Our Week: D.C., Experiment Failure, and a Hockey Party

Another busy week here. We started the week in Washington, D.C. We went to the National Zoo on Sunday.

 

We spent Monday walking around visiting the museums and seeing the monuments. We rode the Metro for the first time and Molly said that was her favorite part.
Some of the things we saw: Capitol, Air and Space Museum, Museum of National History, Museum of American History, National Gallery of Art, Washington Monument, Old Post Office clock tower, and the Lincoln Memorial. My pedometer said we walked over 8 miles that day.

 

We got home really late that night so we took the next day off from school to run errands and get caught up.

In Chemistry, we read about energy molecules. Our experiment to find out which foods are starches didn't work out. None of the foods changed colors. When I looked at pictures online, I noticed that the tincture of iodine was a dark color. Ours was clear so I guess it has to be colored for it to work.

In Story of the World, we read about the Ottomans trying to expand to the west. We also read 3 chapters about Virginia in A History of US.


On Wednesday, I took Colin to roller hockey practice and he had biology class on Thursday.

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day on Friday. I'll try to post those pictures tomorrow.

Today was the end of the season party for Colin's ice hockey team. They had laser tag and the kids all really liked that.

 

I made a cake with the team logo for the party.

 

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: Hockey, Germany, and Nativities

We've been so busy that I've gotten a little behind in doing our weekly wrap-ups. We had Molly's birthday party 2 weeks ago. My dad and sister came to visit that day and stayed for the week of Thanksgiving. We took that week off from school. We left on the Friday after Thanksgiving to go to Colin's hockey tournament in Atlanta for the weekend. After a week off school and traveling, it took us some time to get back into our routine this week.

In history, we read about the Thirty Year's War. We read some books about Germany, including some Grimm's fairy tales. Reading Rapunzel and Snow White made things a little more interesting for the girls.

Colin had his biology class this week. They got their midterm back and he did great. While he was in class, the girls had fun visiting the horses.

On Friday, we went to a nativity festival. It was really nice. They had nativities from all over the world. They also had crafts,  dress up clothes, and a nativity scene to take pictures of them dressed up.

We went to visit Santa.

This weekend was busy again with hockey. Colin had a game Saturday morning and one in the evening. Then he had another game Sunday morning.




Colin is in the black stopping the puck



Girls at the hockey game.

  

Love the missing front teeth smile



Our Week: Pilgrims and Lots of Insects

Besides two nights of hockey, we didn't have any outside activities this week. It was nice to stay home and have more time for our schoolwork and free afternoons.

We did go to a birthday party last Saturday. It was a dress up party and this is what the girls dug out of the dress up box.

Three Rs

Colin is doing really well with RightStart Geometry. He's doing pretty much all of it on his own. I'm even giving him extra work some days because he's getting through it so quickly.
Caleigh is still working on multiplication and is finding the area of rectangles.
Molly is moving on to larger numbers.

Colin and Caleigh are both doing well with spelling. Caleigh has gotten 100% on every test so far. Colin has only missed one word.

Molly started First Language Lessons. She acts like she loves it, but I think it's because she knows it was both Colin and Caleigh's least favorite subject.

Science

We covered a lot of insects this week: praying mantises, dragonflies, crickets, katydids, grasshoppers, aphids, and cicadas. We spent one day on praying mantises and one day on dragonflies, reading extra books, doing lapbook pieces, and making a dragonfly craft. We also read a couple books on crickets.

Praying mantis & dragonfly notebook pages (I've tired everything, but for some reason I can not get this pic to flip)

We did an experiment to see how shorter wings make higher sounds.

Our caterpillars arrived because our next insect is the butterfly.

Caterpillars the day after they arrived

State Study

Vermont was our state this week. We read a few books and will finish it next week. We had pancakes for dinner with maple syrup.

I tried to make them into butterflies since that's the state insect

History

We started learning about pilgrims this week. We read lots of books, which I'll post soon. We spent time talking about the reasons they left England, the Mayflower, the journey, the first winter in the New World, the Wampanoag people, and Squanto. The kids used Draw Write Now to draw pictures of Squanto and the Mayflower. They made pilgrim puppets. We also made pilgrim hats for snack. We'll be continuing with this next week.




