Ancient China and Christmas

Well, it's New Year's Eve, and I am sooo behind on this blog.

Fun things first, Social studies. We did a short Ancient India unit, and we marbled shirts as part of this. Which will tell any true India buffs how badly I taught my kids. Marbling is Japanese, not Indian, but I didn't realize this until after. We also read "Just So" stories, which was written by an Englishman....so yeah, I failed.

But we DID talk a lot about the Ganges river and how that impacted their society and religion. I got that right...Didn't I?

After that, we've been having an Ancient China unit. I invited my friend whose parents are from China to be part of this, and I was a little intimidated teaching her family, but she was excited to be part of it, and brought some super yummy Chinese food every time.

I even decorated our house for this unit

Once we learned about the Chinese inventions. Namely wood printing, the compass, kites, and PAPER. So we made paper.

The next time we talked about the legends of the invention of silk, the Silk Road, and gunpowder. We danced around with sparklers as our activity. It was a hit.

The next time we learned about Qin Shi Huang. It was all very fascinating but our activity was going to be flying lanterns, however, it was windy, and so when we tried, we wrecked a couple and I got my van stuck in the snow. Yeah.

Then for our last time together we moved over to Japan and learned about ancient Japan (not too ancient-we focused on the samurai which was really during the Middle Ages.) For our activity we did origami.

Science- we had two science clubs since I wrote last time. The first week we learned about oxygen and carbon dioxide. We did things on air pressure too if I remember right. This year I actually remembered to get ready for this lesson and made some carbon dioxide indicators from a lime solution. These take over 24 hours to prepare, and I usually forget to prepare that far in advance, so this was the first time we actually did it, and it worked!

Next week we focused on the water cycle (perfect timing for watching Frozen 2 which in a round about way talks about it.) As part of this we showed how hot water rises and cold water sinks. Red is hot and blue is cold. In the purple one the red had been on the bottom and they mixed immediately.

I also had them draw pictures of the water cycle.

Pretty cute eh?

And maybe they miss my science during the holiday or (more likely) they love Mark Rober, they decided to have an egg drop contest, and engineered ways of making it so their egg wouldn't crack. They did this 100% on their own, and I don't think a single egg cracked after they had perfected their carriers.

Since it's been Christmas break all of their many, many, many extracurricular activities have been on hiatus, which honestly has been nice. But before they left, they got their fill.

For art, they made Christmas cards. They also have been making "zen tangles" which are really awesome and keep them occupied almost as good as a video game.

Abraham has been loving art and says he wants to be an artist when he grows up. At the risk of being too graphic, I have to share this story: So Abraham drew a picture of our aquarium one night while I was reading to them, and he had done quite a good job and asked me to keep it safe. I forgot about the picture almost as soon as he had trustingly put it in my care, and left it on the bedroom floor. That night Daniel woke up and threw up on it! Yep.

I got sick before Christmas as well. (Head cold-not throw up) and my sweet sister-in-law came over and had all the kid making gingerbread houses while I slept the day away. Maxwell had been preparing for this for a day or two. First he designed the house pieces and 3D printed the cookie cutters for it, and then he baked them all. So really, it was all ready for my sister in law to come in and finish off the magic.

Another thing that ended for the holiday was Westwind classes. This year they've been having Maxwell's class make their own houses. They had to design them and figure out prices for things (I think) anyway, I loved the idea, and I thought Maxwell's was pretty awesome.

They've also been teaching things that are off the Alberta check list, like aerodynamics.

Our choir had its holiday performances, which were so cute. I really appreciated Jandy and Kadie's work with them.

Their Hip Hop had its "parent watch" day, but I could only come for the very end and I only got this really bad photo.

The service club had its last activity. We all made cookies and sold them as a fundraiser for #TeamTrees. That was super exciting for the kids to be involved with something that all their youtube heroes were doing. They ended up donating over 250 trees!

And our group had it's last field trip, but I can't remember why, but only Daniel went. He went to the Card house and to the old Court house.

And as for the necessary subjects, Hyrum is done with his trigonometry unit that Rightstart had him do. Here he is finding the angle to our ceiling to figure out how high it is.

Yet here is him writing phrases for Barton.

Yep. That's my kids for you. Dyslexia. What can I say.

Daniel is also moving along with Barton, here's one of his extra practice pages:

And Abraham is ready for a reading program! He knows all his letters and their sounds. So I had him take the Barton student screening test to see if he needed Foundation in Sounds.

