Germination, Wright Patt and Catching Up!

I have a lot of catching up to do on here! I have been swamped with work and lesson planning which does not leave much spare time. 

The girls are moving right along with Botany. They have completed the lessons on seeds and germination. As you can see, they are very excited about our herb seeds starting to germinate. They have scientific notebooks with graphs to chart the progress of each herb to see what rate each one grows at. Of course it is a competition to see whose is growing the fastest even though we are rotating who is responsible for misting each day and monitoring the temp. I love seeing the lightbulbs in their heads light up when they see something they learn about. A couple of the herbs are showing the cotyledons, the seed leaves, and they thought this was AWESOME. Hearing these big words out of their little mouths amazes me.

The yarrow was the first to show. This is funny because it is the one they are most interested about and excited to use because of its many medicinal properties including stopping bleeding. The leaves of this plant were used back in the war days to control bleeding during battle on wounded men.

We learned about Christopher Columbus this week. They played a board game on CC sailing the ocean blue and loved it so much they had to play it three times. They asked me to laminate it so that we could keep it long term;)

A Girl Scout Puppet Show in the Hull Theater was the perfect way to break up the week!

LOTS of coffee needed this week for lesson planning!!

Thank you Poppy for the Shizzle game to break up the day!

Who doesn't like playing with bunny fur?

There is no better way to learn massive amounts of exchanging money than using authentic looking play money right?

Ship Wrecked!! Another fun dice game using tally marks to 100



AIR FORCE MUSEUM HOMESCHOOL DAY
What a great learning opportunity for kids to learn! During this day they have science centers set up everywhere for the kids to learn about all kinds of different things. They also have classes on everything from light and energy to gravity and space. All the classes did not cost anything and all of the extras like the IMAX were discounted for homeschoolers so we were able to see The Hidden Universe in 3D which was amazing. There is so much to see and do there we will definitely be back numerous times. This was a great day!

Marissa

Ainsley

Emma

3D printer

Royal Italian? Why yes of course!

The girls were GLUED to the 3D printer. They were able to interact with a scientist and ask questions and learn how they put in all of the code into a computer and watch the end result being produced and were able to take it with them. I was able to find a recent news article on how a doctor was able to use a 3D printer to make a prosthetic arm and hand for a child for next to nothing when it was going to cost $40k. They were absolutely amazed by this. Of course now all they want for Christmas is a 3D printer. We are in trouble. The normal children would want one so they could make toys and such....our kids? They want one so they can "make replacement parts around the house for things that break and make learning tools for a fraction of the cost to save money and possibly sell to make money!" Only my children!!!!

Dad was able to join us for this field trip:)

The start of flight area-special to Marissa because she has read many books on this

An inchworm....they loved it!



We are still learning about Ancient Egypt in History and moving right along there. We are now into the 2000BCs. They retain at such a fast rate we move very quick. The timeline is coming along quite nice. We are just about to move onto Hammurabi and the Babylonians and will be slowly heading into China and India.

Math is going well for the twins. They are now adding 6 column problems which is awesome! They are definitey going to finish this book before the year is our. We are in our 6th week and they are half way through the book already. This is something I was not expecting. Once I get them through this book I plan to move them into the Saxon 5/6 book which is what I initially started Marissa in and found to be too easy for her.
Marissa is knee deep in fractions and geometry. She caught onto long division like nobody's business. The only issue I am running into with her is boredom. She is so bored so fast because if she does something one time, she retains it and does not forget it so doing the same type of problems over and over is absolutely impossible for her.  Keeping her challenged is definitely the hardest thing for me right now because she does not want to focus. I have had to just quickly skim lessons, teaching her things that she understands within two seconds of explaining, and moving on. It is very rare that she gets a wrong answer on something and if she does, it is because of something simple like not copying a number from one sheet to another properly. I see a lot of supplemental things coming.

The twins have mastered at least half of the alphabet in cursive and it look beautiful! I am mega impressed. They are doing really well with this. Language Arts is going pretty well so far with the interactive notebooks to keep us on task for what they need to know this year. They like the cutting and pasting but the material itself is really boring because they know everything already. I just look at it as a quick daily review. The twins have morning work that includes grammar, math, vocab and  writing and even the third grade level is a lot of review for them but at least some of it is a challenge so it is worth it.

Their writing pieces are coming along quite beautiful. We have finished our final drafts of our first big pieces and next week will be illustrating them. The twins wrote spooky stories using story starters and Marissa composed her first big opinion piece. She chose to write about the importance of art, music, gym and a foreign language in school.

Next week we are taking our first theater field trip. We are going to the Children's Theater down at the Taft for Disney's Beauty and the Beast Jr. They are so excited about this and I have to admit that I am too.

Mummies & Medicinal Herbs

We are continuing our lesson in World History by learning out Ancient Egypt and the Egyptians believed that their people went onto another life in the afterworld if they were mummified. We read about this and then watch the IMAX movie Mummies so the girls could get a visual on what it was like for the priests and pharaohs back then. They were very intrigued that people had such different beliefs than we do. To integrate art into the mix we made bendable mummies by taking wire and shaping it into a body shape, then wrapping it in strips of fabric and using hot glue affix the edging and eyes. They of course had to gussy them up:) They had a great time  making these! I have a feeling they will be making guest appearances all over the classroom and the house in the near future!

