Last two weeks of September

We got so busy that I didn't have a chance to write a wrap-up for last week so I'm going to put both weeks here. We decided at the last minute to go to Tennessee to see my cousin and her family while they were visiting there. We hadn't seen them in over a year so it was nice to catch up and the kids had a great time with their little cousin.

History

 

 

Our first SOTW chapter was about China. We read that other countries wanted to trade with them, but their emperor Chi'en-lung didn't think they needed anything from others and made the other countries follow lots of restrictions. Then we learned that the British started sending opium to China and continued doing so even after the emperor ordered them to stop.

The next week we read about Napoleon Bonaparte, his battles, and how he came to be the ruler of France.

We also learned about the Louisana Purchase.

 

 

 

 

Science

 

 

The girls have been working on chapter 2 in Zoology 2, learning about whales. They did experiments about echolocation and to see why ocean water doesn't freeze as quickly as other water. They made paper bag whales (directions found here) and a toothed whale for their ocean boxes.

 

 

Caleigh's whale                           Colin's whale

Molly's whale

Whale books we read

 

 

Colin has been doing module 2 of Apologia General Science about scientific inquiry. He did some experiments to see how weight affects the speed at which objects fall. He started working on the study guide questions to prepare for his test this coming week.

 

 

 

 

 

Art

 

 



We did a lesson in Artistic Pursuits about seeing lines. The kids drew a model of an animal following the curves of the lines they saw while looking at the object. 

 

 

 

Colin's moose

Molly's giraffe

Caleigh's sea lion

 

Field Trips

 

 

We ended up doing quite a bit of traveling over the last 2 weeks. We went to Richmond, VA for Colin's hockey games. While we were there, we got to visit Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown Settlement, and Yorktown Victory Center. The kids liked Jamestown the best and loved checking out the ships there.

 

Last week when we went to Tennessee, we took the kids hiking on some trails in the Smoky Mountains.



Our Week: 9/10-9/14

I'm still surprised with how well we've all adjusted back to school. We're still not starting as early as I would like, but it's getting earlier. Everyone got used to sleeping in later while I was dealing with the tiredness and sickness of pregnancy. I'm still dealing with some sickness, but it's mostly just nausea and has gotten much better. 
The weather was great this week and I wish we had gotten out to enjoy it more. Looks like next week is going to be nice too so I really want to try to get us all outside more.

History

 

 

We ended up getting in a lot of history this week.

We started by reading more about Catherine the Great and learning how she became the empress of Russia. Then we read about the steam engine being used in Britain and how that increased the demand for coal. We also read about Eli Whitney's cotton gin and how he made standardization popular by making interchangeable parts for guns.

 

We finished the week by reviewing a little about the Jamestown settlement, the Battle of Yorktown, and what life was like in Williamsburg during Colonial times to prepare for a trip next week to visit those places.



We made our own cotton gin to help them understand how it worked.

 

Science



We finished the first chapter of Zoology 1.
The girls did a couple of experiments.

The first used a balloon and soda bottle to demonstrate how lungs react when a person dives into the deep ocean.

 

 

The second experiment was to find out if hot or cold water is heavier. This one was a little difficult
 for the girls to see. You were supposed to color the cold and hot water different colors. When the water came out of the cup into the bowl, they should have been able to see where it went, but it was really hard to see. It worked a little better when we tried leaving the water in the bowl clear and only coloring the water in the cup.

 

For General Science, Colin did an experiment that showed two chemical reactions occurring.

 

The girls were very excited when they saw the balloon suddenly blow up.

 

Art

 

This week's lesson from Artistic Pursuits was about form. We read about what form is, looked at a picture to discuss if it had form, and then made animals with form.

 



Molly's cow

Caleigh's dragon

Colin's dog

 

 

Other News

 

 

We drove two hours to go to an apple orchard Sunday. It was a beautiful day and we all had a good time. The kids picked 40 lbs of apples. We had a picnic lunch there, petted and fed some animals, and bought lots of goodies. The only bad thing was that we had car trouble right after leaving there. Luckily, we made it home, but the car wasn't going any farther. We had to have it towed and ended up getting a new transmission, which caused some rearranging earlier in the week with only one car.
 

 

Colin had hockey practice Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings. We drove to Richmond, VA today for his first games of the season tomorrow and Sunday. We're planning to get in some history field trips while we're here.





Our 2nd Week

Our second week of school went well. We've almost worked up to doing our full load.

Three Rs

 



Everyone has finished reviewing and moved on to new stuff.

Molly finished learning all the single phonograms and is ready to start Spell to Write and Read. She also started cursive this week.

Nothing else too exciting. Colin and Caleigh are just progressing with their usual things.

 

History

 

 

We did 1 1/2 chapters in Story of the World this week. First we read about the French Revolution. Then we started learning about Catherine the Great of Russia.

 

 

 

 

 

Science

 

 

Just as I expected would happen, Colin has insisted on listening in to the girls' science even though he still has to do his own. We started on the first chapter of Zoology 2, learning about aquatic animals, currents, and tides.

They did an experiment to create a miniature gyre to learn more about surface currents.

 

In Aplogia General Science, Colin did two experiments.

The first was putting different things in a glass to learn about density.

 

 

Then he did an experiment with cold water, hot water, and food coloring to learn about atomic motion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art

 

 

We did a lesson in Artistic Pursuits, where we talked about seeing shapes and studied Diego Rivera's Flower Day looking at shapes. Then the kids made paper cutout collages. 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

Other Stuff

 



 

Colin had his first week with three hockey practices. He'd only been having 2, but will have 3 the rest of the year. 

