ANYWAY focusing on the good:
We've been doing Ancient Greece for social studies. Daniel likes to say we're "studying that greasy place."
Our first class we learned about myths and Homer. We read a children's version of the Odyssey, and have been reading children's versions of greek myths. Holy cow I forgot how traumatic those stories are. I just remember loving them. They're just as bad as the Arabian night stories!
We (by "we" I mean Daniel) attempted to make this Trojan horse as our activity, but it just never quite happened:
The next class we learned about Minoans and their bull jumping. We read about Theseus and the minotaur and we made our own life size maze. That was much more successful than the horse.
The next time we learned about the Olympics! This was super fun. We watched all the torch lightings since the 1960s and studied how the torch is transported through the world. They LOVED that.
And of course we learned about ancient Olympics (my boys are very much little boys and could not get over the naked part.) and we read the magic Treehouse about the Olympics.
And we acted out our own olympics. It was epic. We had the music going, and they had to hoolahoop and jumprope and use a bow and arrow. We did it in such a way that no one officially won, so they were all winners and all got golden medals. Love it.
Maxwell got creative and even made us an olympic torch.
A torch that Hyrum insisted doing a "slow mo" lighting of the flame.
I usually teach Ancient Greece at the same time as the actual olympics, but it wasn't synced up this year. I'll have to change that in four years when we do this again.
And then we learned about the philosophers. Mostly Diogenes, Socrates, and Plato. We also talked about the zodiac signs because decorating coins that had Greek zodiac signs was our activity.
It was perfect timing to teach a certain Barton lesson to Daniel. The lesson that teaches that "ph" and a "y" in the middle of the word, are Greek influences. So we were learning about Greece and Greek words. This is also the lesson when they can finally read and spell that very special word: "dyslexic."
For science, we've been learning about reactions and how certain things effects reactions, such as heat, light, surface area, concentration, and of course catalysts, and what better catalyst is there than mentos in coke:
We also talked about exothermic and endothermic reactions. I wanted to do elephant toothpaste for this, but it was a major fail. BLAH! I need good high concentration hydrogen peroxide!!!
But we didn't have science the next week because it was COLD. Really cold. So cold, that vehicles didn't start and people would start coughing by just going outside.
Right as the cold was coming into our valley, Dustin got cabin fever and stuffed all of our kids and the Blackmore's into our van to go to Waterton for a wiener roast (we precooked the dogs to make things easier) and it was a cold blast. The kids loved it.
But my kids did their own science experiments without class because of GRANDMA!!!
Yes, as a very big surprise, Grandma T came for my birthday. She wasn't planning on it, but Eric stayed at her house and in the morning she asked him where he was going, and when he said "Cardston" she asked to come too! She woke up my dad and told him to put in his hearing aid. "I'm going to Cardston right now" my dad: "Uhhh I think I need my other hearing aid" LOL.
Anyway, she brought some science kits including a crystal growing kit and a microscope you put on your phone.
And as for other fun things, their service club put on a winter Ball. We decorated a church and we turned up the music and it was magic. I helped face paint. Hyrum's was pretty clever. He asked someone to paint "I'm something, Okay?" on his face. That is sooo his sense of humour.
Also, Daniel got some good quality balloons for Christmas and has been making animals and funness everywhere.
And I know that I started out this blog saying how hard it was to realize that half the year is gone, but there have been some accomplishments that I'm quite proud of; Maxwell is now doing math that I don't understand at all:
And I've printed off charts for their keyboarding and I've given them the "carrot and the stick" in accordance with how many squares they do.