In Science we discussed the different herbs we would be growing in the light hut. We decided to go the medicinal route since we did the culinary route over the summer and can do that again in the Spring. This will change things up a bit and it was very educational for them to learn about the different types of herbs and how they can help the human body in different ways. They have each started a scientific journal with the name of each herb and have listed the benefits each one provides so that we can decide whether it is best in tea or soap for the skin. Here are the herbs we chose:

• Echinacea, Milk Thistle, Peppermint, Yarrow, German Chamomile, St. Johnswort, Burdock, Fever Few, Lemon Balm, Valerian, Cayenne, Lemon Bergamot.

They were most interested in the Yarrow because it was used to treat battle wounds and control bleeding and several of these have allergy benefits which they cannot wait to try. There are so many benefits to the ones we have chosen that we cannot wait to get started. This also will bring on a very good lesson for them.....entrepreneurship! Now THAT I cannot wait for:)

Our Light Hut

We have finished the construction of our light hut to grow our herbs and plants during the Fall and Winter season. This space will be monitored and cared for specifically by the girls stemming from the choice of plants all the way to charting each phyla we choose and and putting those plants to good use after they grow. They are very excited about this project. Now that we have learned about the different types of plants we are ready to start growing so that we can learn about all the processes each plant takes from start to finish. We will also be monitoring them in this light box with and without our curtain to see how each plant develops in different temperatures and light exposure. The goal with the herbs is to make soap with them which is another project we will be working on later. You can definitely tell this light hut is owned by girls can't you?? We will be venturing out to a farm in KY to learn about green houses and how they work which coincides with our light hut experiment. We cannot wait for that! Plus, it will be with good company;) Aunt Steph is always a good hostess so they cannot wait to get the grand tour!

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The twins started learning cursive today which they were very excited about. they did not want to learn just one letter which is what I had in my lesson plan. They want to learn them all! Of course my TA decided to step in and take the reigns for a bit on this one. She is the handwriting expert after all!

A Field Full of Angiosperms

Blooms and Berries

The girls were able to do a corn maze and at each station was each of the 5 food groups with a hole puncher. I liked that they integrated learning with this activity.

The girls were so excited to see that each flower in the corn field represented an ear of corn that would grow. They looked at the field not just as a field of corn but as a field full of angiosperms.

We ended our adventure at one of our favorite places to see one of our favorite people.... Jen at DeSha's in Montgomery! We can always count on A+ service and food here and nothing beats seeing my best buddy on a school day! The girls agree 100% :)

All other subjects are going well. I feel like I am starting to get a handle on Literature and Writing which I was worried about in the beginning but I have found so many great sources from the library and from friends that I am finding all kinds of fun things for them to keep their interest while learning. I currently have 4 libraries in my classroom to keep track of which has been challenging as far as due dates for me! I have my own, Cincinnati Public, Clermont County, and a teacher friend of mine. We are heading to the library today so that I can get an Educator's Library Card which is going to help a TON because it automatically renews all of the books for you to eliminate late fees and also helps to group different books of the same subject matter when planning your curriculum. I FINALLY got my letter of refusal from the Superintendent of the county. That is my proof that I am an educator and it is finally official. This was a big deal for me because I got the approval on the first try. I was proud of myself:)

Monarch Adventure and Creek Hunt for Hieroglyphics

It has been a while since our last post. I have been so busy! I have taken on a part time position helping some amazing teachers do some amazing things:)

Here are some pictures from our Monarch Adventure and our Ancient Egypt lesson. 

In History we learned about the earliest forms of writing and how if it was not for the Ancient Egyptians recording history in Hieroglyphic form we would not know anything about them. For this exercise I thought it would be fun to let them make their own history by finding their own stone tablets and painting Hieroglyphics on them and putting them in the garden out back. I took them to a creek in Anderson so find some nice flat rocks. The steep hill down INTO the creek was not fun for me I will say...this is where I miss the health of my back, but I survived:) They thought this was the coolest thing ever. I did not tell them why we were collecting rocks. I only told them we needed them for an art project that day. They were up and down the creek searching and exploring and we decided, WE WILL BE BACK TO THIS CREEK! It was an excellent learning place. It also made a great opportunity for some pictures of course so I just couldn't resist.

Marissa read the chapter about Hieroglyphics while I graded papers. This has been working out so well. She reads with such affliction that it really keeps their attention. They look forward to this every day. 

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During the Monarch Adventure we took a 3 mile hike into the milkweed field exploring how caterpillars seek out this plant and how it is the key to their survival. It was the perfect time for us to go on this trip because we were just about to learn about the different types of seeds in Botany and how they are spread throughout nature whether it be by animals from stickers on the seeds, or by wind like the milk weed or simply by falling on the ground. They learned more about seeds than the butterflies themselves I think but it was still very cool to see the butterfly tagged and released. 

Tagging the Monarch

Inside the Milkweed pod are the seeds with the silky soft strands that fly in the wind helping to spread the seeds throughout the lands.

Milkweed seeds

They learned so much! They are LOVING the field trips!