Friday, September 6, 2013

Homeschool Week Two

This past week, we learned about the letter S. And talked more about God's creation - specifically the Sun.


We made pizza one day for lunch. 
The kids followed the recipe (Ruth has even loves "helping" bake things this now)
Then we rolled out the dough & took turns kneading it. (yes, that's Ruth in the corner, crying, because she wants a turn!)


Nathan tried his hand at throwing the dough in the air to make a pizza.


But he wasn't successful so much.


So Faith pushed it out into a circle. 
And then we took turns adding beams to our circle - to make it look like the sun.


A little sauce...


Lots of cheese...


After 20 minutes in the oven, Ta Da! Lunch!
That day, we ate the sun :)


Another day, we had company most of the day (watching kids for another mom).
So we painted with shaving cream (added a little glue so it would dry hard).


The kids smeared it all over the place, then we tried making "S" in the paintings somewhere. 


That day we had glow-in-the dark star snacks.
Did you know if you make jello with tonic water, it glows under blacklight?
Well. Now you do - just add a couple Tablespoons of sugar to offset the bitter quinine.
The kids LOVED it!


When our paintings were dry enough, we took put them under the blacklight, too - I had added fluorescent paint to the shaving cream without telling the kids. So they were excited their S's glowed!


Another day we attempted a sun science project... NASA has a kids science page with instructions on how to make smores with the sun. They wanted us to line a box with foil, but I had a bunch of foil pans and that should work just as well, right??? Apparently I need some lessons in solar engineering (or whatever its called). We let our "oven" preheat for 30 minutes, then put the marshmallows in. NASA said it would take 30-60 minutes in direct sunlight for them to melt. 2 HOURS later, in direct TEXAS sun, they still weren't melted.... so I added the chocolate anyways and we pretended the marshmallows melted. Anyone know what I did wrong? Would a cardboard box lined with foil hold heat better?? Maybe I need to go back to kindergarten. If you want to try this, the instructions are here: http://climatekids.nasa.gov/smores/


The chocolate still melted, and the sun did that! So our science project wasn't a total failure.


And any project that ends with eating chocolate can't be bad!


(Above, Faith was mad because he smore was too big to eat... the other day she was made that her shoes touched the floor. And this morning, she was mad that her spoon couldn't pick up cereal.... she'll outgrow this phase one day, right???)


Nathan and Ruth had zero problem enjoying their dessert!


All in all, the week went good. The kids know what S sounds like and can pick out words that start with S, with at least 75% accuracy - at least if they're really paying attention. Both kids made progress in learning to write the letter S, too. Nathan gets frustrated easily when he can't do it, I think there's a perfectionist in him starting to peak out. So my hardest thing this week has been calming him down and encouraging him to keep trying it on his own.


Why, yes, Faith is wearing a glove in the photo above. For no other reason than because she is 3 years old and likes to wear strange things on occasion. haha

And we started our count to 100 - instead of a bean jar, like the curriculum suggests, we're adding a glow-in-the-dark star to their bedroom ceiling each day, and counting them. We didn't start till Thursday, so they have 2 stars so far. 


I've also started introducing new songs to the kids. Right now their new favorite is "This Little Light of Mine" - even Ruthie gets in to it sometimes!




It was another good week of school. Next week, we'll work on S and M. And talk about the moon. We might even take a trip to the moon. Want to come join us?

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