'13/14 Week 29 Day 1

Friday of last week ended up being our catch-up day. The next day was Little League's opening day and we, as parents and coaches, had many last minute things to take care of. 

History. Andrew entered the Seven Years War. A lot was going on in many places and it was a rather big chapter to digest.

Science. Revisiting the rainbow with the help of the Magic School Bus.

LA. Somehow our journey along the yellow brick road is going rather fast. Saara retelling me today's chapter.

The Opening Day mayhem. Just a glimpse at the photo shoot in the morning.

New week has begun with lots of activities. Baseball will, of course, dominate, but we will also have Saara's ballet and the kids will finish their choir season with a concert on Friday. 

Today, for Andrew the BIG thing happened in math where he moved on to solving equation problems, i.e. finding the missing variant 'n' in an addition problem. 

Andrew also had a intense review of the Seven Years War and the French Indian Wars in America. Things get more and more exciting as we get closer to our time.

Bible. We started tracking all the 12 disciples - when and who started following Jesus.

LA. The "Oz" characters reached the field of poppies. Saara made a field of her own.

During the breaks, the kids practiced hard for a magic show that they gave at the end of the school day. It was hilarious.

'13/14 Week 28 Day 4

And another day done. I finally started reading Andrew's new read-aloud book called The Strawberry Girl. The way the author has penned down the locals' speech is driving me bananas. 'Young uns', and 'jist', and 'jedgin', and 'tole' - I am not fluent in backwoods lingo and I do not strive to be. I might skip the book for now. The story itself is promising to be good. But I feel, I am torturing myself and my kids with bad phonics. It just sucks the joy of the story right out. It reminds me of another book "Uncle Remus" I borrowed from the library once. What a disaster! That book had even worse spelling than this.

Bible. Andrew's new Bible verse/song has an excellent rhythm pattern.

Long ago, I taught the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness in my Sunday School class. I popped the balloons (representing satan) each time he failed to tempt the Lord. Both children remembered that class and we repeated the action this morning as we were reading today's Bible story.

The cola-cleaned coins. This experiment was successful.

'13/14 Week 28 Day 3

A full day of experiments and reading-writing. Again, the morning was spent doing various science experiments. As we were working with lots of food items as our testing objects, half of them got eaten. (Got to love science!)

In math, Andrew had his fist glimpse into learning about the ratio. He seemed to understand the basics of how to write and read ratio. 

Now, we are heading out of doors to enjoy the beautiful spring weather!

Good morning!

LA. We are making slow but steady progress on our yellow brick road.  I think, the company is together at last.

Science. Sour taste and acids. The children tested various things for acidity.

I had the sour tasting foods first and finished the line with sweet things for testing.

Just like two years ago, the kids had a blast tearing up the red cabbage. And like two years ago, half of the cabbage ended up eaten. We needed the cabbage water for a true acidity test.

The dark cabbage water in the making.

The other acidity test: cleaning up some dirty coins in coke. I will take another photo tomorrow to see how clean the pennies will be.

Finally, Saara squeezing lemon juice into the cabbage water ...

... and watching it change color in front of her eyes.

'13/14 Week 28 Day 2

I can not believe, how much we accomplished today schoolwork wise despite it being the busiest day of the week. Saara's ballet class will finish up toward the end of April and so do the children's choir and hand bells. Only baseball remains until the end of May. 

LA. We all did a little sentence building exercise by combining three words into a sentence.

Andrew super excited about using a fountain pen and practicing cursive.

'13/14 Week 28 Day 1

The kids had a great play date last night and, at least Saara, had hard time getting going this morning. But she did and proved herself as an expert Mary-Joseph-Baby-Jesus-Angel as we staged a small puppet play based on our today's Bible reading. 

The whole morning was swallowed up by various science projects. Fist up was Saara's. Her science reading was about what scientists do. We tried to follow the steps scientist take, like asking questions, coming up with theories (or hypothesis), testing the theories, observing, and then drawing conclusions. Writing it all down was kind of boring at first, but once we got into the testing stage, things got exciting. 

Andrew had a couple of experiments of his own as well. We are still talking about severe weather and how wind creates tornadoes and hurricanes. Today's experiments were all about air and learning the difference between low and high pressure. 

Thankfully our own weather is beautiful outside and the kids are enjoying it both at the playground at home and at the ball park in the afternoons. This is the last week for practices. "Play ball!" starts next week for real.

Bible. Andrew and Saara in charge of their group of characters from the traditional Christmas story. How do you like Saara's hair? She is so proud, she learned how to make her own pony-tail. Sort of.

Science. Questions and theories before we start.

Our question was a simple one: do objects float the same way in both fresh and salt water? Or do things float better in salt water (like Saara put it)? Saara's hypothesis was that they do not. Well, she observed her experiment and realized her hypothesis was wrong. Stuff floats in salt water.

Saara seemed to enjoy the scientific process. Afterwards she gave an overview of our experiment I recorded on the white board and the children wrote down on their papers.

Andrew making his paper propeller go round by the means of hot rising air. A very similar experiment we did with Saara a few months ago. Then we used a paper snake.

Learning about air pressure by means of a balloon.

LA. Andrew is finished with his handwriting (printing) course. He is so excited about his next workbook - cursive.

Saara's reading practice book. We are getting ready for out next field trip in a couple of weeks.

'13/14 Week 27 Day 4

Our day was unexpectedly interrupted as the pest-control truck rolled in in the morning instead of the usual afternoon hours. We rolled with it too. We grabbed what we could and spent the next hour or so out of doors reading. The kids loved it so much that even after the pest-control left, they wanted to continue their lessons outside. And we did. 

Our meadow is blue!

LA. Wizard of Oz on the trampoline this time.

Our read-aloud time today.

Andrew's baseball practice was cancelled because of a heavy thunderstorm. It even brought us some hail.

Of course, I had to bring some hail stones in to have the kids measure them and cut them in halves to check for layers. Both kids just learned about weather and how hail is formed. Wasn't this a nice well-timed hands-on science experiment?

Sure enough, they had layers.

'13/14 Week 27 Day 3

What an intense day! But a good one.

In science, I and Saara read about what science is and what it does and how scientists work. I asked her to name things that would not be in our house if scientists had not made it happen. Well, we pretty much 'stripped' our rooms down to the pioneer era level.

Andrew, using one of the blessings science and technology has brought to our house - the computer, was taking a closer look at the hurricanes. We watched some footage of Katrina and Andrew. But most importantly, we talked about what we should do if severe weather threatened our region. 

Another BIG subject with Andrew was Peter the Great in history. Because Peter won the Nordic War with Sweden, Estonia became part of the Russian Empire. In fact, one of the most famous battles of the war was fought at Narva, Estonia. 
In Tallinn, Peter also bought and renovated a cottage for his wife Catharine I. It is now a museum. So, besides talking about the man and his achievements in Russia, I was able to touch upon some facts in the Estonian history as well. Cool!

Science. Andrew watching how Katrina formed. The teddy bear in his lap was given to him (as a baby shower gift, for Andrew had not been born yet)  by a sweet family from Louisiana who had evacuated and lived next door at the time.

This is what Saara occupied herself with while I and Andrew were getting to know Peter I.