Monday, October 3, 2016

Put put Boats and Bones

Did I mention that my husband's gone? He is. Oh he definitely is. He's in Africa. He's been there for a week and a half. I will meet him there next week, but then I will fly back without him and he will go to China before he gets back home.

That's ALL THE WAY AROUND THE WORLD people. In one trip he will circumnavigate the globe. Watch out Jules Verne.

And in the meantime we are messier and not as healthy without him.

One of the main reasons we got messy this week was because of making PUT PUT BOATS! We made them last time we did modern history, and this time we made them faster and better because we knew what we were doing.

Maxwell was in heaven. I'm very blessed that my oldest is so enthusiastic for everything. It's like having a little cheerleader to get me doing things.




We made them as our intro to the industrial revolution....which was made possible by steam engines! However, we did very little history this week. I didn't get to the Morse Code like I wanted.

For science we studied bones. That's when my favourite moment of science EVER happened. I brought out my little skeleton man and said "Bones protect our organs. Look at his head. What is the most important thing to be protected?" And quiet Hunter Blackmore shouts out:

"OUR BRAINS SO THE ZOMBIES WON'T GET THEM!!!"

Bwahahahahah! I just laughed and laughed. That was awesome.

We talked about the structure of bones, bone's joints, their strength, and what happens if you break them. We made a spine as one of our activities, and I let them take it home. It was a balloon head with a string as the spinal cord and thread spools as vertebrae and buttons as disks.


We also looked at xrays....I think my mom bought this kit for me...


By the way, even though I'm going to the coast for awhile, I decided to make a CARDSTON science club blog to make it easier for my friends to report to Westwind what their kids learned with me. Behold:

http://lindyscience.blogspot.ca/

It's super easy.....I just copy and paste what I did here onto that blog. Now they don't have to sift through all my ramblings. But YOU still have to read it all John Creed!

This week I took the boys on dates to do crafts at a store where you make china and ceramic things.  I have my dad for Christmas, and I wanted to go to this store before we leave for the coast.



Isn't Abraham so ccccuuuuttttteee!

In other news, Maxwell got a Marriage certificate of our ancestors in the mail!  I'm so happy for him. In the family history world, Marriage certificates are like gold. There's so much information on them! He is on his way to having quite a few names for the temple.


He opened it up and said "Look! I can read 'December' in their cursive! It's not even hard once you start learning!" Hooray for us!

And yes, we have continued with cursive, and Maxwell's picking it up easily and with eagerness.

Maxwell practiced note taking this week because of conference and Auntie Bear's youth discussion night. Thank you Auntie Bear! (Even though I know she never reads this.)



Now, I plan on reporting on english and math, BUT I don't like so many photos of sheets of paper. You can't even see them properly when I print this blog into my yearbooks. So we'll see what happens. This week I still photographed sheets of paper, like this one of Maxwell's:


This is Barton at it's finest. Maxwell learned the nuances of when to spell "tion" vs "sion." He didn't have to memorise every single word that ended with the sound "shun." He memorized a few rules (whach are easier for him to memorize than letters) and he KNEW the first time he was asked which it was. Notice "inflate" becomes "inflation" but "submit" becomes "submission" HE DID IT!

Now, would he be able to do this when composing his OWN thoughts in the midst of lots of words....well sometimes, and that's pretty good for a kid with his dyslexic brain.

Speaking of his dyslexic brain, take a look at this!:


Maxwell ALL BY HIMSELF came up with this concept. He put this on his wall. He designed it and did it all in photoshop himself, but he did need my help with research. I was happy about that because I am still a little leary of my boys just poking around the internet, and I KNOW (haha) I can guide them safely  through, so we were watching this youtube video of famous dyslexics, and it jumps to a photo of Jennifer Aniston NAKED! We have pretty good filters, but not for everything apparently!

Thankfully I had taught all my boys using this awesome book:


And it was an excellent time to example what you do, and a good time to talk about everything again. Honestly....the internet....SHEESH!!!

But we also found inspiring stuff. Jack Horner is one of Maxwell's favourite people now. Just check out his ted talk:

HE THINKS LIKE A DYSLEXIC! His interconnected thinking, his thinking outside the box, his understanding of complex systems. I LOVE IT! Here are dyslexic strengths on display.

YIPEEEE

I had recently read a book about Tesla, and I diagnosed him as a dyslexic based on his strengths (the book didn't mention any weaknesses he may have had) and then I find him in every dyslexic scientist list out there. OH YAH! Dyslexia is a super power baby! (but it's just really hard on their english teacher!)

Speaking of hard english, here's Hyrum's example:


Is this all ADHD? Was he bored or was it too hard? Well, this is honest. This doesn't usually happen, but I must say, I'm excited for the Seeing Stars Program. Soon he'll get better instruction.

Daniel started on  contractions. I have a feeling this might take awhile. We just touched on it this week, next week will only be half a week and then we will need to review when I get back.


As for Math:

Maxwell's is super EASY! He's just now reviewing area. I really like it, because on a hard day, I know Maxwell will be easy. BUT I'm not too worried about it's easiness.  I've looked ahead, and he will learn things as complex as TANGENTS this year! And he is always getting drafting practice in each day:


Hyrum is doing great with math. Check out how he figured out every possible way to give change of $0.25:


Daniel is getting prepped to enter the world of multiplication! We played a memory game where he had to get all the multiples of 3 in order, while I had to get all the multiples of 2 in order. He won. (He usually does.)


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