Watching the Storm

      This afternoon still praying for all of those in the path of Hurricane Isaac. This storm seems to be taking its time about coming on in on land. That scares me because the slower they are travelling, the more strength they can build up.

     In my last post I had mentioned that I had given my children an opportunity to make some extra points in Science. At that time things didn't look as if either of them wanted to earn any extra points. One was on facebook & the other was playing video games. Yesterday I saw them working towards extra points. Here are a couple of pics of what I saw:

Matthew started his painting of Hurricane Issac by drawing the outline of the storm & then painting the swirling cloud formation.

Matthew's Hurricane Issac is nearing completion.

Sarah's designing her diorama of Hurricane Issac.

Sarah painting on the sky blue background & letting it dry overnight.

I'll post pics of the final products when they are finished.

Until next time, Happy Homeschooling!

Monday's Musings

I wasn't too sure how much schooling we would get to do today on Saturday. We had our eyes on Hurricane Isaac. Not knowing which direction he would come in on land, we had to make some preparations. Being the procrastinators we can be sometimes, of course, we didn't do all of them on Saturday. That would mean today we would have to finish them. When we awoke this morning, the reports have it missing us. That allowed us to work on our schooling. I feel the pains for others, but am so thankful it is not coming in on land here. We have been in the path of many major hurricanes and they are not fun to be in. Ok, maybe excited the first time or two, but then reality kicked in and then we realized how dangerous they are. My prayers are going out to the Gulf Coast right now. God help all of us?

I give my children an opportunity to earn extra Science points by making a hurricane project. We will see if either of them takes me up on the offer. As of right now things don't look too promising. My son is on the computer playing video games & my daughter is on Face Book. Extra credit has taken a back burner.

We did enjoy our Science today. We began a new Module and started learning about inertia, force, and friction. Our experiment included an egg again today. I'm amazed at the Science experiments that can be done with eggs. I did not realize there were so many of them. We will be learning about Newton's Laws of Motion in this module.

Enough for now, hope all of you have a great week. Happy Homeschooling!!!

Video Links For Appologia: Exploring Creation With Physical Science & More

     I have not always been a fan to Science, but since I began home schooling my children I have become very interested. For a few years we followed the Charlotte Mason method of education & just found library books on a particular topic and just went with the flow, studying from one topic to the next. This year we are taking a more formal approach. We are weaving our way through Exploring Creation With Physical Science by Apologia. We are having a great time with it, but could not move out of the CM style of education. We are still adding library books along side our textbook.
    The reason for this post is I wanted to say thanks to Judy over at Contented at Home. She shared another blogging friend with me that has done a superb job at showing what she has done with her children while they worked through Exploring Creation With Physical Science by Apologia (also their General Science & Biology). She has links to videos & all. I feel like I have been blessed by Judy and Marty today. Much of my lesson plans will just fall in place due to someone paving the road ahead of me.
    Thanks Judy for sharing Marty's blog with me & thanks Marty for the hard work that you have done, all of your time & effort.
    If you are using one of these Science's or intend on using one of them, you will want to definitely check out Marty's blog.

Educating From Library Books To Encyclopedias To Erupting Volcanos & Even A Blog Give Away

In My Life This Week:
    My scales are going in the wrong direction. I'm not sure if it's the week I don't pay much mind to the scales because of mother nature or if I've been enjoying too much food. Regardless of the case, it aggravated me that the scales went in the wrong direction after I counted calories & carbs, 20 carbs or less each day & less than 1600 calories per day, with excercising. Can you believe that? Uhh!!!!

Uhh!!!

Me trying to thin down

I'm Grateful This Week For:
    the relationships I have with my children. I know we only have that closeness due to all the time we spend together. Here's a link to a post with a pic of the card my DD left on my desk for me.
I have special tea parties with my children (individually) to build our relationship. My DD sends me little notes & cards from time to time laying a few building blocks to the relationship. I'm grateful that we are both working on the building.

