Posted in General Talking
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I love when things come together as if by coincidence. God is so cool how He lines things up. For Thanksgiving we traveled to see family and along the way, we happened upon a steam engine.
We were on our way to supper and I asked dh to drive up the engine so the kids could get out and take a look at it since we had just finished learning about steam engines and been to a railroad museum for a field trip. We were all so excited, it was lit up beautifully and on display as if, just for us.
When we drove around to the parking lot behind it we discovered it was in fact a restaurant!!!! Can you guess where we ate our dinner that night? In the caboose!!! As we dined, the children explained to their father the importance of the caboose on a train and why they are not needed anymore. No, I don't think this was a coincidence, I don't believe in those. |
Posted in Homeschool Talk
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Our final week before Thanksgiving and Christmas vacation was a blast. We did some review during the early discussion then let the children team up to do some inventing of their own with specific sets of the oddest materials. They were resourceful. We ended the afternoon with a "snack" as usual, this time it was a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. Instead of going into all the details, I'll let you view our final co-op day of 2009 in pictures.
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Posted in Homeschool Talk
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We've been doing tons of reading lately about inventors and their inventions. After reading about steam engines one final time and how they came to be useful on paddle boats, I let my kids have some fun. We used an old foam poster board from a previous academic fair display to build a boat that would float. The kids and I cut out the pieces with an exacto knife and glued them together. Then we cheated and used a rubber band to give our paddle its power.
The kids christened it with a toy soda bottle and sent it on its maiden voyage in the bathtub.
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Posted in Homeschool Talk
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We have just begun the Great Artists book that my friends have so highly recommended to me. The first artist is Giotto. After reading to the kids about him and showing him some of his paintings via the internet (Oh, what did people do before the internet?!) we went ahead with the activity. Rather than recreating his pieces and focusing on technique or style, our focus was mostly on materials, the type of paint Giotto had available to him in the 13th century (he made his own) and the fact that he painted on specially treated wood. Although we didn't have his special wood hanging around the house we could go down to the garage and pull out some boards from the scrap pile. Grinding down our sidewalk chalk and mixing the powdered colors into egg yolk was fun for the kids and simple enough to do. Our selection of colors was not very bright so I was a bit worried the paint wouldn't turn out very colorful but it worked out well as you can see.
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Posted in Homeschool Talk
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I'm not sure if I'm posting these co-op highlights in the order we did them in anymore... I'm not sure that it matters, I just need to catch up with my blog. Highlights: I finally got to see the egg sucking bottle experiment! We first tried it by heating the air in the bottle on the stove and then quickly placing the boiled egg over the opening. This took quite a bit of time and we enjoyed the hypotheses given by our dc as to what was going to happen and why.
When they weren't gettting it, our ever resourceful mom, Missy grabbed some cups and large and small nuts to give the kids a visual of how air molecules change size when they are heated or cooled down. Soon after her demonstration we decided enough was enough and the eggs were taking too long so we lit a match and threw it into one of the bottles. The egg got sucked in and a few minutes later our first egg got sucked in too so both methods were successful. One was just not quick enough for those of us with short attention spans.
Snack was a highlight this week. We have opted to have the kids make snack each week whether it has anything to do with our unit or not. I absolutely love this picture though and I'm thinking of submitting it to KONOS to use for their advertising. You know sometimes one copy of KONOS is not enough. You should really have three available at all times.
Ahhh, but the kids are working together so nicely aren't they?
While the cookies were baking each of the children made a motion picture and helped build two zoetropes. Well they were similar to zoetropes although they each had one hole in the side to view through rather than slits around the uper half along all sides.
It worked out all right except that the hardest part with this experiment is getting the inside can to rotate at a speed of 16 images per second at an even keel. |
Posted in Homeschool Talk
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More from our resourcefulness unit... Each child has had to do an oral report on the inventor of their choice. During this particular week we had two reports. The first was on Archimedes. This little guy made his report quite interesting by including a water displacement experiment for demonstration purposes.
My 5yo did her report on the inventor of the Teddy Bear. She talked a little about the origin and the couple who made the first set of bears named for Teddy Roosevelt.
And she showed some meaningful pictures from Teddy Bear: A Loving History of a Classic Childhood Companion by Gustav Severin. She loved the beautiful photographs that this book was filled with.
And here is her own watercolor pencil rendition of a teddy bear.
She and her brother and sister presented their personal inventions this day as well.
Highlights: Building electromagnets and testing them. Yes, they actually worked!!!! I know more about magnets now than I ever have before. These electromagnets were simple to put together using a D cell battery, copper wire, a galvanized nail and some electrical tape. The kids coiled the wire 20 times around the nail then taped the ends of the wire to each end of the battery. Be careful, they do get hot!
Cracking a secret code. We paired up the kids into teams and gave each team a message written in morse code. They loved deciphering the messages which were scripture verses relating to our theme.
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Posted in General Talking
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The most overwhelming thing said by girls thinking about having an abortion is that when they went to find out about possibly having an abortion, they were not given the facts as to exactly what abortion is. Most of the time, when a woman goes into a Planned Parenthood or an abortion clinic she is not only encouraged to terminate her pregnancy but she is bombarded with the reasons she "should" terminate the pregnancy and the ease of having an abortion as though it is just a minor procedure like getting your hair colored. My question to the people working in these clinics is this: "If there is nothing wrong with abortion, why wouldn't you explain all of the facts including the emotional side effects so that each woman can make an informed decision? Are you afraid they might decide NOT to have one? " If the goal is to get as many women to have abortions as possible than we are no longer trying to help women, rather we are trying to push an agenda. If you know someone who is pro choice because they really do have a heart for women, I encourage you to share this video with her. Without any tears or emotional pleas, this video made by Priests for Life, gives a good description of what the doctors do when performing a first trimester abortion. It is not graphic at all but gives a gentle, yet matter-of-fact description using a fetal model and in fact is something you could share with your kids when you are explaining abortion to them. With all the news lately of health care reform, the abortion topic comes up often within the homeschooling community. I hope this will be a help to you. The other fact the abortion clinics don't tell you about is the extremely high rate of deep depression in women who have had abortions. They don't tell you about the women who can't live with themselves and are haunted by nightmares, who turn to alcohol and drugs to mask the pain they go through everyday for years and years afterward. There are thousands and thousands of women like this who regret their decision to abort. If you really want to help women, give them all the facts. |
Posted in Talking About the Family
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He's known as the meanest gunslinger in the west...
He took our family by surprise that day he rolled into town.
My husband tried to save his girls...
But it was no use. That outlaw was too fast for us.
It will never be safe in Dry Gulch until this fast handed desperado has been apprehended... |