 

The kids got to go to the doctor with me and see the baby on the ultrasound. I think it made it more real for them to see the baby and hear the heartbeat. The girls have asked how much longer until the baby is born a million times since then. It's going to be a long 4 months.

 

We met some new people at a park day nearby. The kids had a good time meeting new people and playing. Hopefully, we'll be able to go to another one soon. Since we've moved, most of the kids' friends are about 45 minutes away so it would be nice to have some friends closer too. 



Benjamin Franklin Study

We spent a couple weeks studying Benjamin Franklin. We used the Download N Go study to break up our days. We learned about his life, who he was, his inventions, his other accomplishments, and much more.

 

 

Books we read:

 

 

 

Kids drew the U.S. seal with a turkey instead of an eagle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liberty Bell art- idea found here

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have to talk about kites when studying Ben Franklin. I got the kids mini kites to play with.

 

 

 

 

 

Charged cereal experiment

 

 

 

 

 

Notebook pages with pieces from Homeschool Share and Download N Go.

 

 

 

 

 

While visiting Washington, D. C. after doing the study, we went to the Old Post Office Pavilion to see the statue of Ben Franklin there.

 

 

 

Our Week: Too Busy

I didn't get a chance to do a weekly wrap-up last week so this will have a little from last week and this week. It's been a really busy couple weeks. Ice hockey season is wrapping up and we've had to travel both weeks for away games.

In chemistry, we learned about mixtures and did an experiment mixing things together to see if they would mix, stay separate, or dissolve. This week, we read about separating mixtures. I was missing one of our materials for the experiment so we'll do that next week.

 In history, we read about Peter the Great last week.

Last week, we did some activities and read lots of books to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday. See our Wacky Wednesday here and our other activities here. This week we got to see The Lorax. It was a really cute movie and we all enjoyed it.

Last week's hockey games were in Charleston, SC. We got a chance to walk around downtown for a little while.

 

 

It was really windy, but we stopped by the beach for about an hour before heading home.

We spent Monday-Wednesday of this week reading about Washington, D.C.

  

The kids used Draw Write Now to draw the Capitol.

Top: Colin
 Left: Caleigh                           Right: Molly

On Thursday, we drove to Washington, D.C. for another hockey tournament. We visited Arlington National Cemetery that day.

Most of the rest of our time has been spent in ice rinks watching Colin play hockey.

 

One more day of hockey tomorrow and then we're going to spend some time exploring Washington, D.C. before going home.

Our Week: Franklin, Pennsylvania, and Neutralization

When I found out Colin's hockey games on Monday meant leaving the house at 10:30 a.m. and not getting home until 9:00 p.m , I was afraid the week would be ruined. Usually if Monday doesn't start well, the rest of the week falls apart. Of course, we didn't get much school done on Monday, but the rest of the week ended up going great. The weather was really nice so the kids were very motivated to get their work done and get outside. We had three days in the 70s. The kids spent lots of time playing outside, the girls and I did our walks/runs on the trails, and we met friends at the park one afternoon.

History/Geography

We continued studying Ben Franklin, primarily using Download 'n Go. We read lots of books about him, did an electricity experiment, drew the U.S. seal with a turkey instead of an eagle, and played with kites. We also used some lapbook pieces from DNG and Homeschool Share for our notebooks. We still need to paste them in so I'll post pics of those later.

Static electricity experiment

Seals with turkeys

Kites

We started reading about Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago, but didn't get a chance to finish it. It went along well with studying Ben Franklin this week. We finished reading our books, and the kids did the flag coloring page and the other pages for their notebooks. They also made their own Liberty Bells.

Liberty bell art

Science

In chemistry, we read about acid and base neutralization. We did two experiments this week. The first was testing items to see if they are acids or bases. The second was adding a base (ammonia) to an acid (vinegar) to make it neutral.

Making an acid neutral

Acid or base?

Our Week: More Chemistry Experiments, Prussia, and New Jersey

After a very busy weekend, where Colin had 7 hockey games and we had a birthday party for Caleigh, we had a hard time getting started on Monday. Once we got going, things went pretty well though.
We celebrated Chinese New Year on Monday by reading some books, doing crafts, and making dragon cupcakes.

Science

We are still learning about the groups of elements on the periodic table. We read about the nonmetals, noble gases, and transition metals.

We studied metalloids last week, but I had trouble finding the blue gel glue we needed so we finally got to make slime with that and Borax this week.

 

To go along with the nonmetals, we learned that yeast will let off carbon dioxide when mixed with sugar and water. The carbon dioxide made the balloon on the bottle blow up.

 

We also soaked dirty pennies in Pepsi to see what would happen.

 

To learn about iron, a transition metal, we used iron fortified cereal and a magnet.

 

Art

So excited that we actually did art! It seems to get pushed aside when we get busy. We did a lesson in Artistic Pursuits on portraits. The kids made portraits using watercolor crayons.



Top left: Molly's                     Top right: Colin's
Bottom: both are Caleigh's

 

History/Geography

This week in history, we learned about Prussia, which became Germany. We specifically learned about Frederick, the first king of Prussia. The kids colored the flag of Prussia and Colin took the chapter test.

We also read two chapters from A History of US.

Our state was New Jersey. We read some books to go along with it and Colin made blueberry muffins since we read that NJ is a large producer of blueberries. We also read a couple books about the Hindenburg, which caught fire as it was landing in NJ. We read about it a little in our chemistry lesson on hydrogen a couple weeks ago. The kids did a coloring page of the state flag, bird, and flower. They also filled in their state sheet for their binders.