Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where Slinky Dog Lends a Paw in Science

It never seems like we get much done all week until I set out to editing the photos that I took. Then I'm like "Dang! What was I worried about?" I take a lot of pictures. lol

Mackenzie's Happenings

Well for starters, she has another new leg. Off with the old cast. On with a new one. That was kind of a bummer seeing as it's hot as a dickens and we want to go to the pool. But the new one is a walking cast so while she might not be able to swim yet, she can get her chores back. Yee haw!!! And get them back she did. Woo-hoo!! She goes back in two week and will, hopefully, be free of all casts.

Math

If this child doesn't start checking her answers to make sure that the fractions are reduced...well I can't be held responsible for the crazy that might come out of me. Especially the even ones.  Sheesh!

Science

Our current unit is on the senses.  So far we've covered taste and hearing. We've done a lot of experiments this week.

We tried that "mapping of the taste buds"activity that we all did when we were kids. However, with scientific advancements we now know that scientists have abandoned the idea that taste buds are located in specific areas of the tongue. We also tested the reaction of our taste buds to temperature. The premise is that warm food stimulates the taste buds more than cold food.  So the taste should be more intense in warm food. We used hot (warm) chocolate and cold chocolate milk.  Being the rebels that we are, we experienced the opposite results.

We also did a couple of hearing experiments. used a slinky to get an idea of how sound waves travel.  Our experiment kit that I purchased came with a small, plastic slinky. Epic fail!  Small, plastic slinkies are good for nothing. Metal is the way to go. Sadly we didn't have a metal slinky on hand.  Or did we? I eventually remembered we had a Slinky Dog thanks to my four year old's Toy Story obsession. And even a Slinky Dog is better than a plastic slinky. You might want to write that down.

We demonstrated how having two ears allows you to pin point the locations of sound by blind folding the child and then taping a pencil on a cup in various locations. Phase one worked great. She had no problem pinpoint the location. Phase two involved covering one ear, which should've resulted in her location guesses to be less accurate. Nope. She was still spot on. And yet she still claims that she doesn't hear me when I ask her to do something. Now I've got your number girly! No excuses. You've been outed!!!

Language Arts

We're plowing through Growing with Grammar despite starting it mid year. I was really surprised to see that we're more than half way finished. Woot! She also asked to get back out WriteShop because she was having writer's block and wanted to work on some stories. Our newest lesson is on science fiction. We got to have fun learning about the parts of a story using a sandwich analogy.

Kayleigh's Happenings

Raising Rock Stars Preschool

This week our verse was 147:1 so we took some time to do some extra praising of the Lord. As is typical of late, the verse wasn't long enough to satisfy Kayleigh's love of long verses. She did like the extra singing. We haven't gotten to this week's craft yet but I hope to finish that later this weekend.

 

All About Reading

Porcupines were the animals of choice for AAR this week. We had lots of fun gluing spikes (spaghetti) on her porcupine craft. The game for the week was "Counting Words." "Zecora" would give her a sentence and she had to lay out a block for each word in the sentence. This gave her a bit of trouble because she tended to rush and not give each word it's on letter. By the end of the week she finally got it.

Sonlight

We are back to reading the Flip Flap Body book this week and as it happens she is reading about the 5 senses too. I'd have never imagined my girls, with a seven year age spread, studying the same thing. LOL This week we talked about our sense of sight.

She used her eyes to to look at objects that I had placed on a tray and then used them again to discover which one I removed. Then she used her eyes to draw a self-portrait. We didn't have a portable mirror so we used Photo Booth on the iPad. She's always loved looking at herself in the iPad. We have 8 billion photos of her between the iPad, iMac, and iTouch. She's a Photo Booth expert. LOL

Other Stuff

In the spirit of P...we made a water color P by blocking off a P shape with tape. It came out so wonderful I wish I'd done it for every letter.  I'd hang them all around my school room.

Kayleigh, with Mackenzie's help, made pudding for a snack. Yum! The Kayleigh wanted a photo shoot with her (guinea) pig because she said that pig and picture started with P. I also had a really cute peacock craft planned but we were slackers again this week, so maybe we'll do that this weekend too.

And she did a shape activity involving blocks and shape outlines.

