tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34691311471657703852024-02-18T23:00:52.772-05:00Dottie's Homeschool UniverseStarting Each Day With a Big BangDottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.comBlogger349125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-23259003487472260622017-11-01T13:45:00.003-04:002017-11-01T13:45:50.519-04:00October Wrap-UpI'm hoping to eventually get back to posting more often, but for now once a month is about all I can manage. We are definitely keeping busy around here.<br />
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School is going well. Squidy isn't appreciating the time he has to put in to Algebra. He says it's not that it's hard, it's not that he doesn't understand it, he just finds it "tedious" and doesn't understand why he has to do so many problems. He's doing Foerster's Algebra and it's a LOT of word problems. Multi-part word problems. I am spending a lot of time telling him how much time is typical for 7th grade (homeschooling or public schooling) and pointing out that he still has it pretty good.<br />
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Writing has consistently been our problem subject. I like the idea of doing projects, ala Brave Writer, but while they are more likely to enjoy the projects, they need more actual instruction in the mechanics of writing. We are giving Wordsmith (for Squidy) and Wordsmith Apprentice (for Vicki) a try. It has a fun, creative, project-y feel to it but still offers incremental instruction.<br />
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We're still a little light on History. We've been watching the Egypt episodes from the Great Courses course - The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World. We will do a few projects after we finish with Egypt.<br />
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On the other hand, the kids are doing a TON of science. We were light on 4-H this month because our location was refinishing the floors and we had to cancel one meeting. We did an activity on Acids and Bases for the session we did have. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We started with a discussion of what is meant by pH and what are acids and bases. pH is the scale that measures acidity/alkalinity. pH stands for potential Hydrogen. </span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">If a substance produces more hydroxide (OH) molecules in solution, it
is a base and is alkaline. </span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">If a substance produces more Hydrogen (H) molecules in solution, it is an
acid and is acidic. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We then tested a variety of household substances for pH using two
different methods: cabbage indicator and litmus papers. We tested </span><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">citrate, baking soda, alka
seltzer, borax (which had to be put into solution first), conditioner, dish detergent, </span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">ammonia, vinegar, diet coke, milk,
tap water and well water.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I have also started offering science classes to local homeschoolers. Vicki is taking two of my classes - Getting Messy with Science and Crime Scene Investigation, while Squidy is just taking the CSI class.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Messy Science began with a discussion of the Scientific Method and an experiment to determine what combination of soda and candy will produce the biggest release of carbon dioxide gas. We compared 4 different sodas: Coke (sugar and caffeine), Diet Coke (artificial sweetener and caffeine), Sprite (sugar, no caffeine), and Seltzer (carbonated water); and 3 different candies: Mint Mentos, Mint Tic-Tacs, and Nerds. In order to obtain measurable results, we used smaller bottles of soda, weighed out the same amount of each candy, and captured the released carbon dioxide gas into balloons, which we then measured to compare. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Our hypothesis was that Mentos and Diet Coke would produce the most gas. In this case, Coke and Nerds actually produced the most. We discussed what effect the nucleation sites, size of individual candies, and mint flavoring seemed to have on our results.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Week 2 of Messy Science, we discussed Physical versus Chemical reactions. We used acetone to dissolve styrofoam and made shapes out of the resulting "plastic". We made Elephant Toothpaste by using yeast as a catalyst to convert Hydrogen Peroxide to water and Oxygen, and we made "plastic" by reacting warm milk with vinegar. Vicki wanted to make sure the class lived up to it's name. She's always liked getting hands-on with everything.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Our most recent class we did some Candy Chromatography in honor of Halloween. </span></div>
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CSI started with the crime scene set-up. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Mary was having dinner at home with her
friend Susie, who works at a daycare center.
