Dissecting Animals, Thomas Edison, Tesla, The Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Henry Ford, and a few Christmas Parties----WHEW!

WOW!  What a WEEK!

We dissected THREE animals this week.  We started our study of invertebrates, and we looked at a real sponge, and dissected a worm, a clam, and a starfish!  Who says you have to forgo anything as a homeschool group :)  My niece whose a born animal whisperer, joined our biology group and was told by all the girls back home that she was sure to throw up, but guess what; dissection isn't actually gross, and she was just as fascinated as the boys.

We learned about Thomas Edison.  HOMESCHOOLED Thomas Edison.  Love his story.  Love all the Troll Associate books about famous people when they were young.  Found a bunch at a thrift store and they are AWESOME. Thomas Edison: GREAT business man.  Great PR skills

I had to include Tesla.  Because of my husband I know how ingenious he was. BAD business man.  No PR skills. Result: No one knows about him, no kids are taught about him, and a little home school mom pities him.

I gave my boys a plasma ball to celebrate these men, but it broke the next day.  I'm hoping Dustin can fix it.

We aslo studied the Wright brothers.  We got out a book I found at the thrift store:

Best. Plane. Book. EVER!!!  I can't rave about this book enough.  IT IS SO COOL! All the airplanes (112 of them) are awesome and can be made without even looking at instructions because they are so easy and my boys can do them by themselves and they all WORK (really well.)

Definitely getting this book again!

Then we Learned about Lindbergh (lucky LINDY) and Amelia Earhart and Maxwell got the idea of making an ocean for us to cross out of a blue blanket.

(The books are islands)

AND we learned about Henry Ford this week---because we hadn't crammed in enough as is!---a great book about him was "Eat My Dust."

We had the best activity EVER.  A cookie car assembly line---oh yah---where each boy was given a specific thing to decorate on the car-cookie.

And I thought I would add this photo of our homeschool supervisor, because he's just so cute.

PS-found some cool books about immigrants-"An Ellis Island Christmas" and "A Place to Grow."

Dissolving Eggshells and Trying to catch up in History

For science this week we learned about semipermeable membranes, but I never used the word "semipermeable."  I thought it a little too advanced for my crowd.  We showed how water passed in and out of an egg (a cell) once the shell was dissolved.  We showed how some things passed through plastic, but other things didn't.

I'm quite behind in history.  It's hard to skip things.  It's hard to not spend the time I want to on things.  Oh well.  The secret to being a homeschool mom is to be flexible. 

We learned about the impressionists this week.  There were some cute books about them at the Library.  A lot actually.  "Camille and the Sunflowers" and "The magical garden of Claude Monet" were a couple of my favourites.  We painted "Starry Night." for our activity.

We also learned about immigrants.  I had wanted to spend way more time on this.  I want to read more books too.  I don't think I'm done with this subject.  We dressed up as Lady Liberty to celebrate immigrants, and I let them light candles for their torches, and Hyrum singed his hair!

We studied the invention of the camera as well.  It was hard to explain how cameras old and new work, even though I had a couple books to help me.  I went to Brainpop.com to help me out.  Our homeschool organization has paid for brainpop and brainpop jr. this year.  BOOYAH! 

We looked up cameras and sure enough there were some movies about them.  Brainpop is a little advanced for my guys, but I think some of it clicked.  Brainpop Jr. is perfect for my little men, and when I am sick or when I'm completely frazzled (doesn't happen too often lately) I let them have full reign of Brainpop Jr. I LOVE it!  Even today Maxwell said "if you cut a starfish in half, they will both grow back and you will have two starfish"  I asked him where he learned that and he said "Brainpop of course."

I'm against having cyber learning as a curriculum for young kids, but for the odd exception, it's heaven sent.

As our activity for cameras, we played with UV paper which works like photo paper, but the chemical changes made by the light can be stopped by simply putting it in lemon water.