 

   

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One With Both Girls

It's been an easy, easy week school-wise. Mackenzie has a much lighter work, end-of-the-year, work load and Kayleigh has only been "schooling" a few days a week.  So this week, Kayleigh finished up last week's work. That seems to be happening a lot. lol

Mackenzie's load is down to math, grammar, Bible, science, and reading.  It's funny to call reading school because she does it for hours on end anyway.  At any rate, I did assign her a book for "school."  You can read about that choice here.  It might give you a chuckle. Especially for those of you who've been missing my posts about winter promise.

Mackenzie's Happenings

We started the five senses in science and we did some "scientific testing" involving our sniffers.

Fun fact: Most people can identify can identify about 4,000 different smells.  Those with particularly gifted sniffers can identify upwards of 10,000.  I don't think that either Mackenzie or myself are on the gifted end of that spectrum. lol

She had her last art class this week.  Sniff, sniff... Especially since she probably won't be taking it again next year.  The middle school class is on Fridays and I don't do stuff like that on Friday.  Friday is Busch Garden's day. Did I just say middle school in reference to my baby? Bite my tongue!

Her teacher isn't a stickler for the age thing and did say she could attend another class on Tuesday but we're planning on letting Kayleigh take a preschool music class and I'm not sure we want to pay for three classes.  Of course that means I have to go back to teaching art.  Sigh...

The highlight of her week was a visit from her bff, Macayla.  They've known each other since they were three when we all lived on Guam. My how they've grown.  I can't believe they'll be in sixth grade. Bad girls, growing up like that!

  

Kayleigh's Happenings

Raising Rock Stars Preschool/ You Can Read

We were on to Oo this week.  Our verse was "Oh give thanks to the Lord for He is good." The verse wasn't of pleasing length so she wanted to eat it. When I wouldn't let her she decided to hang it up with the rest of her verses. She was a bit of a stinker when it came to her tracing.  She wanted to color the Os in instead of trace them.

We finished up the third YCR unit.  She's finally got them down.  We stamped them out and then highlighted them in sentences. On to unit 4.

 

All About Reading

This week in AAR pre-1, we worked some more on syllables. Instead of breaking down compound words, we broke down regular words.  Well, I broke them down and she put them back together. Then we had fun making an octopus craft. It involved paint AND sand. Double win. And octopus is a much better animal choice then nanny goat. lol

And because we love the octopus, we made another one using cheerios and googly eyes. Another double win in the world of octopus crafts.  

Math

In math we did a 1-10 sequencing activity.  She cut out the numbered squares and glued them in order on another strip.

 

We also had some fun rolling a die and then dot painting the correct number of dots onto a coffee filter. She didn't like this as much as I thought she would.  Mainly because she wanted to be free to dot as much as she wanted.

 

 

 

The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew Blue Ribbon Awards

It's that time of year again.  Time for the Crew to vote on their favorite review items for this cruise.  It was really hard to pick just one product for each category as we were blessed with so many great products to review.  Without further ado, here are this years winners. If you were wondering what our family thought of the products, click on Our Thoughts to read our reviews. We were excited to see many of our favorites on the list.


Congratulations to all of the winners!!! We hope you'll sail with us again.



Favorite Reading Instruction Product: Reading Eggs / Our Thoughts
Favorite Writing Product: Write Shop / Our Thoughts
Favorite Language Arts Product: Progeny Press / Our Thoughts
Favorite Social Studies Product: TruthQuest History / Our Thoughts
Favorite Science Product: Amazing Science
Favorite Math Product: Math Mammoth/ Our Thoughts
Favorite Online Math Product: Math Rider/ Our Thoughts
Favorite Foreign Language Product: Visual Latin/ Our Thoughts
Favorite Fine Arts Product: Artistic Pursuits/ Our Thoughts
Favorite Christian Education Product: Apologia: Who Am I?/ Our Thoughts

Favorite Preschool Product: Before Five in a Row/ Our Thoughts
Favorite Elementary Product: All About Reading
Favorite Middle School Product: Write With WORLD/ Our Thoughts
Favorite High School Product: Excellence in Literature
Favorite College or College-Prep Product: Excellence in Literature

