picture of where the next egg is. We will see how it goes this year! I am hoping it will be more of a challenge!
Easter kind of snuck up on me this year! We have always colored eggs, went through the ressurection eggs, and made plenty of crafts but this year we have been so busy with outside activities and Easter came earlier that I found myself trying to figure out what activities we can fit in! So this week we did manage to color some eggs! This year we used kits that I had bought last year on clearance but next year I really would like to try using different dying methods (that's for next year though) :oP Every year I also do an egg hunt for my kids. As my kids started to outgrow the regular Easter egg hunts, I started creating a riddle based one where each egg would have a riddle to where the next one is with a "prize" at the end. I've been doing this for awhile and I must admit that I am all out of riddles! So this year I have created a picture based egg hunt! I begun by taking close up pictures of objects around our house... and then place those clues in the eggs in which each egg would have a
picture of where the next egg is. We will see how it goes this year! I am hoping it will be more of a challenge!
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After having last week off of school, we are back into the swing of things! We have continued our studies on Ben Franklin! Goosey made her own paper from a paper making screen that we had and then used her stamps to stamp on them (her version of a printing press). Next we made an armonica which fascinated everyone!! It went really well with the documentary that we saw about him!
We have spent a while in England but it fit very well with our TOG study of the beginnings of the Revolutionary War. We finally finished watching all the Harry Potter movies and we ended it with our own celebration last night complete with a slumber party in the living room! I created a Harry Potter invitational letter that I printed on parchment looking paper. We served "gummi slugs", although they were more of worms, and we had some roasted chestnuts (Goosey pointed out they had chestnuts in one of the movies. Butterbeer was also on the menu but we had no whipped cream for the topping so we opted for hot chocolate instead). The kids even brought down some memorabilia that we have collected over the years and some from our trip to Universal Studios a few years back. While we were in England, Goosey made a candle in a tea cup using our candle making machine. Speedy and Rosey have been a little too busy this week as they have been preparing for speech and debate that they haven't made theirs yet. Much to the kids dismay as they have really enjoyed England, we ended it on a tasty note with tea and pound cake! We used this recipe for our pound cake and it came out very good! It is definitely a keeper recipe!
We begun week 30 this past week and have started to cover events leading up to the Revolutionary War. I have added a lot of extras for these next 7 weeks of TOG. This week was learning more about Ben Franklin. We have been watching a really neat documentary about him, a PBS DVD titled Benjamin Franklin. It has a wonderful website connected to it as well...Ben Franklin. In the documentary, sentences and phrases were quoted from Ben Franklin's autobiography which tied in really well to what Speedy is reading for the week.
We have also been reading books on Paul Revere and I even brought out the good ole' school house rock video! For Paul Revere, I thought we could make some tin can lanterns as our project. Throughout the years, I have come across them on websites and in books and I always wanted to give them a try but we never did, so this time since my kids are older, we decided to give it a go! Goosey made hers by punching holes with a nail in a tin can (you need to freeze ice in the can the night before which makes it easier to punch the holes through). Then when she was done, she put a candle in the inside. Well we have managed to make it to the 3rd Harry Potter movie, almost halfway through! :oP I wasn't able to find any frog molds so we decided to just make some Butterbeer which was really good! I want to try and eliminate some if not all of the powdered sugar next time I make it though because 1/4 cup goes into each cup of butterbeer which made the drink good but VERY rich!! We used this recipe and made the hot version. I decided to get creative with mine and add a scoop of vanilla ice cream-yum!! We had a souvenir cup from when we went to Universal Studios a few years ago so I poured it in there. We will probably spend next week in England as well so we can finish up the Harry Potter movies and I have a few more crafts to do as well.
UPDATE: I made the butterbeer again but this time I used 1 tbs of powdered sugar and it tasted much better, not as rich! We are in week 29 of TOG and need to play catch up as we had a busy week! For this week the kids have been mainly working on their readings. Goosey has been continuing with her Ben Franklin experiments. She tried one with static electricity again but it didn't quite work the way it was supposed to. She needed to cut paper moths out of tissue paper and place those in a plastic box with a lid. Then she was to rub the top with a piece of wool and the moths were supposed to move. We did get close to the results but not quite like she expected. After she rubbed the box with the wool, she flipped the box over and then flipped it again, that is when the moths stuck to the lid because of the static.