Also present were John, the chef who cooked the meal and Brian, Mary’s
housekeeper who was doing laundry.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>During the course of the evening, Mary’s
jewels disappeared! </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>You are Crime Scene Investigators who are
tasked with processing the scene and solving the crime.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Your suspects include everyone who was
present that night.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">During the first class, they processed the crime scene. Taking pictures, examining evidence, gathering trace evidence, swabbing "blood", and lifting fingerprints.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Our second class, we identified the unknown powder found at the scene by testing knowns with iodine, vinegar, and pH indicator. Our unknown ended up being cornstarch, which could have come from Susie (cornstarch baby powder), or John the chef.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In addition to our group science activities, Squidy has continued working on getting the Nitrogen cycle started on his fish tank. We weren't making much progress so ended purchasing some chemicals to help get it started. Ghost shrimp and a snail were added over the weekend and we will be going soon to pick out his betta fish.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The kids are still doing Tai Kwan Do as their main PE activity. They had a belt test this month and are now Brown Belts! </span></div>
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We've been struggling a little bit finding other PE activities. Swimming lessons last year were such a total bust, both in the learning aspect and the exercise aspect, that we decided not to waste the money this year. Too much waiting around, not enough actual swimming. </div>
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The kids yoga at the Y, despite being advertised for ages 7 to 12, ended up mostly preschoolers. Neither of the kids were comfortable in the class, and they weren't doing any actual yoga, just running around. </div>
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We've done some hiking, Squidy takes a walk to the bus stop to meet the kids coming home from school each day, and we've dragged out the old Wii Fit to help us get through the colder weather.</div>
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Of course, since this is a wrap-up for October, we have lots of Halloween!</div>
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We started our Halloween activities with a trip to pick out pumpkins and check out a corn maze. This maze was HUGE. Squidy went off by himself for a little while and when we met back up 15 minutes later, he was done and ready to leave. It took us another hour to find our way out.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It was a neat maze with activity stations, bridges and riddles but it was just too big unless you were super-excited about corn. Previous years we've gone someplace closer to home that is about a 10th the size, but is big enough for the kids to go off and have an adventure, yet easy to get out of when you've had enough. Lesson learned.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Squidy turned his pumpkin into an Elekin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In a long tradition of picking out costumes that it is impossible to just buy at a store - Vicki dressed as Funtime Foxy and Squidy was a Decidueye.</span></div>
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We did a Mad Science lab at our local Trunk or Treat to advertise our 4-H Club and my science classes. </div>
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The kids also enjoyed a party at TKD, and Trick or Treating around Gramma Kaye's house. This year Squidy decided he was old enough to go T or T'ing by himself. Since it's basically one street with a small cul-de-sac off one side, we agreed he could go alone. Vicki and I did cross paths with him a couple of times.</div>
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A common theme with Squidy lately has been wanting to do things by himself, with friends if possible, but definitely without parents or siblings. There aren't a lot of opportunities for him to get this independence but we are trying to offer it when we can.</div>
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Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-19042441883770432682017-10-04T12:21:00.000-04:002017-10-04T12:21:10.532-04:00September Wrap-UpWe're starting to get into a decent routine with school and it no longer feels like we're still trying to figure things out. Mostly. Okay, maybe we're still working out history, science, art, music, writing, and health. But math, literature, grammar, reading, PE and nature study are going great.<br />
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The kids start their morning with their one hour of required reading. This allows them time to wake-up slowly, enjoying their morning chocolate milk. Squidy is working his way through The Lord of the Rings, while Vicki is on the second book of The Mysterious Benedict Society.<br />
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Once the kids finish school, they usually have some time before they are allowed on screens. We've been playing lots (and lots and lots) of board and card games. Their favorites right now are Aggravation and Pokemon Headbanz (both birthday gifts), and the old favorite Uno.<br />
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I got fed-up with chasing dice and having to get them away from the dog so now we use the "dice monster" to hold the dice.<br />
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We haven't started our formal nature study yet but we've taken quite a few nature walks. We even managed to find a geocache that we couldn't locate last year.<br />
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I finally got brave enough to take the kids to the top of the Tourne. We've gone there before but just on the lower paths, because I wasn't sure about tackling the route to the top which is steep and long. We went with some friends (so another adult along just in case) and gave it a try. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and there's a great view of NYC from up there.</div>
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We studied some mycology, both in our backyard and on our hikes....</div>
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and we did some caving.</div>
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Squidy has been doing some science as part of his 4-H project for this year. He's been asking for a fish tank for his room for a while so we decided to finally get him one. We are currently working on getting the Nitrogen cycle properly set-up, which involves lots of water testing. He has been keeping records on the test results and once he gets his fish (a Betta), he will continue keeping records on its care.</div>
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We are continuing with our 4-H STEM club this year. Our first meeting we worked on a cup stacking challenge, using rubber bands on strings to stack cups. Because one of the set-ups used index cards between the layers, they were allowed to touch the strings and the index cards. Vicki's group mainly used the string/rubber band set-up but it didn't take Squidy's team long to figure out to use the index cards like gloves to touch the cups. They declared themselves "Team Loophole".</div>