Best Online Resource: Reading Eggs/ Our Thoughts
Best e-Product: Heritage History
Best Homeschool Resource: Apologia: Education the Wholehearted Child
Best Book, Novel, or Magazine: Apologia: How to Have a HEART for Your Kids/ Our Thoughts
Best Children's Book: Amazing Animals by Design / Our Thoughts
Best Game or Toy: Northstar Games: Wits and Wagers and Say Anything / Our Thoughts
Best Hands-On Resource: Pitsco Education

Best Resource I Didn't Know I Needed: eMeals
Best Customer Service: K5 Learning
Best Adaptable Resource: Creek Edge Press
Most Family-Oriented Resource: Northstar Games: Wits and Wagers and Say Anything/ Our Thoughts

Kids' Choice (age 0-12): Reading Eggs/ Our Thoughts
Teens Choice: Pitsco Education
All Around Crew Favorite: Visual Latin/ Our Thoughts

Click the Crew banner to read all of our reviews on these great products.

For those of you who have been missing my...

 winter promise posts...

Do I have a treat for you...

When I logged onto Facebook today, I found this...

Oh yeah baby! don wants to be my Facebook friend.  Maybe he forgot that he banned me from posting on his forums.

And for the record, I have never posted on his forums.  I think he was being proactive incase I decided to post any of my questions to him or his unsatisfactory answers. (Quite possibly the smartest thing he's ever done since I've known him.)

And that's not all...

My bff, Andra, has been using wp's All American 1 this year.  It has not been a pleasant year for her at all.  She decided to plow through it though.  (On the bright side, there's been lots of stories of ridiculousness for me to listen too.  Don't worry, she'll be blogging about it eventually and I promise to share when she does.)

Anyhoooo...her most recent dilemma has been a read aloud issue.  As in they start reading a book (Great Horn Spoon) get fourteen chapters into it (out of 18) and suddenly wp stop scheduling it and schedule a new book.  They start the new book, Wild West, on p. 20.

And it gets better. She never received the Wild West! As you know, their shipping practices are deplorable at best.  Like myself, she never received an order confirmation listing everything she'd be getting and there were never any shipping notices or packing lists.  So it's not a real big shock that this could happen.  She went back and checked her website and didn't even see the new book listed there.

So when she got the FB request from wp, she decided to ask her question there.  And I thought that I'd share the exchange with you because I know how you love all this wp madness.  Please read on with the knowledge, that my friend is even more blunt than I am.  She's not one to mince words.  So read with that in mind.

Bwaa haa haaa!!  They took the book out and left it in the IG.  Which is par for the course with them as my Children Around the World core had books scheduled that they were no longer using. Classic wp!

So just in case you've been wondering, the problems are not just limited to the Children Around the World study.

But speaking of CAW, I've got another fun nugget regarding it.  Since Mackenzie has finished with her  "official" history for the year, and I want her to continue with some school reading, I decided to assign her some of our left over books from our wp misadventure. (Not anything written or published by them, of course!)  Seeing as we just finished studying Russia, and CAW covers Russia, I decided to use the reader that they selected.  I get out out my not-so-trusty wp IG and look at the index to see what week Russia is studied. Week 9.

 Then I pull out the reading schedule for the readers. (Which, f.y.i., is a single sheet of paper that I paid $8 for.  And they forgot to send it with the readers so it arrived in an letter sized envelope all rumpled and torn.) I peruse the schedule and see that Treasures of the Snow (by Patricia St. John who is in no way affiliated with wp) is scheduled for week 9.  Okay. I pull it off of the shelf. As it turns out, it's a book set in Switzerland.  Naturally. For realz. Of course. Seriously. I'm not lying.

If you'll recall, when actually studying Switzerland, they had us reading The Swiss Family Robinson. You know, that book that takes place on a tropical island thought to be in the Caribbean.  That shouldn't surprise me seeing as they have scheduled Heidi to be read during our study of Africa and Asia.

 

On a side note, if you're ever studying Switzerland, consider adding Treasures of the Snow to your reading list. There's quite a bit about the Swiss culture and it's been a good read. It might not, however, be the best choice if you happen to be studying Russia.