Not sure if you can see this, but he doesn't need FIS because he passed level C, but he FAILED A and B. Yep, just as dyslexic as the rest of them.

I've talked on here about how I was experimenting with Toe by Toe with William because I wanted to find something else that worked besides Barton, well, that experiment's over.

Toe by Toe is not for a little guy who has not had any other training in how to read. It doesn't actually teach anything. I truly believe it helps those who just need to work on their fluency, but that's not all that William needed. I gave it a good 8 or 9 months. It's time to move on.

Behold:

I've heard about All about Reading for a long time. I knew it was neck and neck with Barton in it's popularity for teaching dyslexic children, (Susan Barton ignored me when I asked her about it when I met her) so I finally caved and bought it.

So far, it's delightful. I've decided to teach Abraham and William at the same time. Both of them know their letters and sounds, so we're just doing the phonemic awareness stuff that's mixed in with their pre-reading program, which means we're going to fly through that level.

So far they are having a blast. They beg me to teach them.

As for other things I wanted to mention, we got a car that was meant for Maxwell to learn to drive in (aka cheap) but it was so cheap it already broke down!

Also, the city had its community awareness day, which they had tons of fun at, and Hyrum won a prize that's worth over $250 in gift certificates!

And Epic had their Christmas parties

And last but not least....it was Christmas!!!

(That's Abraham being a nativity sheep by the way)

Quarter of the Year Already

A quarter of the year is already done?!?! Wow...what have we actually done?

Dustin says we're on fire this year from his perspective. And while it's true my kids have never been more involved in co-ops, community experiences, and extra curricular, I feel like I am just scraping by in what I need to do for the essentials.

For example, this year I haven't done as many math and English examples on this blog. They were boring photos and I figure that I'm physically close to Westwind alt this year and that having my kids go there weekly will help give proof of learning. However, I will show some evidence here.

For example, Daniel did his quarter of the year math test:

And here's a photo of Hyrum finding out the area of Legoland using the Pick's Theorem.

Yeah, that photo's not boring I guess LOL.

Hyrum has actually been learning TRIGONOMETRY! It hasn't been easy, and sometimes I feel like I can actually see hyrum slowly cranking the wheels in his head, but I think he's getting it.

And here's Hyrum's worksheet that's a review of the last while:

And William, my little 7 year old, is learning his TIMES TABLES!!!

Maxwell's doing ACT math, and supplementing with Khan Academy.

As far as English goes, Barton has been nonexistent because I haven't had an iPad. I just got one through the school, and so we should be back in business. I plan on putting math on the back burner for awhile to get a crash course in Barton for Daniel and Hyrum to catch up a little. Actually, Hyrum is so close to being "done." He's reading a novel as I type this.

And look at Daniel reading to his brothers!

Hyrum, Daniel, and William have been writing stories, which I'll include at the end of this post.

Maxwell has been doing IEW Student Writing Intensive, but I'm starting him on High School Essays soon. He's also been doing ACT English and Reading Comprehension. Not quite as easy as his math for him.

And finally we had a break through in spelling. Maxwell and I do spelling EVERY DAY, but it's still so hard for his dyslexic mind to grasp. (And this is a kid who will read a novel a day--it bugs me so bad when people say that if a kid is reading a lot then they will be able to spell. It doesn't always correspond folks.)

Finally there was a "before and after" example in his Stareway to Spelling that actually showed a huge improvement. It was very encouraging.

And as far as Abraham goes, he's loving Handwriting Without Tears, but he has had a weird pencil grip. I'm worried about that in the long run, and I went with what seemed the easiest answer: a special pencil holder.

Hopefully it solves the problem.

And as for other English, Hyrum and Maxwell have been going to a special class hosted by Epic Youth that was focused on The 7 Habits for Highly Effective Teens. I love it when other people teach my kids good lessons.

We've also been reading the Dragon Watch series by Brandon Mull as a family. Also, I have all these Christmas books that I've wrapped and I'm going to put under the still-non-existent tree, and we're going to unwrap one and read one every night.

And now for funner subjects:

Science has been going as smoothly as possible. Since Cayleen's not here, the kids have watched science related movies downstairs while I teach the other group of kids upstairs. One week lots of kids couldn't come, so we had a combined lesson. I won't lie: that was nice.

