Judaism, Mexico, and the last Astronomy lesson

This week's science really stank. There were hardly any experiment suggestions. We finished learning about the rotation of the earth. We focused on the foucault pendulum. We made our own mini version, which was a pendulum in a jar on a turn table. Needless to say, the pendulum did not care about the turn table.

We also made globes from flat paper to show that the earth is definitely not flat and maps are wrong (we already did this as a family for geography with an orange peel, but whatever.)

For geography we learned about Judaism. It was fun to talk about their "word of wisdom" and talk about what exactly is kosher. We talked about Hanukkah and we made dreidels and played the game with them and then we even had fry bread for dinner since apparently they eat fried food as part of Hanukkah.

We finished our random songs:

We also started learning about specific countries. I think I'm going to like geography from now on. When learning about countries, I don't really care if they remember specific details about each country. It's more of cultural literacy that I'm after. So showing them lots of photos, learning a few facts, but then reading children books from that country (which seem to be easy to find for the few countries I have planned in the next few weeks) gives them tastes of how everyone's different, and everyone's interesting and of worth.

Mexico was our first country. We made a pinata. Maxwell made this 90% on his own, and I think it's our best pinata that we've ever made:

The coolest part of our week though, was our first GEOGRAPHY FIRESIDE! Whooo Hooo, I actually organized it! I had this awesome lady from Mexico come. She was perfect. I've never seen that group of kids be so respectful, and I think we've all learned a lot.

You know how last week I was saying how we had to move school to the counter because William was taking over the table top? Well now nothing is sacred. He climbs on top of the counter. He plays in the sink, he gets in the cupboards, He takes everything out of the school bins. He is EVERYWHERE! We've already had to be DEVOUT at keeping the bathroom door shut at ALL times since he LOVES water (the only water he could reach was the toilet's water btw) and then we had to keep the office door closed because he sits on the computer and climbs up the desks. He finds the ipad and claims it. (The ipad is NOT a toy and NOT for kids in our house.)

I feel like I need a door for my life so I can keep William from it! Holy cow that kid is BUSY!!!! here's William in the sink when it was on purpose, but he's in here at any time of day in his clothes when it's NOT on purpose, and a photo of him with my lap top. It was on my desk closed and is now on his lap open. Yah, uhhu.

But he really is cute, and life is good.