Week 24 Day 4

February the 24th is Estonia's Independence Day! Made me a bit home sick. But my two half-Estonians colored beautiful pictures of our national flower - the cornflower - , our national bird - the swallow-, and the Estonian flag - blue, black, and white. Heritage studies.

The rest of the day was spent doing the regular drills of letters, hand writing, and math. We also tiptoed into the realm of energy. It is a rather hard subject for my five-year-old to grasp, so I tried to make it as simple as possible, focusing on the energy we use up moving around and where it comes from. All the 'kinetic' and 'potential' and other alien words can come later.

Week 24 Day 3

We started reading the New Testament in our Bible Stories book today! Amazing! The children have heard all the major stories in the Old Testament. I do not expect them to remember every single name they were exposed to, but it will make it easier to recognize the characters next time they run into them.

Our afternoon after the library's story time was dedicated to science. We watched the video as usual and copied the experiments in our kitchen. It was all about evaporation. Andrew and Saara are very familiar with this process because we almost lost our pond due to the water evaporating. So, it was already months ago that we had to answer their question "where is the water disappearing?"

First, we soaked two dish cloths. We laid one out on a plate and the other one we folded into a plastic bag. In the evening, the cloth in the bag was still damp while the cloth on the plate was bone dry, of course.

Second, we added some salt to some water and covered the bowl with plastic. We let it sit in a warm place (in the sun) and in the evening checked the plastic. Water that had evaporated had condensed on the plastic and tasted like distilled water should. How on earth did the 'scientist' in the video taste saltiness in the condensed water, is beyond me. He himself said the salt stays in behind in the water ...
Explaining why the ocean water was salty, was part of the lesson here. I drew a simple picture of the water cycle adding the elements the rivers carry to the ocean.

And third, we are still waiting for the outcome of the 'rainbow sugar' experiment. We added food coloring to the sugar water we mixed and now the colorful spoonfuls are waiting for the evaporation to take place.

It was fun. Let us see, what tomorrow brings.

Week 24 Day 2

Our school day was fun filled but rather intense - I did not have time to take any pics. The only shot I managed today was of Andrew inspecting the science experiment. The water in the small containers did push up and out of the neck a bit and made the sides and bottom of the containers bulge. Not much, but it was enough to deduce that ice needs more space than water.
I hope, Andrew will remember that and not end up like a friend of mine 15 years ago who could not figure out why his Coke bottle burst in the freezer. Teenagers then, let me tell you ...

Week 24 Day 1

What a busy day! A good one though. We learned about cities and towns. The fun part of it was that I tried to play an artist and draw on the white board some scenarios how towns could have started, like a village supplying the castle on the top the hill with food and services grew into a town, or a good port grew into a busy trading town, etc.
In science we learned more about materials and how they change with heat or cold. We also started an experiment of watching the 'frozen water grow'. We will see if the ice expands over the top of the containers or not. Only tomorrow will tell.
Our school day ended on a very upwards note. Literally. Andrew had tryouts at the Upwards Soccer in town. He is all excited about it. Good.

Presidents' Day

Although we did no school work today, I gathered the kids around the table for a little Presidents' Day activity. It is high time Andrew (and I) got to know some of the past US Presidents. We have been working a lot with coins in our math class, so we brought them out again this time to look at the pictures rather than work with their values.
We made some coin-rubs and found the pictures of Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson on the web just to see what the men actually looked like. Andrew loved the activity so much, he went on rubbing the coin images for both heads and tails. The best part: later in the day Andrew recognized Washington in a picture he saw. Good. He was only the fist one. There are still dozens of Presidents we will get to know in time.

Week 23 Day 3

A rather eventless school day. A good one, though. I am thankful for Andrew's progress in his reading assignments and his creative writing assignments. Today he managed to keep his story short and sweet and did not chase any rabbits. His reading ability is increasing. We started to borrow beginner reader books from the library and I can tell a little boost in his self-confidence when he actually reads a book from cover to cover. Way to go Andrew!

Week 23 Day 2

The two last lessons we had today were the most fun. First, we reviewed everything we had learned about houses since the first people to the Victorian times. We also explored the houses we are living in today and checked if Saara's doll house has all the parts mentioned in the lesson. It was missing the attic and the garage, but that does not really matter - our house does not have those either. Neither do we have a cellar or basement which to Andrew was such a fascinating part of Grandma's house in Estonia.

Our science lesson proved to me that chemistry can be a lot of fun (I have no clue, how I survived it at school). We talked about solids, liquids, and gases, and how the molecules behave in them.
In solids they stick together closely and barely move:


In liquids they are together and move faster:


In gases they do not touch and move very fast:


The best part of the science class was another vinegar + baking soda experiment (the first one being the volcano we made to erupt months ago). This time we used a liquid and a solid material to make the gas CO2. That was way too cool.