For science and for our group 4H project, the kids are making a pizza garden! Our plan is to grow basil, oregano, onions, tomatoes, wheat, and garlic so that at the end of our 4H year in a few months we will be making pizzas with the ingredients that we grow! This week we had each family plant all the ingredients and take them home to take care of until we can transfer them into the greenhouse. We brought ours home and Goosey made some signs to go along with them and will be monitoring them as they grow as a science project. This week we have been learning about England. I plan on spending the rest of the week learning about it. We read a few great books on England and found out that many things have come from there! We were able to make connections between Colonial America and how maybe some of those things came over from England from the pilgrims and many other people that came to this country from England. We ate some Hobnobs which are a chocolate oat cookie that I bought from a grocery store that carries international items. Those were good with a cup of tea which is consumed in England more than any other country! We learned about Stonehenge. This was a neat website here with pictures! Goosey has been working on a model of it. So far she has the blocks made out of baking soda clay (here's the recipe we used). She's waiting for the blocks to dry and then I will post a picture of the finished project. Goosey decided to finish her postcard today and decided to make it of the London Eye. Now what was amusing about this postcard is that we have become fans of the show Doctor Who, much to Speedy's dismay as he thinks the show is a little too weird, and the London Eye is a "transmitter" for one of the Doctor Who shows. What I found amusing is that Goosey instantly recognized the site as she was researching England and exclaimed, "look, its the transmitter!! I have to draw that!" We are gearing up for a Harry Potter marathon over the next few days. I plan on making some "butterbeer" and if I can find a frog mold, some chocolate frogs.
This week our geography travels took us to the Netherlands! We've been
reading a really good book called Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates. There is a movie based on that book too so we just watched that last night. We read how many people travel by bicycles in the Netherlands and since it was a little too cold (and snowy) here, we decided to bike on the wii fit! I know a stretch, but we made it work! :oP We made cardboard windmills and my feeble attempts at getting Goosey to make a Lego windmill was returned with "I already made one awhile ago but I can't find it". We made Olliebollens which are yummy doughnuts!! Next week our travels will take us to England which we will also be having a Harry Potter marathon. My kids have been looking forward to that since we began our geography travels! We are beginning our unit with Ben Franklin experiments! I've assigned Goosey to look through The Ben Franklin Book of Easy and Incredible Experiments and then choose at least 2 experiments to do throughout the week. Her favorite this week has been separating pepper from salt using a balloon charged with static electricity. She mixed salt and pepper together on a plate and then took a balloon and rubbed it on a wool coat we have. When she placed the balloon over the plate of salt and pepper, the static electricity that built up, pulled the lighter particles of pepper up. She did this experiment quite a few times! Switching gears now, I have always had the best of intentions to use timelines with my kids and even was successful for about a year or so when they were much younger (we had a timeline with pictures going all around the border of our school room and then we moved and no longer had a room to dedicate to school, sigh). So began my struggle with time lines! For awhile I searched the internet for all sorts of different ways to present it in a condensed form but never found anything that really appealed to me so I gave up on timelines! Yesterday however, I came across this really neat idea on timelines here! Not only how to keep them contained in a small space but what to include in them! I like how she uses photos of book covers that they have read and other simple pictures that can be found online! So this week my goal is to have a set of timeline sheets ready to go in a binder so we can begin! :o)
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SearchAuthorWelcome to our little space on the web!! I'm a mom homeschooling my kids and blogging about our school days. My kids are 19, 17, and 14 years old and we share a household with 2 crazy cats, an African grey parrot, 2 hermit crabs, and a turtle. Curriculum we are Using...Goosey-14 year old
-Map Travelers -Tapestry of Grace Year 1 -Math U See Geometry -Physical Science -Easy Grammar -Bible Road Trip Year 2 Archives
January 2016
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