So far she's built a catapult which the cat was having fun chasing all the little marbles that were being shot out of it and a board to measure the height. Her experiment was to shoot the marble out of the catapult at different angles and see where it landed on the measuring board.
Everyone has been working away at their science. Speedy is almost done with his Apologia Biology book, Rosey has a science research paper for CC and she has chosen aromatherapy as her topic so she has been busy researching for that. And Goosey is continuing with the Physics set. So far she's built a catapult which the cat was having fun chasing all the little marbles that were being shot out of it and a board to measure the height. Her experiment was to shoot the marble out of the catapult at different angles and see where it landed on the measuring board. The next big project was to make a pulley.
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Goosey is about halfway through Farmer Boy (Little House on the Prairie Book) so she has been making some recipes from The Little House Cook Book. So far she has made popcorn and milk which she has actually eaten before. Donuts, we just added different toppings-powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar, and then Goosey also made a honey glaze by adding honey and milk together. The last thing she made was molasses candy.
All were good except the molasses candy! I don't have a great history with molasses in general (the smell is not something I can tolerate very well) but I thought since Goosey was old enough she could handle the cooking on her own. She did a fantastic job of it but man did it stink up the entire house! When it was all done, she tried it and said it tasted the way it smelled so needless to say, I did not end up trying it! I do want to try it again with her but find a different hard candy to make with corn syrup or a different ingredient. We finished up the Civil War study by having a strawberry party (they were popular during the 1860's). Since they are out of season here now (the prices are high), I limited our strawberry selections to whatever we could make with 4 pints of strawberries! We were able to make strawberry pie, strawberry shortcake, strawberry scones, and we still had some strawberry sorbet that I made last year when we went strawberry picking. I'd like to have this strawberry party again during late spring when we are able to pick fresh berries. While we were waiting for all these delicious strawberry items to bake, we tried to extract the DNA in a few strawberries. This was fairly easy to do! This is the site we used here and it has an explaination on what is happening. Once we had the DNA strand floating the kids looked at it under the microscope!
It's been awhile since I posted! We decided to take a week off of school last month due to the kids other activities and commitments and then the flu and colds decided to take over the household! Before that, the kids had some time to play in the many inches of snow that we have!! They created a snow fort and a snow TARDIS of all things! We also had our annual Valentine's Day party at 4H but this year we decided to add on a spin of Olympic activities! The kids had a lot of fun! We divided the kids into 3 teams and had each team create their own name. Then we played indoor winter games such as the luge (a plastic sled that was pushed across the carpet by each team), skating relay (kids just skated with their socks and passed a baton), and curling which proved to be the favorite event (the kids used feather dusters to fan a balloon and try to get it to the center of a bulls eye taped to the floor without going beyond the circle).
Well we have been trekking away on TOG on weeks 21-22 and we are starting week 23 this week. We watched several movies the past couple of weeks! We watched Florence Nightingale which was very good. A few graphic scenes that we skipped through. Week 21 was concentrated on the Underground Railroad so we watched Odyssey Race to Freedom and Race to Freedom: The Story of the Underground Railroad. Both were very good, one is an animated version and other is not. We also watched the Disney version movie of Treasure Island since Speedy finished up the book. Goosey made cornbread from the Addy's Cookbook (American Girl Doll) which came out pretty good! And then the kids played an online Underground Railroad game here. This past week and for the next few weeks we will be concentrating on President Lincoln and the Civil War. The kids started out building this paper model of Lincoln's house but then lost patiences so I finished it up. It came out pretty good considering it was a little difficult to get the roof on! We watched Lincoln which was also pretty good and with research from Speedy, we found out that they did a pretty good job at portraying Lincoln with his calm demeanor and his story telling. We started out this week by making hard tack which is 2 cups of flour, 3/4 cup of water, and a few pinches of salt. We mixed everything together and rolled it out to 1/2 inch thickness. Baked for 30 minutes at 350. Then we pulled it out, cut it into squares, and poked holes in it. We then put it back into the oven for another 30 mins. We let it cool once it was done baking and then tried some! Very plain and hard but the kids thought it was good! Today we also created and solved secret encrypted messages as they would have in the Civil War. I had some workbook pages on hand from awhile ago so we used those but I found some sites online where you can create your own Cipher Disc which are similar to what we did. Sliding scale/cryptograph and Confederate Cipher Disc. We all had fun with this project!
This past week was our second week learning about Japan! We tried our hand at origami and had a lot of fun making boxes, baskets, and animals! We did many tutorials from this website here. Some had videos that we could watch and fold along while others had pictures of the steps. Coming from someone that normally does not have the patience for origami, the steps from the website were easier to follow than some of the books we had! Being that we have 2 cats that sort of rule our home here, we decided to read more about the Japanese Welcoming Cat! We read some history at this site and then created our own clay versions! Goosey also made a Shoji, paper screen, by cutting pieces of cardboard strips and gluing them together to create a window type panel. Then she painted everything black and when that was dry, she glued white tissue paper to the back. She created 3 panels that way. To attach them together she hole punched a hole on the top and bottom and tied yarn to hold it together.