I've Been Inspired By:
    two tapes that I checked out from our local library this week. They are by Inge P. Cannon. I have not heard of her before this week. It appears that she has lots of books/audio tapes that I am interested in reading/listening to. The two that I listened to this week are: Schooling or Educating: Which Are You Doing? & Eliminating Crucial Gaps While Individualizing Education. She never mentions Charlotte Mason, but her teachings could very well pass for CM methods. These tapes were a great encouragement this week to remind me (again) that we don't have to move at the pace of the public school system. We can remain in our subjects/topics for as long as we desire.

In Our Homeschooling This Week:
    we accomplished three math lessons in Saxon 8/7. My children are enjoying their lessons right now. The lessons have had geometry & prime & composit numbers. Their words are, "This is easy. We like this." My son has decided this week that he wants him some drafting tools.
We have not yet returned back to our Exploring Creation with Physical Science through Apologia yet. Hopefully that will be next week. We chose another library book this week. It is:

Exploring The Sky By Day by Terence Dickinson

    This book is easing us in to the different types of clouds & the water cycle. Our next Module in our Physical Science is going to be on water so I just eased this book in to introduce them to the water cycle a bit more in debth than what we have studied in the past. I like to ease in a library book for a review from time to time.
    We place two different bowls of water outside for an experiment, one in the shade & one in the sun. We are checking the temp. of the water each day & measuring the debth to see the warmth & how much it is evaporating. This is to reinforce our Module that was bringing out humidity. We've been testing to see if there was already enough of moisture in the air already or not. We've also checked the sky for clouds to see if we could identify them.
    We are still reading Little Pilgrim's Progress for Literature. We should have this finished up by next week. My son said this has become one of his most favorite books.
History has been a pretty relaxed week. We finished reading our book about Pompeii & pulled down the encyclopedia for further reading. After that Sarah & Matthew drew maps of Italy for some geography skills. Here are the pics of their maps.

Sarah's map of Italy

Matthew's map of Italy

    We've done this in the past, but my children thought it only right that we do another volcano experiment since Pompeii was buried by Vesuvius erupting. Here are some pics of them recreating Mount Vesuvius's eruption burying Pompeii again.

This is the Lab Tray

They are filling the 2 litter bottles with their mixtures

Matthew's volcano erupting and destroying Pompeii.

Sarah's volcano erupting. We used to big of a bottle and not enough mixture to have a more powerful eruption. So now we are planning to do it again for the third time to get it right.

    For English/Grammar this week they wrote narrations on what they have learned about Pompeii. Here are their essays.

Sarah's Essay on Pompeii

Matthew's Essay on Pompeii

    Other than getting in a drawing lesson today, I think this about Wraps up our week.
I am linking up with Kris over at the Weekly Wrap Up & with Sue for the Homeschool Mother's Journal. If you'd like to read more about other's weeks, drop over to one of these blogs & check out the others that linked up also.

On another note, I am having a give away on my blog. Click here to check it out.

Can't Get Away From Charlotte Mason

In Our Homeschool This Week:
     When we began our school year this year I wanted our year to be a bit more formal than what we were accustomed to. So I decided we were going to use more text books this year. Off our year began and we've been moving right along, BUT something just wasn't quite right. We've kept trudging through our books, accomplishing things, but just not receiving what we have received in the past with our studies. What was wrong with us? Sometimes we would even have a lot of tension between teacher and student. I asked my children what was wrong. Immediately they told me, "We want to dive deeper in to our studies like we were doing when we were doing Charlotte Mason style of education. So this week we made a trip to the library & grabbed some books to reinforce what we have been studying in Science and pulled a book off of our shelf for history that they had been wanting to do. The tension has lifted & our week has been fun & refreshing.
What's Working:
    We've decided that we will keep our Apologia: Exploring Creation With Physical Science (which wasn't giving us a problem, & we love), but would slow it down and also add in library books along side of it. This just means that we won't finish this book this year & will carry it over in to next year.
    Our library book we used for Science this week was: The Atom By Elizabeth R. Cregan

    A very interesting book, filled with information. My DH grabbed this book in hopes of reinforcing our study on atoms. The book covers atoms pretty good, but has a lot of info on radium, radiation, & cancer. My children seemed to be more excited over the things they learned about them than they were the atoms. Like how they used radium in paint to paint the numbers on watches, getting some of the paint in their mouth due to the method they used to paint, not knowing that that the radium would begin to destroy their cells & cause cancer. A very interesting book. Here's a pic of my children drawing a model of an atom.
    For our history this week (& will go in to next week) they wanted to learn about the buried city of Pompeii. My DS had gotten a book from a thrift store about Pompeii so we began a study on it this week. My DS has had to do most of the reading in our book due to some nudity for their bath ceremonies. Other than that we have enjoyed the book & have looked at some pics on Internet this week. The book we are using is: The Buried City of Pompeii By Shelley Tanaka.

