Science - Arches

The strength of an arch was proven in our science experiment today.  We carefully cracked four eggs at one end and  poured them into a bowl to scramble and eat for lunch.

Then we stuck tape around the center of each egg and carefully cracked the open end off until we reached the tape. This allowed the eggs to sit on their own with the arch side up.

Next, we place all four egg shells on the counter and placed books on them until the eggs completely cracked.

Our eggs held over 9 1/2 pounds of books!

Brazil Potato Question

Do potatoes grow indoors?  I'd love to attempt this science experiment but don't want to bother with the mess if they won't grow inside.

Canada Highlights

We have left Canada and entered Brazil.  But I wanted to take a few moments to highlight some of our Canadian adventure.  Until our recent studies, I never desired to visit Canada.  Now, I think it would be really neat to see the Inuits that I grew up to know as Eskimos.  And to see the Northern Lights would just be phenomenal!  We learned that the Aurora Borealis shows a display at least once a week, which is quite often, but the Canadians never tire of seeing it.  They say it's never the same, so it's always amazing.

We made soap sculptures similar to how the Inuits carve into soapstone, which is how many of them make a living.

And some of them really do live in igloos! So, we made our own igloos from sugar cubes. I got to the igloo a little late with my camera and it was already falling apart by the time I snapped the picture! Nonetheless, they were fun to make!

We found many great books at the library on Canada - some we read, others we looked through.  I think I had about 100 books checked out at one point (for both kids)!

At the end of our last week in Canada (Friday night), we popped some popcorn, nestled under blankets on the couch and had a girl movie night while Daddy worked.  We watched Anne of Green Gables since it was made in Canada on Prince Edward Island.  I wasn't sure how my girls would like it, but they both loved it.  I even overheard my youngest talking to her friend about it the next day!  The book would have been a great read, but it's quite long and too much for either of my girls.  I did check it out anyway, hoping to read it myself, and to show them that the movie was made from the book.  Yes, I admit, I've never read this book!  Add it to the list of books I've never read but always wanted to!

One other fascination with Canada was Niagra Falls.  Emily really wants to go there now.  What a fun trip that would be!

Even though Canada wasn't quite as "festive" as Mexico, I think we learned more on this trip because we didn't know as much about the people, provinces, and territories; and we had fun doing it!

Canada - Leaf Suncatcher

We collected some colorful fall leaves on our Science Nature Walk a couple weeks ago that came from many different types of trees.  We placed them between wax paper, put them in large books, and left them alone.  At the time, I really didn't know what we would do with them, other than stick them in our nature notebook.

So today, we read a book about Canada that had some neat project suggestions.  One was to make a suncatcher with dried leaves pressed between wax paper.  Ding-ding-ding!!!  The bell rang in my head, alerting me to use the leaves we collected from our nature walk!  So, we pulled them out of the books, and voila...we now have gorgeous suncatchers!  (Had we kept solely with the Canadian project, we would have only used maple leaves, but the others were too pretty not to use!)

Here is Emily placing her leaves just the way she wants them.

And we're pressing with a hot iron.

Emily's finished piece of art.

It's lovely!

The only thing left to do is attach a hanger to it.  I'm thinking of having her put brads on each of the top corners and attach a string to them so that we hang it on the window with a suction cup.  Although she's think about using her piece of art as a placemat instead.  Hummm.....

Celery Experiment Photo

The xylem tubes were removed from the stalk on the right yesterday, and it's already wilting!  And as you can see, the undisturbed stalk on the left is flourishing.

ECC Celery Experiment TIP

Peeling the strings off celery takes a while, so we peeled some by hand and then used a vegetable peeler to finish the job.  This was much faster and had the same end result. 

I recommend doing this experiment, although it's optional in the curriculum.  My daughter grasped the concept pretty quickly and using the vegetable peeler makes it fast and easy.

Fiesta!

Our Fiesta was a big hit today! We made taquitos, Mexican rice, and refried beans, and we had a taco bar with chips & salsa. And since no party is complete without ice cream, we had some of that, too! We had a total of 16 people here! We set up a display area where we put some books about Mexico, our tissue paper flowers, geography notebook, and passport. We had to show our family and friends what we've learned so far and this was a great way to do it. Some of the kids (and adults) enjoyed looking through the books and I think they were impressed with the passport and notebook. All in all, it was a great fiesta! Even so, I think our next few celebrations will be low-key - this was a lot of work!!! I'm exhausted!

This is the tin punch project.  We had to use aluminum flashing found in a roll at Lowe's and we couldn't get pencil to show up so the kids used permanent marker.  We didn't even attempt to get the marker off.  Emily likes hers the way it is.

Some of What We've Done So Far...

I haven't been great about posting pictures...or taking pictures for that matter! I'm trying to improve. I like to keep a picture record of what we do. Especially since many of our art projects end up destroyed. It saves so much space to have a photo of some of them rather than keeping them all!

Hard at work...

Park Day:

Matthew bookmark from Week 3:

Indian Sand Painting from Week 3:

Off to MEXICO!!!

We started off with some turbulence and the landing was rough, but since the kiddos heard about a fiesta with a homemade pinata, the trip took a turn for the better!

Handing out the passport was a fun activity. I'm so glad MFW includes that in the materials. We'll begin our art project (the pinata) tomorrow. The kids are very excited about this, and I am too. I hope I have all the supplies! =)

Our week began with some challenges, but we worked through them and seem to be back on track. ECC takes a while, so it's a big change from last year's Adventures. There is a lot of reading and writing. The good news is that there has been very little complaining about that this year! Last year, we struggled through the language lessons at first because it was such a chore to write. Now, most of the time, Emily just accepts it, does it, and moves on. In fact, some of the dictation actually makes her laugh!

This week, our prayer focus is for the people of Cuba. I got to break out my photo album from my mission trip to Cuba back in 1998 and share some personal stories with the kids. It took extra time, but we had fun flipping through the album. And since we are learning about deserts in science, we discussed our family trip to the Mojave Desert a few years ago where we saw many Joshua Trees. The picture above is one of the many I took on that trip!

The K program is moving along nicely. Katie is learning very quickly - we are actually doing about double what's on the schedule. She'll start 1st grade some time this year; looks like it will be sooner than I first thought. She is like a little sponge, absorbing everything right now. We are working on K Lesson 10... W-w-waterfall. We have an abundance of stickers, all in a pouch (the "sticker pouch" as it's been called for years), so for the tactile activity, I had Katie write a capitol W and lower case w on a sheet of paper and then place stickers on top of the letters. She loved it! How simple! During that activity, she said "I love school!" Who wouldn't when you get to use stickers?!!

My Father's World ECC

This year, we are Exploring Countries and Cultures with My Father's World with my 9 year old and MFW Kindergarten/First Grade with my six year old. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on using the World Geography book with my 9-yr.-old. The book is written for grades 5-8, so I'm wondering if I should hold off on it or just try a few pages with each country we visit.

We started week 3 today and it's going really well so far. I like it more than expected. We really liked Adventures last year and I miss the United States history, but this is exciting too and we've learned so much (together) already!

My 6-yr.-old started Kindergarten late last year, so we're finishing that this year before moving on to first grade. She wanted to jump right in to first grade once she saw the science books. I hated to tell her that she had to finish K first! She's starting to read, which is very exciting. Her older sister went to public school for K & 1st, so teaching a child everything about beginning reading is new to me. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it, but I owe God the credit. He led us to this curriculum and is guiding our days. I couldn't do this without Him!

All in all, we've had a great start to a new school year.