One week we spent the time figuring how to tell the difference between elements. We found what elements conducted electricity, we did the Moh test on some, we heated some up, we saw which were magnetic, and my personal favourite, we burned them and saw the colour of their flames (boric acid makes some awesome green flames.) I'm sure there were other ways we categorized elements too that I can't think of right now.

Then we played "Periodic Table Battleship" to get the kids to feel comfortable with the table and where the elements were.

I also made this movie about the element symbols that are odd, to help them remember them.

The next week we learned about density I made a song for that, but it isn't nearly as impressive:

The big experiment of the day was putting different kinds of liquids into test tubes to make a density rainbow:

And this week we talked about molecules. This included talking about mixtures and compounds. Mixtures are just physical changes where the elements are just next to each other and can easily be separated, and compound is a chemical change where new molecules are formed.

We read the Adventures of Adam the Atom (love that book!) and made cake, and hardboiled eggs, and we took sulphur and iron and mixed them together, and separated them out again with a magnet,  and then melted them together. We also made molecules out of candy (it was a yummy science. Well, yummy and stinky. Stinky because of the sulphur.)

Social Studies-

Well, we finished up ancient Egypt. We combined ancient Egypt up with Ancient Israel because we talked about Joseph (found that book-Squee!) and Moses. We made Papyrus out of celery for one of our activities:

We then left Ancient Egypt behind and followed Ancient Israel with Joshua and the wall of Jericho, which we acted out with cups and party favour horns:

We then learned about King David, and the hight of Israel and made slingshots as our activity:

And THEN we talked about Israel being conquered by Babylon and learned about Daniel, and made lion pinchers as our activity:

Now just look at those photos I just shared. Aren't they awesome photos? compare them to the photos of the Joshua/Jericho photos....the difference. For an early Christmas, birthday and life present, Dustin upgraded me from an iphone 7 to an iPhone 11!!!!

It's all about the camera folks.

And then we moved away from the captured Israel to learn about ancient Persia. I'm not sure if I should have done Ancient Persia this early in the year. I didn't focus on Assyria and Babylon like I wanted to because I ran out of time. Of course, Persia conquers Babylon, so I thought it would be a good time to talk about it.

The ancient Persia I wanted to cover was the Aladdin Persia. But I didn't realize that this ancient Persia was during the Golden age of Islam which is in THE MIDDLE AGES. Yeah, we are no where near the Middle Ages in our timeline yet.

In other words, I don't know enough about ancient Persia. Good news: most Canadian public schools don't either, so My kids' lives won't be traumatized.

ALTHOUGH the Arabian night stories are rather traumatic! There's so much murder! Oh well....culture....right?

They made lamps while I was reading to them, and they loved making smoke look like Genies coming out of them.

Alright, there you have the main subjects of study (math, English, science, Social) but of course there's SO MUCH MORE!

Let's talk holidays:  Maxwell spent so much time and energy making Daniel's costume, and it's Awesome:

And William was a cat again

And Abraham couldn't decide WHAT he wanted to be

But then there was the Peavoy's costumes! We watched Nightmare Before Christmas at their house for Halloween.

All our pumpkins rotted, and all pumpkins were sold out, so we decorated small pumpkins:

Then for Remembrance Day, Janet had them all make poppy art that was awesome:

And we went to the Cardston memorial service

I must admit, when they showed the video of those who were killed in the wars, I got choked up big time.

And as for Christmas, we've already decorated (except for the tree,) and Cardston has already had their festival of Lights, which meant Santa and so much more!

And besides all of that holiday stuff, we have been continuing with our co-op craziness.

Like our awesome Choir that Jandy's doing:

And Westwind has been holding fun events and classes. Here's them at a science get together where they even included Abraham. Hyrum's holding a representation of the solar system.

And this is from one of their regular classes:

And Maxwell's been studying hard, and got his LEARNERS DRIVING LICENCE!!! WHAT!?!? How did that happen?

And as far as Physical Education, since there's been so much snow this fall, we've gone sledding a few times.

But honestly, I dislike sledding because of all the preparation involved.

A couple of weeks ago the Proffitts invited us to go ice skating with them. I've only been to the Cardston ice rink once for a ward activity a few years ago. I didn't know that it's free if you have your own skates. I didn't realize that because my kids are now pros at rollerblading that they would be so good at iceskating right off the bat.

