Thursday, May 9, 2013

Weekly Wrap Up: A Canal, Heat and Upside Down Painting

yes... it's all learning;) And I'm trying, trying , trying to get back into Wrapping Up:)

No good excuses  not to, except that these days are precious:)

Bible

We worked on our final way of Our 24 Family Ways by the Clarksons. I really have loved this kid-friendly devotional. I am hoping to make the list visible somewhere in our school room. Hopefully with it visible we will be reminded of the things we need to continue to put into practice. I would also like to repeat the study in a few years.

Language Arts
Doing the Spelling Power thing.. sort of:) The middle two and I worked through 2 sections and Anna started a BIG section; she's working through the names of the States. I love that my kids are definitely going to be better spellers (is that a word?) than their mother:)

We're treking on through Grammar... the middle two still loving FLL and Anna (and I) just doing it to finish up. I hate to say it but we're both learning from Rod & Staff just not as "fun" as we'd like :/ Anna also completed a book report... maybe she'll blog it;)

IMG_1905Anna and Lydia were reading Misty of Chincoteague and Stormy: Misty's Foal last week (they started the week before last). Chris and I are reading through some Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant... these are some great practice reading books for Chris and he likes them!!

Yes, I even caught him reading on his own... one the first steps of being a fluent reader;)

Math
We're getting to the end of our math for the semester... well Anna has 20 lessons and Lydia FINISHED!! LOL!! During the year, Lydia would sometimes do 3 lessons in a morning (she's a determined little gal)... so she got to finish early... her siblings aren't very happy about it;)

Since Chris started SAXON 3 after Christmas, he is working to the middle of the book and then he'll take a break... if he wants!! He has been doing really well with his math work... but he's not loving  doing xtramath.org subtraction:/ Working on it;)

History
We looked at the building of the Suez Canal and the changing of power in Egypt at that time. We read the section from SOTW, did the map, worked on the outline together and the kids wrote narrations for the section. Unfortunately there was little for kid to read about the Suez Canal and Egypt during this time period.

Interesting videos about the Suez Canal;) YouTube summary of the building of the canal  called "A man, a dream, a canal" (4 min) or Modern Marvels: Suez Canals (44 mins). The kids watched both, but Brian and I liked the Modern Marvels video because it covered the original building of the Suez Canal through the point when Egypt was the final "owner".

It was a little humorous that as we were studying the Suez Canal inside, Brian was building his own outside....
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LOL!! Actually he is working on a "french drain" but uncovered it looks like a canal through the yard:)

Science

Last week we started working on a unit of Heat Transfer. I'd definitely heard the words before but I'm totally learning with them (well a little before them).

We talked about conduction last week as we heated up a pot of water with two spoons sticking out, one metal and one wooden. We read a description about the molecules of the spoons getting hot and bumping into one another making the heat move up the spoon... move more up the metal spoon than the wooden one. We demonstrated it by standing in a line and having the last person bump the first one... we were close and we all felt it. Another cute explanation of the molecules "moving" was that they don't travel around but "dance in their seats when it gets hot". LOL!!

This week we tackled convection and convection current. We attempted two experiments, the first was heating up particles in water so we could see the particles move as the water heated up. The second was to show how warm air currents using a spiral and our space heater.

IMG_1900Maybe it was because the first experiment was "ok", it was really cool to see the 2nd experiment work;)

Through different readings we also learned about some real places convection currents are found/used... like weather (wind), some ocean currents, heating/cooling a house, etc!!

On Wednesday we finished with radiation. Through our readings we were able to make a definition and talk about where we use radiation.

Some fun resources were
*Intereactive video that reviewed the prinicples
*Simple explanation of each concept
*Heat, Matter and Energy by Graham Bateman ( a little too much for my kids but we read through a good portion of the book.. a great resource for us).

Art
Last week we started reading about Michelangelo as our "artist of the month".  We have enjoyed the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artist series and corresponding lesson plans from COnfessions of a Homeschooler.

This week we looked more indepth at the Sistine Chapel.  We talked about the challenges surrounding painting the ceiling. And we examined talked about the different scenes found in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

And then ....
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they climbed under tables and benches...
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and painted their own biblical scenes;)
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Super fun.... they all said that they "Love art time!!" Oh, and "ouch, this hurts my neck!"

Well, there was a look into our schooling time... it totally doesn't really wrap it ALL up, but it's ok:)

1 comment:

Phyllis said...

I always find myself saying, "What a great week" every time I read a weekly post from you. Your weeks are so full of variety and great learning. It is wonderful that your kids love some of their learning materials and that they excite them.