Sink Me! They Seek him Everywhere!

 If you don't know the reference of the title of my post, you had a monstrous intolerable childhood, and you missed out on the best movie ever: The Scarlet Pimpernel (Jane Seymour version of course.) We watched it again this week as our activity for learning about the reign of terror, ----but I'm getting ahead of myself.

For our school, the first thing we learned about in this year's social studies was The Enlightenment!!! 

(We are just following the same Modern History schedule I did four years ago.) https://lindyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2016/08/modern-history-outline-for-2016-17-year.html

And the first person we studied for the Enlightenment was Isaac Newton. We did experiments for his three laws of motion as our activity.

And then we learned about John Locke. We watched a few videos about him because he was so important to history. One video I liked so much I added it to our daily devotional.

Then we moved along to learn about Marie Antionette. Honestly, I just feel bad for that girl. Society made her, then society killed her. (It reminds me of Britany Spears.)  My kids were SO EXCITED to realize that they could make cake from scratch by themselves. They've insisted on making cake twice since we first did it.

And THEN we learned about the Reign of Terror. It was the first time that I realized that Robespierre was actually "against the death penalty" and thought he was following the ideals of liberty from the enlightenment. SERIOUSLY? This is why we can never elect someone who's main motivation is hatred. Regardless of their "beliefs."

For science, we started our club. We've had them outside for the first few lessons. This year, we are learning Biology. 

For our first club we learned about what actually qualifies something as living. We also talked about Natural Selection. One of the highlights was looking through my telescope at some pond scum where we were able to actually see some moving single celled organisms!!!

Our second lesson was about cells. We made a couple of cell models, including one out of CANDY. Always a hit.

See the DNA/sprinkles inside our Oreo/nucleus? Classic.

We also talked about osmosis, and I had made a "naked egg" from vinegar, and took it out to show the little class (I have two classes, one for littles and one for bigger kids) how big it was, and it exploded on me! I guess I hadn't left it in vinegar long enough!

The next lesson we learned about classification, bacteria, and fungus. For classification, we took a million shoes and created our own taxonomy to decided how to map every shoe. (This is actually something I did in middle school, and I've never forgot it.)

For our main bacteria activity, I had them take a queue tip and try to find some bacteria in my house, and put it in a petrie dish. I'm not sure if it worked, but they had so much fun hunting for nasties!

Also, we ate active yogurt, as you can see.  For fungus we looked at mould and mushrooms and yeast. It's weird to think that mould spores are already on all our food long before they mould!!! 

 And as for the standard subjects, I have slowly but surely gained steam in accomplishing everything I need to with math and English.

It makes it a little easier to not have to worry about Maxwell. Well I still worry, but I'm really not in charge. 

Abraham did all his games with All About Reading that were super fun, and we have now started on his Logic of English.  We'll see how that goes!!!

And for Daniel I found this super awesome book called "Canadian Story Starters" to help in his writing. When Daniel is done with Rightstart Math, I'll get him started on IEW, and I think he will be done with this writing prompt book about the same time.

For Hyrum, he's been doing pretty good with IEW. I find that kids don't love it, but it works. Also, I just read about how to properly teach writing for my college class, and IEW ticks all the boxes.

It's honestly so much easier now that Hyrum and Daniel are reading fluently. My two dyslexic are reading for fun and writing without help.

It was funny last week. Maxwell is not the only teenager going to virtual school this COVID season. The internet went out in Leavitt, and a gang of teenagers rushed to my house to connect to my Wifi to do their school.

And they aren't the only ones who are doing online school, I AM!! It's been quite the learning experience, and I feel like I'm going super slow compared to my super sonic husband, but I've been learning and stretching, and although I wish I had a real-live-proffesor, it's good so far. I'm totally old-school though and I bring out pens and notebooks and flashcards. I guess I'm really not a millennial after all LOL!

 I also have been reading for our Cardston reading group. It's been so wonderful, but lately it's been a big item on my checklist of all the stuff I need to do. Here's one of my favourite paragraphs from our last book "Rest Play Grow" my Nacnamara. SUCH a good book! To me, this paragraph means we can't be frustrated with how are children are (specifically-for me-learning challenges) and to delight in who they really are.

As for AWESOME field trips, we went to Royal Tyrell Dinosaur museum. IT WAS FREE! What? only one weekend a year is free and we randomly go the right weekend? And then the city's swimming pool/slide was free too. 

I couldn't help think back to our night at the museum last year, when social life was a bit more simple.

And it was Orange Shirt day on the 30th, so we talked about the tragedy of the Native Residential Schools.

And we went on a few outings to enjoy the last of nice days before the weather turns. Including to Waterton and their fire-marked forests.