We finished our first week back after Christmas break and it went quite well! We finished up week 19 of TOG. This week was concentrated on Asian history (China/Japan), we focused a little more towards the Japan side and traveled along with Map Travelers! Goosey made a Mount Fuji (well a little version of it) out of clay and then painted it. Once everything was dry she added the baking soda, food coloring, and vinegar. Then came the explosion! I found these snacks over at World Market so we taste tested these and they were quite tasty! We've had these kits for a couple of years. I found them clearanced out at Barnes and Noble so they painted these Japanese gold panels. Last but not least I found these Zen gardens at the Dollar Tree last year as well. Originally we were going to make our own but then I thought for $1.00, I can't go wrong! We plan on carrying over our journey to Japan next week as well!
Goosey finished up her Apologia Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics book in Dec. so I wanted to keep the momentum going! I found this awesome Thames and Kosmos Physics Workshop kit last summer at a used curriculum sale so she is continuing the rest of the year with that! So far this week she did an experiment on finding balance, made a contraption to spear a potato, and then she built a car which she had a lot of fun with! The kit consists of a booklet and parts/pieces to build things. She reads a section of the booklet, then completes the experiments by building and carrying out an experiment with what she built, and finally it has a short explanation on what is happening. So far it is going very well!
We are HUGE board game fans here so it was without surprise that the kids received games for Christmas! I thought it would be fun to list our top favorite board games since we have been playing so many during our Christmas break! My kids are on the older side so the games that I list will be for older kids. Without further ado, here is our list in no specific order... 1) Dutch Blitz-this is a new game for us that we all love! It reminds us all of the game spoons. This is a fast paced card game where you try and play sequenced numbers in a central pile all the while trying to get rid of your 10 pile Blitz. This can get a little crazy but we all love it! Ages 8 and up 2) Ticket to Ride-we have had the US version for awhile and we just welcomed the Eurpoean version into our board game family! This is just a simple but fun game! You try and build trains to link cities together by collecting colored cards. The European version just adds more challenges such as tunnels and ferries. Ages 8 and up 3) Settlers of Catan-we just discovered this game and it has been a lot of fun! You build roads and settlements by collecting resource cards. Ages 10 and up 4) Scotland Yard-another Christmas game. The detectives work together to try and find Mister X (1 player is Mister X and the rest are detectives). We only played this twice, it is a challenge to find Mister X and a lot of strategizing but it is fun! Ages 10 and up 5) Who What Where Drawing Game-Fun twist on Pictionary! We all had plenty of laughs with this one! My only complaint is the kids didn't know some of the people so I just ended up pulling all the people they didn't know out of the deck which made the who deck a little smaller. Ages 12 and up 6) Zooreeka-an oldie but goodie! We have had this game for years and it is still a favorite! From the price of this on Amazon though, it looks like they do not make it any more. This would be a good game to watch out for at garage sales or yard sales. Collect cards to trade in for animal habitat tokens. Ages 8 and up 7) Pandemic-we've had this game for awhile as well. You work together as a group to try and fight diseases. This is a challenging game! We have yet to beat it but we do enjoy playing and the challenge (I am determined to beat this game one day!!) Ages 13 and up 8) Pay Day-my kids discovered this game while playing it at a friend's house. We were able to find it in great condition at a used book store that also sells used board games so it has been a favorite over here (the one we have is the 70's version)! You travel through the month all the while collecting bills, saving money, getting paid on payday, etc. Ages 8 and up 9) Clue-another oldie but goodie game but it's still fun to play. You try and solve the clues on who commited the crime. Ages 8 and up 10) Monopoly-I had to put this in here because Speedy is a collector of Monopoly!! He has quite a few versions! His favorite though is the Disney version which we found at the used book store for a really great price. That is our list of favorite games right now! I am sure we will be collecting more as the years go by and we'll be having new favorites!
We all had so much fun learning about the Victorian Era that we decided to have a Victorian Christmas Party as our end of unit celebration for TOG! Speedy's ongoing project was the food portion of that time period so he made most of the food that day! Upon learning everything they ate, we opted to create a more "simplified" and do-able menu (we weren't up for trying ox tail soup or oysters)! For our menu we had roast chicken, wasail punch, a variety of cheeses with crackers, mashed potatoes (I don't think this was Victorian but it went well with what we were eating), cranberry sauce, yule log for dessert, and several samplings of coffee. Everything was delicious! Along with Speedy learning about the menus and recipes, he also learned that they set their tables in an elaborate manner where many of us kept asking "which fork do I use for this"! We also dressed as Victorian as we could get! The kids wore their hats that they made, Speedy had his cane he made, and then I had each of them read a part of the Christmas Carol outloud.
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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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