Weekly Wrap-Up: The One With a Field Trip

This wrap-up will kind of be a twofer since I was so worked up by Winter Promise’s justification of their shoddy and error-ridden product that I didn’t get around to last week’s post.  So some of this actually happened last week.

Bible

We are just LOVING Remembering God’s Awesome Acts.  Last week we there was an awesome lesson about creation vs. evolution.   The gist of this particular lesson was how much guesswork scientists use when coming up with their theories.  They used the various Neanderthal models that scientists created.  Using the same skull as the base for their model, seven different scientists came up with seven vary different Neanderthal models.                         Wow!

Math

Math is getting a little wonky.  I have review of a math program coming up so we’ve had to put our Math-U-See on hold.  Our last MUS lesson was on using the rule of four to create equivalent fractions.    She took to it like a duck to water.

Then we started the “new math” and that wasn’t as pleasant. LOL

Science

We finished up our unit on muscles and started the digestive system.  Lots of experiments.  Shew!!

We are attempted to grow a muscle by working.   Our finger muscles to be exact.  By working it with a clothespin.  She was able to work it 120 in one minute.  We’ll see how she progresses in two weeks.

 

 

 

Next we were testing the effect of acid on our teeth with the aid of some soda and a tooth.  We didn’t have any teeth lying around the house but our super, fabulous, experiment saving science kit from Nature’s Workshop, came with a tooth from a water buffalo.  I LOVE these kits.  We’d never get any experiments done if we didn’t have these kits.  I’m lazy like that.  We have have to check it every few days so we’ll keep you posted.

While talking about chemical digestion we learned about amylase, an enzyme in your saliva that breaks down starches.   This was a very technical test.  Place something starchy, like the cracker that came in our lab kit, on your tongue and observe what happens.   It starts dissolving as the starch is broken down into sugar.  We also did the same thing with a piece of cheese to show that this only works with  food that is starchy.  Naturally, nothing happened with the cheese until she chewed and swallowed.  And just a fun fact…did you know that without the moisture of the saliva, your taste buds wouldn’t work at all?  I didn’t.  Who knew?

We simulated our stomach in action using a ziplock bag, bread, and water.  You can probably figure out how that one works.  LOL

And, btw, that churned up glop  is called chyme.  Which rhymes with time. I wonder who got to pick that name.

Social Studies

We finished up our study on the Pacific Islands.  We read a book called Torches of Joy which is the story of missionaries, John and Helen Dekker, and their work with the Dani people of New Guinea.  Wonderful book!

Mackenzie finished her Choose Your Own Adventure project for Eastern Hemisphere Explorer project.  She choose to design an island resort according to certain guidelines.  She did a good job.

And boy is she LOVING EHE. I’ve heard horror stories about how difficult this project can be and it takes hours but she hasn’t had any difficulty at all.  It’s never taken her more than 20 minutes.  Maybe it’s just the honeymoon period. 

We started praying over various cities that we are learning about in Praying Through the 100 Gateway Cities of the 10/40 Window.   The whole idea of the 10/40 window blows our minds.  97% of the worlds unevangelized in this one small area of the world. Wow.

Other Stuff

We studied Bach this week in A Young Young Scholar’s Guide to Composers.  What’s not to love about Bach?  Or about the guide.  I just love how easy it’s made our composer study.

We finished lesson 6 in Visual Latin.  This week we covered adjectives.  Last week is was declensions. 

Soccer has been keeping us busy.  I have some pictures but they’re still in RAW format so you can’t see them yet.

And lastly, we hit the local children’s museum.  Super fun!  We’re going back next week because we want to explore more.   We saw a wonderful show in the planetarium about the telescope. 

We had fun messing with some unusual musical instruments.  Boy was that room LOUD.

 

 

 

 

 

What’s more fun than giant bubbles? I can’t think of  anything either.

 

We checked out levers.

 

 

And pulleys

And we had fun in this awesome theater area.  Did I mention we want to go back next week?

Check out the other wrap-ups over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.