But now I do realize this, and we bought skates from second hand stores, and have been going to the rink at least twice a week ever since. They love it:

And last but not least, this past week Becky and I made an upgrade on my mission vision board that I did years ago. I absolutely love it. I think it's very inspiring if I do say so myself.

Okay and now for the writing that I promised:

William wrote an outline of his characters, setting and events, but this is just the story so far:

Seven years ago, I loved Lily so much. She is nice. She has two long sharp teeth that never brake. She is fast, and she liked hunting mammoths and killing them. All but one mammoth which is our friend. She never took a slice out of him.

Lily had really warm fur for a saber tooth cat, just like me. But we were special saber tooth cats, because I'm green and she's purple.

We were standing in a mine. It had a bunch of gold and iron in the walls.

Daniel has been contenting his old Digital Three story:

"Because the electricity from the electric dragon only hits people it can easily go through. That's why it's so dangerous for the water people." I say.

Suddenly, a wall in the castle falls. We could see the dragon's eye peering through the rubble looking at all of the warriors.

Instantly everybody started to try to attack the eye. After a bunch of hits that were not successful, a lot of people dropped their weapons and ran.

Then Twister said "Should we run away too?"

Jack said "No, we can't leave now."

"Do you have any ideas?" Twister said to me.

I say "Why are you asking me?"

Twister says "Because you're the smart one."

I said "We should attack it from the inside, not the outside."

Then Jack says "I've got an idea. We need to distract the dragon while I throw my ice bomb inside its mouth."

"Where did you get na ice bomb?" Twister asks.

"Oh, I found it on the floor. It was left by oe of the people who ran away."

Then Twister quickly turned into a weird purple blob like creature. You could still see his mouth and eyes which had become part of the blob. His boomerang had turned into a gun looking thing.

Twister's purple blobby hands reached for the gun, and fired it at the dragon Purple glops shot out. After a while, I realized Twister was slowly shrinking as the dragon's scales started to be covered in purple gloop. Some of the scales fell off while others were getting bigger and gloopier, almost like they were becoming blobs.

Then I noticed Twister's eye and hand shoot out of the gun. Then the rest of his body shot out of the gun.

The dragon turned around and looked at us. When it was just about to shoot a thunder bolt out of his mouth, Jack threw the ice bomb into his mouth.

The Dragon quickly bit the bomb and threw his mouth open. Then the purple globs slurped off the dragon and came together to form an even bigger Twister.

The bomb in-between the dragon's teeth began to brake.

And here's Hyrum's continuation of his old story about the Elements

Flame warmed up the ice that was keeping Vipe stuck.

Meanwhile, the water element put out the fire surrounding him and he dashed.

Flame focused on Vipe, and as the water element ran out of sight, the ice started having a red sheen and an alarm started. Flame said "We should get out of here!"

"Wait!" said Vipe. "What about that water element? He's seethe floating crystals."

Flame said "We can't worry about that now. Let's go!"

As they were running away, all the water elements headed for the castle.

Suddenly a huge ice wall started to rise from the ground, blocking Fame and Vice from running away.

They turned around to see a whole army of water elements coming down towards the newly formed wall.

Flame desperately shot fire at the wall, trying to melt it away, but the wall just got higher and higher.

Then Flame and Vipe opened the bag of crystals. "It will take too long to make a flying board. Jump in the bag!" Said Vipe.

Flame thought that was crazy. The bag was too small, and it would make it easier for the guards to capture them, but as Vipe jumped into it, he remembered that the bag had a magical unlimited space.

Flame jumped in the bag. After he landed, he saw Vipe and a lot more crystals. It looked like they were inside a box. Then Vipe said "I thing the more items you put in here, the bigger the box gets. When you fell in here, the space got bigger. Also, gravity seems not as strong."

"Do you think the guards are going to notice us?" asked Flame.

"Most likely"

"Do you think...: Flame started.

"Shhh" Vipe whispered.

Then they heard a low man's voice. "Hey, I think I see a nap sack."

"Me too." another voice said.

Then they felt like they got picked up. Flame was worried they would do something to the bag that would make it so they would never be able to come out, or something much worse. Flame started sweating nervously, although, fire elements sweat hot rocks kind of like lava.

One of the guards said "Bring it to the vault."

A few minutes later, they heard some bars closing. They couldn't see what was happening because the bag was tied shut. Then they heard some rumbling after another few minutes. They heard a person trip. Then they heard a voice say "I wonder what this is." and the bag started opening.