    Three math lessons were accomplished in our Saxon 8/7 math this week. We are getting in to Perimeter, Area, & Exponents. We have worked on this some in the past. My DS enjoys the square root part of the exponents.

Helpful Homeschool Tip:

  To pull in some English/Grammar this week I pulled out a handbook I had bought several years back and just picked out a rule for a particular type of verb & that is what we worked on this week. I chose Active & Passive verbs.

    We read the rule from the handbook, along with its examples & then worked on our dry erase board making our own sentences. Today the children had to write me three Active verb sentences then three Passive verb sentences that would accompany their Active verb sentences. That was English for the week. Here's a couple of pics of the handbook I had purchased.

     It's not very thick, but jam packed with info. It covers just the rules & gives examples in a very basic way. Easy enough that my children can take it down & find the rule they would like to use by themselves. I got it from a used book store for a dollar, great investment.
    We are still reading through Pilgrim's Progress for Literature & On the Banks of Plum Creek for a Library Read Aloud. I'm not sure if I put a pic of the version of Pilgrim's Progress we are using on here or not, but we are using a children's version. Here's a pic of it.

    Other than my children spending a lot of time outside after our studies, I think that about concludes our week. Here's a pic of my DC having P.E. this week.

     Kris usually has the Weekly Wrap Up on her blog, but she had a close friend pass away and left behind are her husband and five girls. Kris said that she will not be blogging for a few days. I'm not sure if she will have her Weekly Wrap Up this week. I encourage you to visit Kris's blog and give her a nice comment in her time of grieving. I am so sorry Kris for your loss and hope the best for your friend's family and we will be praying.
     I am also linking up with The Homeschool Mother's Journal this week. Drop over & check out what everyone has been up to this week. I'm sure you will be encouraged.

     By the way I will be starting a Give-a-Way tomorrow that is going to be continuing for a while. I have lots of books & workbooks for all ages. So get the word around, I'm sure you'll be blessed & encouraged.

Late Weekly Wrap-Up

     I've missed a few Weekly Wrap-Ups so this weeks will be a little longer.
Our Week starts with Apologia's Exploring Creation With Physical Science, Module 2-The Study of Air.

This is the list of materials for Experiment 2.1 Evaporation and Temperature; A small glass, 2 cotton balls, tap water, a bulb thermometer and a small piece of plastic such as sandwich bag or a piece of trash bag, etc...

Sarah reads the instructions before we start.

Put about 1/4 water in a small glass as soon as you turn the faucet on so the water will be as close to room temperature as possible. Now drop 2 cotton balls in the water.

Lay the bulb thermometer on the plastic bag with the bulb touching the plastic bag. Next squeeze the excess water out of the cotton balls and lay them on the bulb of the thermometer, covering it completely.

Be sure to note the temperature (ours was 78 degrees F).

Wait 10 minutes, then recheck the temperature and note the change (ours dropped to 72 degress F).

Matthew reads about what happened and how it happened.

We learned that as the water evaporated out of the cotton balls, the temperature cooled.

This is our Module 2.3 experiment which is about Oxygen & Fire

Our material list for experiment 2.3; 1 liter bottle, 1 pack of yeast, hydrogen peroxide, matches, small candle, thick jar or glass, balloon, 1Cup measuring cup and 1tsp measuring spoon.

First we lit the candle and put the jar over it.

In just a few seconds the flame consumed all of the oxygen in the jar and the flame went out.

Matthew reads the instructions as Sarah does the mixing.

Matthew uses a funnel & measuring cup to pour in the Hydrogen Peroxide in the bottle. Then Sarah uses a measuring spoon for the yeast & pours it in the bottle.

