Weekly Wrap-Up {the one that started with pie and ended with cranberries}

We've added another child to the adult population this week.  Nick turned 18.  How can that be?  Seems he was just a 6 pound 9 ounce baby (our littlest).  It's cliche, but true - they grow up so fast.

Pumpkin pie, always pumpkin pie.

Have you heard of the game Speak Out?

It's crazy.  First you'll want to brush your teeth, then you form a team, then you put in a lip spreading contraption and try to talk clear enough so your team members can guess what you're saying.  

Warren is doing the talking right now.  Sorry no picture.  Nick's trying to guess the phrase.

It's a really fun game, but the lip spreader contraption kind of hurts.

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Joe's making great progress with his reading lessons.  In case you missed it, I wrote a long post about tools I use to teach him to read.

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I'm pretty excited about this.  We actually completed an entire science curriculum in less than 2 years.  Actually, it took only 5 months.  That is unprecedented.  Unchartered waters.  Never been done before.  It was a thorough chemistry program with labs.

Amber fills in her lab workbook after extracting DNA from her own saliva.

Nick shows the DNA he extracted from dried peas.  The white thread-like material is the DNA.

I don't remember ever doing this lab.  It was quite thrilling, especially for Amber.  Holding out a stick with her DNA, she said, "this is me on a stick."  In case you'd like to conduct your own DNA extraction, here are the directions she followed.

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WRPS Virtual Learning "Star Student"

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On the food front, I used Honestly Cranberry cranberries in my chicken salad.  If you're looking to ramp up the flavor in your favorite salads, these dried cranberries are just the thing.  Cranberries are the only thing in the bag.  No sweeteners, just cranberries.  It was so good, I ate it for breakfast.

And that's it for my Weekly Wrap-Up.  Are you interested in other homeschooling families' weeks?  Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers has it covered with her Weekly Wrap-Up Linkup.

Have a great weekend.  And don't be shy, leave a comment.  Thanks.

Weekly Wrap-up #3 {the week the van doors fell off and Peter threw up his Halloween candy}

That title is a bit loaded.  Last Sunday after attending 7:30 a.m. Mass, I planned out our homeschool week.  Reading, handwriting, math, art, history, chemistry - all the details were planned out and ready to go.

Then the duck hunters came home and the van door wouldn't close.  Back track 18 months, the other sliding door broke and was Duck taped - good enough.  The remaining sliding door has been giving us grief for 6 months or more, and sadly, Sunday, it wouldn't latch shut.  Warren made a few calls, got some pointers, and tackled the job of fixing it.

Well you know the phrase, drive it till the doors fall off.  That's exactly what happened, because when he tried fixing the door, it actually fell off the track.  Our favorite body shop man is on vacation until just before deer season so we're down a vehicle for a few weeks.  We've vowed to attempt creative carpooling.

That was the start of a week of phone calls.  Life really took a crazy turn, despite my perfect homeschool plan.  Calling the body shop, chiropractor, pulmonary specialist, plumber, and college admissions office took up a lot of time.  Every call required messages and call backs and scheduling appointments.  It was crazy.

Now it's time for my weekly wrap-up.  I like to focus on our homeschool week, but let's face it homeschooling is just a snippet of our life, so the wrap-up includes it all.

Chemistry Chapter 4 lab - the classic cabbage juice indicator lab.  We're working through Focus on High School Chemistry.  It's very thorough and broken down into bite size pieces.

With real lab equipment the fun never stops.  Here are two sets with similar equipment to ours.

It wouldn't be a Halloween week weekly wrap-up without a few costume pics.  Here we have Little Bo Peep.

Hans and Franz with a mini Incredible Hulk

Ariel the Mermaid, Giraffe, French Spy, Super Girl and baseball player.

The costumes lead to candy.  There was a lot of this this week.  Rummaging, trading, eating.

Even a little hiding with candy.

Poor Peter ate so much candy that after all the craziness of costumes and trick-or-treating were done, he hopped into bed and promptly threw up.  Happy Halloween!

Are you familiar with Snap Circuits?  They've been on the dining table all week keeping Peter and Sam occupied.  Playing with electricity is like magic to a 4 year old.  Every time he completes a circuit his eyes light up in amazement.  If I didn't have so many phone calls to make, I'd probably sit there and just watch him.

Snap Circuits are on sale at Amazon for $14.39.

We're setting up for a beautiful weekend.  Most likely one of the last warm and sunny weekends of the year.  I wish you all the best and thanks for visiting my weekly wrap-up.

Linking up with

Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Weekly Wrap-up #1 {leaves, stomp rockets, spiders, chemistry}

Today I'm sharing a Weekly Wrap-up.  Mostly it will include homeschool pictures I've taken throughout the week.  Sometimes it might contain affiliate links.

This is my first time linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers for the Weekly Wrap-up.

For a peek into more families' homeschool days, visit the link-up.

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Want to be the best mom ever?  Of course you do!  Grab the kids and a couple of rakes and do what comes naturally.....rake a pile of leaves.  You can call it life skills class or physical education class or community service if you really feel the need to define it, but we called it plain old fun.

A child size rake makes it that much more fun.

We pulled off the leaf raking in between walks on the cranberry marsh.

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Another super fun outdoor activity is Stomp Rockets.  My kids are ROUGH with their toys.  This toy has stood up to tons of abuse.  Yes, the fins on the rockets are mostly missing, but that hasn't stopped their fun.  I like that Joseph gets lots of jumping with this toy.  It helps strengthen his leg muscles and loose hips.  They also get tons of exercise running to collect the rockets.  Again, I could categorize this into a school subject, but I don't.  We just have fun first and let the learning come naturally.