Since it's actually already Sunday, I'll include our weekend here. Colin's house team hockey games started.

Colin waiting for his team's turn to play

The girls had a fun evening last night playing with two of their friends I was babysitting.

Today we had a Thanksgiving dinner in celebration of our study of the pilgrims.



Our Week: Moving Out

We didn't do any real school this week. On Monday, the kids spent most of the day playing outside while I prepared the house for packing. They rode bikes and scooters, played in the sandbox, and gathered items for this picnic I saw going on from the window.

Most of this week was spent trying to keep out of the way while movers packed up our house and loaded it all into this trailer.

Chad was able to work from home Tuesday and Wednesday so I could take the kids away from the house.

Some friends had the kids a moving away party. It was so nice of them. The kids got to play with the all the friends they'll miss the most. They had snacks, cupcakes, and ice cream. They even made a banner.

I finally took the kids to the NC Museum of History. I've been meaning to go there, but just never made it before. I think the part that excited them the most was a tree with the letters CRO. They remembered reading about it last week in history when we studied the lost colony of Roanoke Island. I love when things like that work out.

Since it's right next door, we also visited the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. We had been there twice before, but both times special activities were going on. It was nice to visit on a day when it wasn't crowded.


Thursday we had to wait for the movers to finish getting everything loaded and clean the house some before coming back to the apartment. Today we're unpacking the stuff we brought with us from the house and getting ready for a weekend trip to stay in a cabin in the mountains.

Colin also got to finish up his hockey season playing games Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday. His team ended up coming in 1st place.

Colin stopping the puck

First Goal

Colin usually plays goalie, but this session there are two goalies on his team. They decided to take turns so he's getting a chance to try new postitions. In Wednesday's game, he scored his first goal and I just happened to catch it all on my camera.


He's in blue taking the shot.

You can see the puck at the top of the net.

It's in!

Excited #51

Our Week: Columbus, Pluto, and Traveling

We've spent a lot of time on the road this week. My husband had a meeting in Kentucky so we tagged along. We drove most of the day on Wednesday. Then we met my cousin and her family for dinner. Thursday, Chad had his meetings and the kids and I stayed at the hotel, where I made them do school.

Thursday evening we met some good friends for dinner. The girls had such a good time giggling with their friends they hadn't seen in a long time.
Today (Friday) will be spent driving home.

Science

We finally made it to Pluto. The kids have been waiting for this because they really wanted to discuss why it isn't a planet anymore. We looked at the arguments for and against Pluto being a planet. The arguments against weren't able to change any of their minds though. In addition to that, we read about Pluto's rotation and revolution, size, moons, how it sometimes moves closer to the sun than Neptune, and the New Horizons spacecraft that is on its way toward Pluto.
We also read some books about the Hubble Space Telescope.
Since it's so cold on Pluto, we made ice cream for this week's project in our new ice cream maker.

History

This week was all about explorers. Our main focus was Christopher Columbus. We read a few books about his life and the voyage to the new world. We read books about and discussed whether the kids believed Columbus actually discovered America. We used the In the Hands of a Child Christopher Columbus lapbook for our notebooks. Using Draw Write Now, the kids drew Columbus' ships. We also made a paper mache earth, ships in bottles, and jello boats. I only have a picture of the jello boat with me, but I'll be adding others to a separate post with more details about our study of Columbus after we get home.

Other explorers we learned about were Vasco de Gama, who sailed around Africa to reach India, Amerigo Vespucci, who realized that Columbus had actually found a new continent, and Ferdinand Magellen, who thought he could sail west and go south around South America to reach India faster than going around Africa.

Everything Else

Colin had Robotics Club. He had two ice hockey games. He played goalie in one of them, but was a player in the other one for the first time.

Colin's First Ice Hockey Game

Colin has played roller hockey for a couple months, but he just started ice hockey. He only played goalie in this game, which is also all he has played in roller hockey. His ice hockey team has two goalies though so he'll be trying some other positions.

Colin loved this part. After they won, his team ran over to him hitting his helmet and hugging him.