Our Week: Australia, Mercury, and Lego League

We had another busy week with lots of school interruptions. It's going to be a busy weekend too. I'm hoping we can have a normal week next week and get a lot of work done before Thanksgiving week.

Astronomy

We reviewed what we learned about Mercury last week. Then we learned about spacecraft that has gone to Mercury, how Mercury transits the sun, how Mercury got its name, and how to find it in the sky. We also made a salt dough model of Mercury.

Caleigh making it into a ball

Putting some craters into Mercury

History

In history, we learned about the first people of Australia. We also learned about the Maori people and how they came to New Zealand. 

Unit Study

I had originally planned to do the FIAR book, The Pumpkin Runner, but it still hasn't come in at the library. Since we had all the other books, I just did a unit study on Australia. We learned about the geography, some history, landmarks, language, and many of the unique animals there. We made lamingtons and koala cookies. Go to this post to see more about what we did and for pictures.

Molly making the cake for lamingtons

Everything Else

With three meetings and a mock tournament, First Lego League kind of took over our week. Monday and Tuesday, the boys spent their time preparing for the tournament. At the end of the meeting on Tuesday, one of the missions suddenly stopped working. There wasn't enough time to figure out what was wrong. We had a short meeting on Wednesday to check it again and then they adjusted it. Thursday was the invitational tournament. Colin was so excited that he couldn't stand still. He was also really nervous. His hand was shaking so much when he was fixing an attachment during their first run. He seemed to get less nervous after that run went well though. I'm glad they had the opportunity to do this before the regionals. I'll post about it more soon with pictures.

Colin also had hockey Thursday evening so it was a long day. They played a game during practice. He was very excited to get 3 goals.

Colin on the left getting ready for face off.

I was surprised that none of the kids asked about going to park today. Someone usually brings it up every Friday morning. I'm glad no one thought of it though so we didn't have any complaining. We really needed to stay home so we could finish our unit study.
We finished the week by making a gingerbread house tonight.


Go to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see how other homeschooers' week went.