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I shared my low tech way of keeping track of preschool activities.  This thumbprint spider project was written on one of the notecards.  It didn't go quite as planned.  The idea was to divide up their paper into 10 sections.  Then make black thumbprints in each section according to the number in that section.

1 = 1 thumbprint

2= 2 thumbprints

etc.

That went pretty well.  Joe loved dipping his thumb in the paint.  Once their prints dried, I wanted them to pen 8 legs on each thumbprint making it a spider.  Peter gave it a try, but it was too much to stay on task for all those spiders.

While waiting for the prints to dry, we spent time with the Animal Encyclopedia (favorite animal book ever - the cover has been torn off more times than I can count) reading about spiders.

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This year Nick and Amber have been working through Focus on High School Chemistry.  

  

It's geared for mixed level highschoolers, which makes it perfect for the homeschool setting.  The chapters are broken into manageable sections making it easy enough to complete a chapter and questions in 1 week.  Then after correcting the review questions the next week, they complete the lab.  The lab manual is laid out well, and they're doing a fine job completing the labs.  Today's lab #3 has been the most fun; they finally felt like they were doing real chemistry - splitting H2O into O2 and H2.

Here's the basic setup for splitting H2O.

Look at those smiles as they write up their results.

More Weekly news:  we finished cranberry harvest, had a harvest pizza party, had the van repaired again, ordered a shelving unit for the little ones' bedroom, and picked up reading lessons again.

It's been a full week, but what week isn't full?  Anything you want to share about your week?  Share in the comments.

Weekly Wrap-up Link-up

Our Life in Pictures

Since it's been about 2 weeks from my last post, I will just share a bunch of pictures which reflect what we've been up to. I really wish I had time to comment on Obama's appearance on Leno and Hilary Clinton's juxtaposition, visiting Our Lady of Guadalupe and receiving the Margaret Sanger award. However, I am short on time and it's much easier to just upload some pictures and focus on the fun we've been having. In no particular order here's what's been happening.

My little St. Patrick's Day Leprechaun

Little J enjoying his first taste of rice cereal.

Our Lenten decorations Lee baked cookies for the Lent mission night bake sale.
We studied the state of Hawaii last week so Lou made a salt dough volcano which we erupted the next day.
Our trapper - his coonskin cap made from one of his catches
Another twirl skirt

We did more chemistry this week. First, we checked for oxygen amounts in different sized jars. To do this we placed 1/2 inch of water in a pie plate. Then placed a lit candle in the middle. Once the jar was placed over the candle we began timing until the flame went out. We used pint, quart, and gallon sized jars. It was way fun and if you watched close enough you could see the water level rise just a tad as the oxygen was used up.

Then we checked to see if the bubbling action of hydrogen peroxide is giving off oxygen. We lit a toothpick on fire and blew it out until the tip was red hot. Then when lowered into a test tube filled with hydrogen peroxide (and manganese dioxide as a catalyst)the toothpick flamed up again. So we deduced that oxygen was the gas.

It was a full week here at Camp Homeschool and this week will be the same. We plan on taking a break from regularly scheduled classes to enjoy Holy Week fully.

Chemistry Matters

After a few brief attempts at chemistry studies, we finally got more than our toes wet. Actually, we dove right down to the bottom and boy are we having fun. More accurately, I'm having a blast. Grace and Lee love the labs, but despise writing lab reports. And yes, I am a wicked mother who actually requires fully written lab reports with purpose, materials, procedure, data and discussion. And not only do I check the chemistry, but the spelling and sentence structure, as well.

The main reason we continue with this chemistry unit is because the materials I'm using are so great. I've tried activities from Creative Sciencing, but some of them didn't work so well - too open ended with no real results. I've also tried activities from 101 Cool Science Experiments for Kids. I found that one to contain more fluff than real science. I pulled out some of my old Home Education magazines, knowing that Rebecca Rupp would have some good reviews on science stuff. She had a complete review dedicated to chemistry materials for kids ages 5-100. I immediately ordered three books, lab glassware and a few basic chemicals. I stocked up on all the typical kitchen chemistry items as well: ammonia, rubbing alcohol, Sharpie markers, Epsom salts, vinegar, red cabbage, baking soda, washing soda, etc.

Chemically Active: Experiments You Can Do at Home by Vicki Cobb

This has been our main text. The back cover recommends it for age 11 and up. I would say that's pretty accurate. My 10 and 11 year old have used it just fine, but I really do think the "and up" crowd would find it workable, yet not boring or babyish. It is true chemistry. So far we've collected carbon dioxide gas, prepared an iron sulfate solution, distilled water, and grew a variety of crystals. We've discussed and used vocabulary such as displacement of water, mass, reagents, filtrate, residue, homogenous, solvent, solute and so many more.

Super Science Concoctions by Jill Frankel Hauser

This book is geared for the 6-12 year old group. We've only worked through chapter 1, Strange but True Brews. It's definitely enjoyable for the younger crowd. Typically Lou and Ray hang around when we use this book. We tried our hand at making cinnamon perfume, studied the concept of molecular motion by making food coloring water colors. Both were fun, but didn't require heat or a lot of apparatus. According to Lee if we didn't use a beaker or flask, we didn't do chemistry. Grace prefers to use heat and real chemicals, but the container doesn't much matter to her.

Fizz, Bubble & Flash! Element Explorations and Atom Adventures by Anita Brandolini, Ph.D.

Recommended for age 8 and up, we haven't even touched this one yet. As the title suggests it really focuses on an understanding of the periodic table. Looks good, though.

I have three main goals for our chemistry studies.

1. To find value in the study of chemistry.

2. To recognize and use confidently chemistry vocabulary.

3. To know the names and understand the use of our supply of labware.

Lastly, don't you just love the title of this post. I thought it very clever, being that chemistry is the study of matter.