would have required a longer soaking time or a stronger acid).
The kids tasted some foods and liquids and decided whether they tasted sour or not. So, we grouped them accordingly. Our Not-so-sour group was much larger than the Sour group. Later we conducted the 'red cabbage water' test and found out that most items in the first group actually contained acid, like cola, orange juice, and apple cider. The children had fun watching the blueish cabbage water turn pink or read as the acid reacted. Way too cool.
And again - the kids ate their school work! While I was preparing the foods for the taste test in the kitchen, the kids were shredding the red cabbage: "One for me, one for the bowl. One for me, one for the bowl." Needless to say, the orange disappeared as well as soon as our experiment was over.

Week 22 Day 5

We started our day out with exercising again. This time the routine came from a book called "I Love Yoga". It was fun to try the different yoga poses and their names, like 'dolphin' or 'downward dog', made us giggle. We will try to go through the whole book and try as many poses as we can. It is fun. And good for our bodies.

If the exercises made us giggle then the history lesson or rather now basic cultural studies of the nations of the world had us in stitches. I laughed till my head hurt. After reading about how different we all are in this world of ours, we tried to greet each other in different ways. The common handshake and even the Asian bowing was easy, but when we got to the Continental (French) style greeting of three pecks on the cheeks, things got out of order. I kind of knew it was bound to be hilarious, so I captured it on the camera.

Here's take one: I just told Andrew and Saara to try to greet each other:



Take two: Saara decided not to let Andrew get away this time:



Take three: Finally, Andrew gave up and agreed to be greeted:

Week 22 Day 4

School day was good. Library was fun. Not much happened except I shot a short video which I titled "Caught Doing Math." In our Wednesday Night class at church we made a Valentine's Day craft - love bug antennae. Andrew has been wearing his two days in a row now, buzzing around even while doing school work. i had to catch that phenomenon on camera. He had no idea he was being filmed and looks pretty confused ...
Here it is.

Week 22 Day 3

Looking back at the school day, it seems that math and science dominated over other subjects. Beside the usual additions and subtractions, every now and then we go over and learn more about money and time. Today we did it again, and again I saw that Andrew likes to count money himself (with me telling him the amount of cents to count) rather than guess how much money is in front of him. Counting coins is fun. I will not be surprised to find Andrew one day emptying his piggy bank just to count how much he has in it. As a child, I did it countless times.

Our science class brought us to a make-believe doctor's office. Saara volunteered to be the doctor. It was not just role playing but serious lesson on what are doctors for and how do they find out about our ailments. Of course, the whole time I was entertained by the pair of them recounting the numerous stories of our visits to the doctor's office. One would think we had been on a field trip!

In our history lesson, I brought out the computer to show some pictures of the decades after the WW II. We looked at the photos of the first television sets, mobile phones, etc. At the end I asked them, would they know what a type writer was. Their answer made me feel SO incredibly OLD.

Week 22 Day 2

Right after prayer and Bible reading we dove into our science projects. We taste tested sweet, sour, salty, and bitter things on different parts of our tongue; we also tasted chocolate milk and strawberry milk both with our noses plugged and unplugged, and we tested our reactions to green and blue scrambled eggs.
Our milk test failed because Saara guessed both milks with and without her nose plugged. Andrew did not guess right neither with or without holding his breath. I tried it too and ended up with milk up my nose. May-be this works with shakes but not milks.
Andrew was very suspicious about the green and blue eggs. Honestly, they did not look appetizing at all. Saara, braveheart, did not mind the color and dug right in.
The children liked the taste testing the best, mainly because I let them finish the bowl of powdered sugar once we were done.
All this fun energized us for the rest of the school day which flew by fast.

Valentine's Day Is Coming

We love Valentine's Day! Tonight we sat down with some construction paper, glue, scissors, ribbon, branches from our forest, and pebbles from our creek ... and - voila! - our first Valentine's Day decoration is up and pretty.