Last week we continued to learn about dinosaurs. How can you not love dinosaurs? We excavated our fossils we made last week. We even wore eye protection. I thought with all my crazy activities and experiments, eyewear was a good investment. Check out Brady with double the protection:
This week we learned about the last ice age. It's pretty cool to think about all those HUGE mammals. I had bought some really cute books that I had borrowed from the library last year....I must say...I've spent A LOT of money this year already.....oops.
We had our own cave for hieroglyphics. So fun, but so fun turned into too close for comfort. Put 6 kids in a box and eventually there will be shoving...
If you look at my history plans you'll notice that I skipped Adam and Eve and we didn't do a second ice age project.....well, we haven't had time! The downstairs McKays are at gymnastics, and Hyrum has been being diagnosed in speech. We'll see how this week goes. We still read books and discuss throughout the week so whatever.
For science last week we continued to learn about atoms. I was so proud, a five year old in our class went home, and when his mom asked him what he learned he said "we learned about electrons." Booyah! if a five year old can retain even the word electrons, I've succeeded.
We made atom models, and of course, the kid's favourite models were the ones made of candy!
They were very proud of their models:
This week for science we started learning about the states of matter. This is the suggested first lesson, but I'm glad I taught about atoms first. I think it makes more sense. We did some fun stuff. Including models of solid, liquid, and gas molecules, and the balloon in the bottle tricks.
I did the balloon in the bottle tricks because of Steve Spangler. He's my geek inspiration. My family is constantly watching these kind of videos:
So I have to give one of my students $10. It is "scientifically impossible" to blow a wad of paper INTO a bottle with a little opening. I said I would give $10 to the kid who could do it, and they had a lot of fun blowing and having the wad hit them in the face, but then one boy gently blew and i think it just, I don't know, but the point is, it went IN. My bad!
Here's another Steve Spangler doing the experiment:
In world of Reading writing and arithmetic, I did not do a full week. I'm a bit peeved about that. But with the play and all the other stuff going on.....oh blah, it wasn't a great week. I need to figure this out.
But one thing that went well was the Rightstart math games. This is one of the reasons I love this curriculum: the games. This time I thought it was cute enough to share. So you take 12 tiles and then take fraction cards and then each time you put down a fraction card, you get to take that fraction of the tiles. I doubt I explained that very well, but the point is, it teaches fractions in a fun way.
A great Science -Math connection was made by Maxwell this week, I was asking him "What would happen if you kept making the denominator higher?" and he replied "the fraction pieces would get smaller and smaller until you would break it into molecules and then you would break that into atoms and then you would just have the empty space in the atoms making up the fractions." Oh yah, pat myself on the back moment.
Now, I titled this post "atoms and attacking Hamsters" Why would I do that? well, here's an......
ATTACKING HAMSTER!!!!
hehehehe
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