Weekly Wrap-Up

     From a wedding to a copper-hydroxycarbonate experiment to paper airplane flight test and finally to a new game of U-Build Monopoly, this has been a trying yet exciting week. Get you a cup of tea of whatever you like and let me tell you all about it.
     First, the wedding was beautiful, but hot outside under a pavilion at a golf course country club. The problems started when they sent everyone inside for dinner. There was no place to sit down and no food until they finished all the photographing of the wedding party. Now I have a little patience, but many of us had small children that we did not feed before the wedding. Need I say more? The little ones complained more and more the longer they had to wait. Our backs and feet were killing us, but we tried not to make a fuss. Thankfully they brought out some fruit platters that kept the young ones satisfied until the food came. Then finally after about a hour or so of standing chairs were brought in and the main dining room was opened up.
     Yeah, now we get to sit down and eat! No, not yet. We did get to drink a cold glass of tea that I never could get sweet enough. I would briskly stir, but it was so cold that the sugar would settle back down on the bottom of the glass. I don't know what it looked like, being I'm blind, but it probally looked like a strange glass of tea with white sugar standing in the bottom.
     The food is ready! Great food, worth all the waiting. Parmesian cheese chicken, scaloped potatoes with a creamy sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, green beans and my favorite, fried green tomatoes. Here's some pictures of what the rest of the week was like.

Sarah patiently for her food at wedding reception.

Me, trying to sweeten my iced tea while waiting for our food.

Matthew sipping on his sweet tea.

Matthew reading out loud about atoms and molecules for our experiment.

Sarah's writing down results from our copper hydroxycarbonate experiment.

The materials list; glass filled 3/4 full of water, 9 volt battery, 2 insulated copper wires at least 12 inches long, electrical tape, 1 tsp of baking soda. mix baking soda with water, trim back insulation on both ends of wires about 1/4" to 1/2", lay one end of one wire on one of the post or terminal of battery and use electrical tape to hold to battery tightly for good connection. Then hang the other end of wires over into glass of solution, making sure wires are submerged and not touching each other. 

If you look closely at the wires in the glass, one or both should be making bubbles. Observe this for 10 minutes.

Is the end of one wire changing colors? What color? Is the water changing colors after 10 minutes? If so, then what color?

Here's a picture of our results. Look at the end of the blue wire and see that it's turning a blue-green color.

Here's another look at the wires in the water. The red wire is still copper and the blue wire has turned blue-green.

The picture is a little blurry, but I believe you can see the colors of the wires laying side by side out of the water. Also, look at the water and see that it may have a light blueish tint to it.

Right after that, Matthew and Elton (dad), made airplanes out of cardstock and tied a piece of thread to it and a hook on the other end to the box fan. Matthew was thrilled to see it fly!

Matthew's windtunnel (box fan) kept him fasinated for over an hour, testing different airplanes. Now Elton's inspired to build a working windtunnel to test their airplane designs. Boys will be boys, no matter how young or old they are.

     For our history, we finished up Tiger, Tiger. It turned out to be a great book. Our entire family enjoyed it. It was a wonderful book portraying Julius Caesar and how he gave command as an emperor, the duties between royalty and slaves, and a brief bit on the life of a gladiator, a very cute story. My children really liked it.

     Now we are reading a very short book about Julius Caesar's life titled The Life of Julius Caesar by Dr. Nicholas Saunders. It doesn't have a lot of reading in it, but goes in to detail enough. It has lots of pictures.

Now we wrap the week up with a good game of U-Build Monopoly.

If you like for your children to use high-numbers math, then this is the game for you. For us it was hard to think in terms of big money. $10,000 was the smallest bill! Our banker, Sarah, kept getting a little jumbled by the big bills. It took us two evenings to finish the game. By the time the game was over, Sarah had gotten pretty good at handling the money. I thing she was starting to like it. I told her not to get use to it for it's only a game! Haha! Mom, yes me, I was the big winner this week. I won the game.
     At least one game a week is my goal for the summer. If any of my readers have any suggestions of great games your family may play, we would love to hear about them.

That's this week's Weekly Wrap-Up! Now be sure to visit Kris at Weird UnSocialized HomeSchool for her Weekly Wrap-Up and all the others on her list. I'm sure you'll learn something new and make new friends!

     See you next time, Traci!