The US Government

This week we made pomander balls, Even Daniel liked making them and it was very cute how Maxwell made the orange into a little man with faces and hair of spices.  

We also talked about the government and  made government mobiles with the white house, congress, and supreme court.

For our field trip, Dustin (daddy) became a US citizen!  Could there be a better field trip for learning about the US?

We are overly busy, and I think that this post will be it until after the holidays, so...
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Back in the groove of things

Our vacation lasted a little longer then planned, but we are back and Maxwell is asking "when are we going to begin our day?" When I want to start our schedule in the morning...since I don't always do it right after breakfast....I say "It's time to begin our day" so in other words, Maxwell was really asking "when are you going to start school?"

This week we talked about George Washington and how he started our government.  Don't I have the cutest Washington wigged boys ever?

We learned how they needed to make a lot of new laws for the new country, so we decided to make our own laws.  These are Maxwell's laws:

-You can't steal (after Maxwell said this I said..."this is for fun you can make up silly fun laws if you want"....these are the laws he then made....)

-You have to jump in the ocean

-You have to give presents that are yours to somebody else

-boys and girls both have to wear dresses when they are small but dads can't wear dresses (I think this one originated when we talked about what the colonists wore, and I told him that little babies all wore dresses...)

-You must clean the kitchen every day

-There must be lights on the outside of the house every night so the thieves don't come in that are on the bad team

-you shouldn't take apart things that are not yours

-you have to brush your teeth with your finger every night

-you must love people

-if there are poor people you must give them money

This month we are talking about service in our devotionals and we all washed each other's feet like Jesus did.  It was cute.

Well, we are not completely in the swing of things again, but we are on our way.  And we weren't completely brain dead for our vacation either.  We went to a few science museums and zoos.  Nothing like hands on learning.  Right?

Yankee Doodle Learns his math

I know it's only Tuesday, but this is the end of my school week, because I am going on vacation for the next two weeks!  We learned about Yankee Doodle this week and the song and the historical story behind the song, and made three cornered hats and hummed the tune on kazoos.  Maxwell informed me that this was the best activity we had ever done.  Hyrum loved it too.

For science we learned about simple machines...ie ramps, levers, and pulleys.  They loved the pulley thing so much, they've been playing with them ever since.

What I'm excited to announce is that Maxwell finished his first Math workbook.  He has now done 160 pages of Math!!!  Time for a little diversity...I bought him an abacus...we'll see how that goes.

Well...I'm off....see you in a couple of weeks! :) :) :)

Secret Messages

This week, we had lots of fun.  We talked about how the patriots sometimes had to write to each other in secret so the British wouldn't know their plans.  We made secret messages out of lemon juice that you can only read when you burn the lemon on the paper (it actually worked!) and then put the messages in envelopes that we sealed with wax.  My boys almost started fires, but we are all burn free.

We also talked about the Declaration of Independence.  We made our own home-made ink and our own quills and we wrote our own declaration of Independence. The first photo is Maxwell squishing berries for the ink.

For Remembrance Day we made origami poppies...and lots of other origami things.  I have to say that Canadians don't do Thanksgiving right, but they sure are better at celebrating remembrance day.

I have started Maxwell journaling his school day.  I had a realization that the most important secular things I should teach my kids consistently are math and writing.  Everything else will come easy enough, but without constant practice, math and writing skills are not acquired. So now I've stepped up a notch on my writing expectations for Maxwell.  I ask him what he has learned that day, write what he has said in a yellow marker, and have him trace over what I wrote with a purple marker.  Gradually I will ween him off tracing, but at this point, he just needs to practice his letters.

Oh we went to the Rigby TV museum for our field trip as well.  Not that new looking, but interesting none the less. (The TV was invented in Rigby Idaho!)

Pink ovens and Tea parties

No, I'm not wanting my boys to be girly, I promise.  But this week we learned about the Boston Tea Party, so I bought a little tea party set, and we acted everything out.  We were Red Coats sometimes talking about how to take advantage of the ungrateful Patriots, and we were Patriots sometimes, complaining about not having our freedom and throwing out our tea.  Maxwell had us include prisons, tar and feathering, and battles, so be assured it wasn't your girly tea party.

