Two weeks ago, it was crazy. I didn't even get the nuts and bolts of homeschool done. I did, however, make almost 200 little tubs of slime:
It was for our Cardston Community Awareness day that I help with each year. It was all gone by the end of the day! Maxwell counted how much slime we had by finding the volume with multiplication...oh yah.
They have a contest where you have to make a poster if you are in an upper grade. I taught Maxwell a bit of photoshop, which he picked up super duper fast, and he made this poster all by himself:
"Seasons change but bugs remain" had to be the theme of the poster and it was by the health department.
I thought he was quite good! We don't know yet who won.
Then, the NEXT DAY was Christmas in Cardston that I help out with. I had made a tree for them which sold at the tree action:
I realized that day that hardly anyone had sent in any gingerbread houses, so I quickly got my family on the job of making some...too bad I didn't have my sister Danette here who makes very elaborate gingerbread amazingness!
Yah, uh, I didn't help and they were truly kid-created.
Maxwell insisted on doing a rice crispy one like last year, but this time he wanted it to be Santa's sleigh. You can't tell how cute it was from this photo, but it was pretty cute.
See the reindeer?
That week I was also making new sight word flashcards. I know they don't look like much, but they're quite hard for me to come up with. Here's a few
Every YEAR you have a birthday. The YOUNG kids like toys. BEFORE Christmas you decorate your house, and WASH the dishes.
Also, my kids have been going to Westwind classes still. I'm not sure if this has helped or hindered my business, but I think it was good for my boys regardless. They had a watercolour class and made scenes reminiscent of Van Gogh.
That week's science was awesome. Awesome because I feel like the kids really grasped the things I was trying to teach, which was molecules, physical vs chemical change, and mixtures vs compounds.
One of the things that I believe made it so understandable was this book:
It so perfectly tells how and why molecules are made in a way every child can understand. So cute. Highly recommend.
We made molecules out of CANDY! Why not?
Notice his glasses? Yep, every class from now on!
It was a very yummy sweet, but stinking science class. We ate cake (chemical change) and trail mix (physical change/mixture.) And hard boiled eggs (chemical change.)
The stink came from mixing sulfur and iron together which you could seperate with a magnet, and then burning them together to make the compound iron sulphate. Burnt sulfur is stinky just so you know.
I'll have you know that I purchased an electric piano at the beginning of the school year. Mostly because of all these brain studies that say how great music is, I knew I couldn't NOT have it be part of our school, but I didn't know if it would be hard to get it all hooked up and synced up with my computer....so I put it off....for over three months...uuuhhh.
Anyway, regardless of my business that week, I got it all figured out, and the boys have been BEGGING to practice the piano!
We use Piano Marvel. I thought it would be a computer program where I wouldn't have to do a thing, but it turns out, I actually have to teach them a bit here and there, but I still love it.
Hyrum (my electronics junky) really took off with it. He practiced for more than two hours in two days! Check out this video:
You like Abraham crying in the middle? Yah, that's my life. If I don't push through and do things even with a crying baby in my arms, things don't get done in my house.
But Abraham likes to get into the action as well:
So stinken CUTE!
Also, we had to decorate our house. Thank Goodness Maxwell is so stinkin excited about things like that. He really helps me a lot these days.
This week slowed down a bit, although I had to get some photos done for a friend and make my mom's secret pal gift and other things.
This week's science we learned about oxygen. I gave them balloons towards the beginning of class, which was a bad idea and they started going crazy, and I had to finally say "If you don't put those balloons in the bedroom and come back without them, I am going to pop them!" and their eyes got big, and we continued on...without balloons.
I really don't know how to discipline. I don't know how to discipline my own kids properly, nevermind handling a whole handful of kids. Oh well, I keep trying.
Anyway, one of the experiments we did was the egg-in-the bottle trick because it shows how oxygen takes up room, and once it's gone, there's pressure where it was. I did it because I had messed up so bad at it two years ago, and I had just read in a Steve Spangler book how if you put birthday candles in the egg, it is way easier. I was excited to try that, but guess what....it DIDN"T WORK!
The candles did nothing but get wax on the bottom of my beautiful bottle. The candles go out as soon as they go upside-down. I read it awhile ago-maybe I missed something.
But anyway, while I was trying (and failing) a boy just stuck some burning paper down into the bottle, and that did the trick.
And I've been feeling really guilty that I've been so bad with history, so this saturday we finally got around to doing some. We talked about ancient Persia and India, read some "Just So" stories, along with some other treasures (the one called "Gilgamesh the King" I want for my collection of books.)
We marbled shirts as our activity. This took all day to prepare because you have to soak and dry clothes and get the marble bath ready. By bedtime we were actually ready to do it. I let the boys watch a movie and I took each boy separately to do his shirt. That was a genius move on my part. I think I might do that again.
The dyes were old (I had bought them four years ago when we did ancient history then but never got to it.) So they weren't working. They were sinking in the bath and not spreading out. Maxwell (my grand excited helper) and I had to come up with how to make them less dense than the bath and Maxwell said "ALCOHOL!" because of our density lesson.
Sure enough, we mixed a little alcohol with the dyes, and they worked like a charm. Good ol' science club!
Not sure if you can tell how cool they are from these photos, but marbling is really cool and fun and beautiful!
And as a bonus, out of nowhere, Daniel decided he wanted to do a little creative writing. Here's his story and prompt picture:
Bunny Invasion!
Super Hero Daniel heard a big bang. He looked outside, and he saw Dirt Bunny and Cloud Bunny. Daniel had seen these bunnies once before. They were mean and they were 20 feet tall. Dirt was brown and Cloud was white. Dirt had black eyes and Cloud had red eyes.
They were stomping down the town that everyone was running away from. They were putting people in their mouths and stuffing them in their cheeks.
Super Hero Daniel came out. The bunnies were chasing him. Then Dirt tripped in a trap that Super Hero Daniel had built. Then Cloud fell in the same trap that Dirt had fallen in.
Super Hero Daniel told them that they needed to take the people out of their cheeks, or he wouldn’t let them go. Daniel the Super Hero let the bunnies out of the trap once the people were safe. He told them they had to leave, or he would do another trick on them.
Dirt and Cloud never came back, at the people lived happily ever after.
Now is that the cutest story about bunnies stuffing people in their cheeks ever or what!?!
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