Matthew holds the bottle while Sarah quickly puts the balloon over the openning of the bottle.

Now shake the mixture up. The hydrogen peroxide and yeast mix reacts quickly making oxygen bubbles and actually gets hot to the touch. It's really neat to watch the balloon fill up with air.

Look at the all the bubbles that filled the bottle, wow!

Sarah lets air (oxygen) out of the balloon slowly to feed the little flame while Matthew holds the glass up.

Final results; The oxygen that was trapped in the balloon makes the little flame get bigger. As we fed the oxygen we had created from the balloon to the flame itgrew larger & brighter. We learned that too little oxygen as well as too much oxygen in the air around us could prove dangerous.

   

We also finished reading Where the Red Fern Grows this week, along with our Compositions. Maybe I'll find time to post those on my blog later.

     Saxon math was still a plus at our house even at the end of the week.

Sarah & Matthew wanted to "precamp" in our backyard to try out the new tent before we go on our camping trip.

Matthew's waving goodbye & goodnight to everybody.

That's it for our latest Wrap-Up. If you want all the Weekly-Wrap-Up's you can get, then go to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschooler's and you'll find plenty!

Weekly Wrap-Up

 

     Hey everyone! It's time for my weekly wrap up again. This week we have been learning about intergers in Pre-Algebra. It seems that most math is hard until you understand how to use the methods or the order of operations with the formulas. We have learned to pause when necessary to know beyond any doubt, what & how to do our work correctly without GUESSING answers. Hands-on is a great way to understand most anything.

Sarah Grace is using checkers to learn how to work with intergers. Looks like fun.

Sarah's equation is -6 + 8= She placed 6 red checkers on the negative side of zero and 8 black checkers on the positive side of zero. After visually looking at her problem she picked up one black checker at a time until she had all of her red checkers covered, canceling all of her negative numbers. The black checkers that remained on the positive side of zero was her answer.
   We worked many problems like this. If it was two negative numbers we were adding  we placed both negative numbers on the negative side of zero in two different rows. Then we added both rows to see what our negative integer would be. If we subtracted two negative numbers we made our two rows, placing the larger number on top and then stacked our checkers again as we had done earlier. The remaining checkers that did not have another checker stacked on top of it was our negative integer. Enough examples of how we did them. I think you are probably catching on to how we did it. Anyway, we mastered the concept. Hands-on & knowing the Order-of-Operations makes algebra so much easier.

This week in Exploring Creation With Physical Science we are doing experiment 1.3 "Concentration" (the quanitity of a substance within a certain volume of space). Our material list is; a spoon, vinegar, 6 Tums, 3 large clear glasses & measuring cups.

Start by putting vinegar in glass A=1cup, B=1/2cup, C=1/4cup. Drop in 1 Tums (calcium carbonate) tablet each glass. Now observe for about 10 minutes and write in your lab notebooks the results or changes.

Now empty the glasses, wash thoroughly and pour in the same amount of vinegar. Only this time we add water to each glass; A=1cup, B=1&1/2cup, C=1&3/4cup. Stir each glass thoroughly. Then drop in  1 calcium carbonate tablet in each glass and write in your lab notebook your results.

If you look hard you can see the bubbles from the tablet. The tablet tries to neutralize the acid in the vinegar and makes bubbles that are a gas called carbon dioxide. The results should be about the same with each glass as each has a presence of acid.

You can see the bubbles better in this picture. The tablet disappears as it neutralizes the vinegar. When the water was added the glass with the most water and less vinegar the tablet dissolved slower.

Here you can see all 3 glasses with vinegar and Tums disolving. When water is added all 3 glasses are equally 2cups.

     At the end of our journey this week Sarah & Matthew both had dental appointments. Of course we schooled while we were in the waiting room at the Dentist. Then Sarah was called in to see the Dentist first. Matthew, while waiting, did his History pre-test so quick it scared his dad. I made sure he knew how happy I was with him.


     That about does it this week. Go over to Kris's blog and make sure to checkout this weeks featured blog links. I love seeing what other homeschooler's are doing, and making new friends.

Traci