For science this week, we talked about energy; stored energy vs released energy and transfer of energy.  We talked about how a balloon is stored sound energy and popped them (I use balloons a lot, don't I) we talked about how we can be storing energy or releasing it, and a few other things.  The Four Year Plan where I get most of my ideas (link on the side of this site) suggested using an Easy Bake Oven to talk about energy.  I went to the thrift store and actually found one!  I burnt the brownies, and I don't know if the kids got anything out of it, but Maxwell sure thinks that pink oven is pretty cool.

We went to the coolest science center this week in Boise.  It had tons of cool experiments.  It had robots that you could control, skeletons that you could control, weather that you could control, and tons of other  interactive exhibits.  We spent hours there and didn't explore everything.  It's called the Discovery center and it's by the university. I Highly Recommend it.

Pilgrim's progress

This week we studied pilgrims and painted pumpkins (that the natives gave the pilgrims) and we painted our own Plymouth rocks.  We also made little colonist houses complete with thatched roofs.  Maxwell loves projects and would have me do them all day long if he could.  I feel like I need to spread out my creativity and energy so I'm not always obliging.  Maxwell then does things on his own. His favorite thing to do as of late is to make an elevator that he has Hyrum fill with odds and ends and then Maxwell hoists it up to the landing of the upstairs.

For science, we learned about Newton's 3rd law: action and reaction.  We made rockets out of milk jugs, rockets out of balloons, pushed people on skateboards, and made little paddle boats.   I think this was one of the easiest concepts to get through to kids yet.

For our field trip we went to a pumpkin patch, but it was a failure.  Although some cute pictures were taken, it was cold and uneventful.  So we went swimming (no pictures) the next day, and then of course it was Halloween too, so I'm sure there was enough going on to count something as a field trip :) Besides, next week we are off to Boise at least,  so field trips might be the only thing we accomplish next week!

Jamestown and real results

This week was great.  Maxwell is so wonderful to teach because he loves to learn.  We learned about Jamestown (which was NOT the first colony as a true North Carolina lover will tell you) but was the first one that was successful, and we had fun making the ships that sailed to Virginia and candle holders (my sons LOVE fire, the little pyros.) But Maxwell kept on insisting that the biggest ship was the Santa Maria still....oh well.

For science we learned about inertia, and it really sunk in for Maxwell.  At dinner that night, he observed "Hey Mumma!  My bean rolled down my chip and wanted to keep on going!"  Now that's what I call real life application :) We had a tower with an egg at the top and hit the things under the egg so the egg would land in the cup of water showing how the egg doesn't actually want to go anywhere, and we made a car wreck where our little clay people fall off because of inertia, and among other things, we had a clamp fire off two markers to go from one state of inertia to another.

What I thought was great, is that we started BOB books, and Maxwell read his first book!  I was going to put up a movie I made about it, but it never worked....oh well

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS!!!

I can't think of Columbus without thinking of Jo from Little Women exclaiming "CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS!"  Maxwell has loved learning about Columbus.  He thinks the Santa Maria is the coolest ship ever because he has a cousin he loves named Maria.  For those of you who do not know, Columbus day in the states is Thanksgiving in Canada, and even though we are in Idaho, we had a full out Thanksgiving, and that was our activity for monday.

Tues we made boats out of Styrofoam.  I left the boys alone for a minute and of course came back to a mess. Styrofoam is a nightmare to clean especially when wet!

For science we talked about centripetal force and I was dizzy for an hour afterward.  We spun cups full of water, tried to play "crack the whip," spun pennies in balloons, spun the boys until they were flying, and spun multi colored jello with marbles in them.  That was supposed to be the climax.  The marbles were supposed to drop down from the inertia, while the jello and cup were held with centripetal force, but the jello was too thick, and it didn't budge no matter how long we spinned. Oh well...the jello looked cool and once we fished out the marbles it tasted good too.

For our field trip we went to Utah!  Yah, kind of last moment, but I'm so glad I went. A couple of my dearest friends were getting together, and I decided not to miss it.  So for Maxwell's activity we went with my sister's family to Bridal veil falls.  It was a perfect fall day for a leaf fight. But of course, i FORGOT MY CAMERA!!! URG!!! so these are my junky phone photos.

Then on Monday we went to the children's museum in Salt Lake...Does that count as this week's field trip?.....