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.