Steam Boats!

For the industrial revolution, we actually made steam powered put put boats!!!  Be impressed. Be very impressed.

I've wanted to make a put put boat since last year when Maxwell wanted to make one for the science fair, but we couldn't figure out how to find the materials needed or how to do it.  Then, I found this website: http://www.sciencetoymaker.org/boat/index.htm which uses every-day materials, and easy to follow instructions!  Yippee!

It's an activity meant for 14 year olds, but we've never let that stop us in the past, and although it took us ALL DAY, and Hyrum and Daniel lost interest in making them, we made four WORKING pop pop boats!!!

We learned about Alexander Graham Bell this week as well. There is a well written children's chapter book called "Alexander Graham Bell" a Discovery Book by Garrard publishing.  It was so well done, that I want to get more Discovery books, although they are from the 1960s and 70s.

We made cup telephones to celebrate Bell, and it was fun to see how a simple toy could entertain them so much.  FYI everyone called the telephone a toy when Bell first showed it off.

Also, FYI: Bell taught Helen Keller a bit, and this inspired an impromptu learning about her.  We watched "miracle worker" as part of this, and Hyrum (our temper tantrum king) couldn't stand watching someone else constantly having temper tantrums. Ironic.

At co-op they learned about Mexico and Audubon again. Science was supposed to happen this week, but my boys had too much fun with cousins, and I never got to it.

Oh, and for my records, there's a cute book called "an Illustrated Timeline of Inventions and Inventors."

School's back with the Industrial Revolution

Being surrounded by good books (I acquired a library card here in Idaho) I can now comfortably resume school regardless of location.

This week we started learning about the industrial revolution.  We learned how it was a time of factories and inventions.

I asked Maxwell to go find some junk and make an invention.  I unleashed a giant.  Maxwell is always building something, but with the little nudge from me, he was in creation heaven.  He got his cousin on board and started inventing Robots that "have never been in this world before" which is Maxwell's definition of an invention.

And Hyrum, whose interests slightly differ, created with another cousin, the costume invention of a Halloween King:

We also talked about trains and their importance in the industrial revolution, and they each got a new train toy (sometimes a new toy is enough of an activity.)

A cute informative picture book about Steam engine trains is "Jingle the Brass."

And we talked about how prevalent child labor was during that time and how bad the working conditions were. A good book that will make you cry is "Working Children" by Saller.  Our activity was to watch Newsies!  Newsies was my favorite movie as a tween----Christian Bale back when he did musicals ahhhh---Dustin mentioned batman, and they were waiting the entire movie for this New York cowboy to turn into batman.  Sorry boys.

We read a children's book, "Kid Blink Beats The World," that tells the real story of the Newsies as well.

We went to co-op again.  Maxwell goes to a Knights of Freedom class where they are learning about John Audubon, and a World class where they learned about Ireland.  All the boys go to an art class, and Hyrum and Daniel go to a nature class and animal class (story times basically.)

Not sure what playing marbles has to do with Audubon but I came in and took a picture anyway.

Vacation? NO----Delay in my life? YES

UGGG!  This school year has NOT gone as planned so far!

Do you wonder where I've been?  In Idaho trying to sell our log house AGAIN!  We've sold it "rent to own" in the past.  We've rented it out an additional two times, and now we just want it GONE!  FOREVER!

We've decided that to do this, we need to stay at the log house until it is completely SOLD (for sure this time.)

I thought we would only be in Idaho a few days, now it's been a few weeks.  Thank goodness I packed a couple of things for school, but I left almost everything behind.  History is so frustrating.  Our trains, morse code kit, UV paper, Victorian decoupage kit, and plasma ball are all in Canada.  I guess I'll just jump around with my history subjects.

Also, the library in Cardston had TONS of books on hold for me that were promising to be awesome and perfect for our school and we were in the middle of a great Napoleon book from that library, and now I'll have to figure out what's up with the library here.  UGGG

Well, in the past few weeks my boys might not have learned anything about biology or modern world history, but they've learned what it takes to sell a house.

We went to a science museum before we left for Idaho and had some fun with liquid Nitrogen:

We aslo got hooked up with the homeschool co-op that my sister's family is in:

(photo coming)

 And we got to really get a taste of Idaho and go pick Potatoes!!!