Weekly Wrap-Up: Where did all the ducks go?

Two weeks down and we're not "behind" yet. Woot! I know, I know. We homeschool, it's our schedule, we can't get behind. I forgot. I mean we didn't have to adjust our schedule at all this week. Except for the fact that we're ahead in math already. I love that kind of rescheduling.

It was a great week. We accomplished a lot, including all of our science experiments. Those I often slack on. Shame on me.

Bible

We're reading through the book of John right now. Mackenzie also had VBS every evening this week.

I do not, as a general rule, like activities in the evenings. I have dinner to make and a toddler who goes to bed at 7. And I'm just plan tired. Usually we do VBS at another church who offers it in the morning. But this year the director asked if Mackenzie might like to participate in the skits that were part of the opening. She loves all things dramatic, so how could I say no. Plus it's a good opportunity for her to serve her church. (As it turned out it was also an opportunity for me too. Somehow I wound up running the skits. LOL)

One of the challenges of the week was to memorize all the books of the Bible. Kenzie already knew the NT so she decided to master the OT too. She did. In one day. Tonight is the actual challenge at VBS. I have no doubt that she'll rock it.

Math

This week we started division. By ones and twos. Piece of cake!

Social Studies

We finished our unit on South America. It was a nice little mini-unit and Kenzie enjoyed it. She'd like to visit South America now. Specifically Angel Falls and the rainforest.

Our reading included finishing up Shoes for Everyone and continuing on with Moccasin Trail and By the Great Horn Spoon. Kenzie was getting a little agitated with Moccasin Trail. One of the characters was insulting the "injuns" and that just got her dander up. She was shouting, "We're the ones who messed up their lives." Clearly she remembers everything she learned last year.

She is continuing to enjoy The Star-Spangled State Book. She aced her second quiz and can locate six states on an unlabeled map. She was also biting her cheese into the shapes of the states she'd learned the other day. LOL

Science

Science was heavy in non-book work. She finished her Live 'N Learn mini books for chapter one and we completed all of our experiments for the week.

Our experiment on air pressure worked perfectly. Our hypothesis (that the water would bubble like it does when you blow air into a straw) was totally wrong. But that made the results (water sprayed out of the straw) more exciting. If you look closely you should be able to see the spray. Very cool!

Our experiment on air lift was not so successful. You were supposed to build two identical gliders, other than their wing size. One glider was to have long and narrow wings, the other short and wide. We built our gliders to the exact specifications in the book.

That did not help us much. Our hypothesis (that the glider with the long, narrow wings would fly fartherest) was correct. Our results were the total opposite. We threw them about 20 times. 3 times the gliders flew the same distance. The other 17 times the glider with the short, wide wings flew farther.

Experiment bust! I think, with my non-scientific mind, that the problem was that the gliders were just too small. Even though we used the exact dimensions in the book, I think we needed to make them bigger so the wings were large enough for the air to really get under.

Maybe one day we'll try it again in jumbo size. Starting with a paint stirrer and our base. Probably not anyday soon though. It's hard enough for us to get the assigned experiements in without adding in extra.

On Friday we went on a Nature Scavenger Hunt. We had a list of things that we had to observe in nature. When we find it all we can had the list to our Live N Learn notebook.

We found a few things on our list. Mostly of the insect variety.

Birds were harder to come by. Which was weird because we were walking around a lake that's usually filled with ducks and other water birds. But that day the lake was empty. Very bizarre.

Recently, our HOA had sent out a letter saying that a lot of ducks had been getting sick. Apparently from people throwing food in the water, which then resulted in bacteria. They asked for people to refrain from feeding them. So we thought maybe they were so sick that they all had to be removed. It was really freaky.

Language Arts

First Language Lessons and Writing with Ease continue to be review lessons so that's been nice and easy. We also added Spelling Power back in this week.

Extras

Mackenzie is officially signed up for soccer and piano lessons. Now we are officially broke. LOL

For art this week we worked in I Can Do All Things. We started on painting lessons and mixing primary and secondary colors. We had a lot of fun but haven't mastered that skill yet.

She used watercolor pencils to draw her bedroom. That didn't work out so well for her. LOL

And here's one of our projects from last week that I didn't post because I hadn't taken the pictures off the camera yet. She was making line designs out of construction paper. She was not thrilled with this project when I explained it to her. "It's soooo much cutting!" she whined. She does not like to cut. I'm thinking Matisse will not be her favorite artist.

Then I had an light-bulb moment and remembered all the scrapbook stuff that I own and never use. So I got out my paper cutter and gave her a quick lesson. She was much happier then and declared the project "fun!" Shew




Be sure to pop on over to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and see what everyone else has been up too.

And in case you're still wondering where all the ducks went, we found them. Napping under the willow trees on the other side of the lake. It was totally weird that every, single bird was out of the lake at the same time.