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Since we are still working on Ancients this year, but we haven't done much over the summer, we are reviewing what we've done so far (Paleolithic, Mesopotamia) by watching the first few episodes of The Great Courses - The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World, and reading through our DK Ancient Civilizations book. We will start on Egypt in the next few weeks.</div>
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<br />Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-57484177709887299062017-09-20T14:34:00.000-04:002017-09-20T14:34:11.495-04:00What Are We Doing?<br />
We have made lots and lots of changes for our new school year. The kids are getting older (Squidy is in 7th grade!?!?!), things that worked for years aren't working anymore, and we seem to have (finally!) found a set-up that should work for the long-term.<br />
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First, our set-up. The kids have been doing most of their work using storage clipboards sitting on the couch or chairs. While this worked for some things, for others (like Geometry using a compass), it was not an easy way to function. The kids had a table with their computers on it, side-by-side, and theoretically the keyboards could slide under the monitors and they would have a space to work. But this really wasn't a lot of room. We bought a second table to put on the opposite side of the living room and now each kid has a table that is 1/2 their computer and 1/2 an open workspace. Much much better workspace for school. Each of them has a 3 cube shelf next to their table to hold all their school books and notebooks.<br />
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I also finally have my own desk, where I can plan school, 4-H, Sunday School, science classes I'm teaching, and all the other fun stuff I do!<br />
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So, what kind of school are the kids doing this year? We've made a few changes which resulted in a lot more of their work being done with textbooks (part of the reason a better workspace was needed) and less being done with worksheets.</div>
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<b>Math</b></div>
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Squidy is doing Algebra I (!!!) using Foerster's Algebra. So far it's going well and he's finding it pretty simple. We're combining it with Interactive Notebooks to use as a reference guide. He's using the 7th and 8th grade notebooks, which covers most of his Algebra text.</div>
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He is also finishing up Hands-On Geometry, using Prodigy to practice math facts, and Code Combat to learn coding.<br />
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Vicki was really struggling with Math Mammoth last year. The pages were too busy and the writing too small for her. Even knowing she didn't have to do all the problems didn't help. We ended up giving MathUSee Gamma a try since I thought she needed extra reinforcement with multiplication. This ended up being too easy and she didn't like doing the same thing over and over and over again. We are finishing up MUS because she does need the extra practice, but we are using Scott Foresman enVision Math as her primary program. <br />
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We used the 4th grade workbook for a little while last year as reinforcement because we were able to access the textbook and videos through our local public school. The set-up worked well so we're going to give the whole program a try this year. I bought a used textbook from Amazon, as well as the workbook, and so far it's working great. This program is colorful, spiral, and has good explanations. The only hitch came when I forgot to tell Vicki that she didn't need to write in the textbook and she got upset at the lack of space to put answers. <br />
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<img height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/510ZJ1H9-aL._SX378_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="152" /><br />
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I didn't even realize that there was a homeschool version of this program available. <br />
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Vicki is also using Interactive Notebooks, grades 4 and 5 cover her text, and Prodigy for extra practice.<br />
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<b>Literature</b><br />
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We are using Mosdos Press Literature again this year.<br />
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Squidy is using Jade, while Vicki is using Pearl. This actually skips a level for Vicki but I decided she could handle Pearl, which Squidy did last year so we already had it, when it looked like Mosdos wasn't going to be available. I decided against the workbooks this year and instead we are using a literature Interactive Notebook I bought from Teachers-Pay-Teachers, combined with going through the vocabulary in each story and a few questions from the end of the story. Vicki loves doing the IN, while Squidy doesn't care for cut and color so I'm allowing him to just write the information in his notebook.<br />
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We are also going to try a literature unit from Moving Beyond the Page. I bought the guide for <i>A Wrinkle In Time, </i>and we will go through it together when the kids finish their current reads.<br />
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<b>Writing</b><br />
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For writing, we will continue with <i>Write On!</i> and do some BraveWriter projects.<br />
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<b>History</b><br />
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We will continue with History Odyssey Ancients Level 2. We will be adding some Great Courses to our plan.<br />
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<b>Science</b><br />
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Science is going to be units this year. We are continuing with our 4-H STEM Club twice a month, I will be teaching other science classes that the kids will participate in, we have Spangler science club kits that we still need to work through, Vicki is going to do a Marine Biology project for 4-H, Squidy is doing a fish tank project (setting up the nitrogen cycle, water testing, etc.) for 4-H, we will be doing twice weekly nature study, and we might do some work from the Big Fat Science Notebook.<br />
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<b>Health</b><br />
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For health we are going to work on Internet Safety, nutrition, exercise, and development.<br />
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<b>Spanish</b><br />
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We are going to continue with <i>Getting Started with Spanish, </i>along with some Interactive Notebook stuff.<br />
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<b>Physical Education</b><br />
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We are continuing with Tai Kwan Do and yoga. We are also doing more hiking, and will try to go at least once a week to lap swimming. We have stopped swim lessons since the kids weren't really learning anything new.<br />
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<br />Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-78577014052195806592017-06-20T13:56:00.001-04:002017-06-20T13:57:03.940-04:00Camping in North CarolinaOur big vacation for this year was two weeks camping in North Carolina. Daddy used to live in Research Triangle Park and wanted to head down to visit with old friends and check out old haunts (which he found had changed quite a bit in 20 years ;-). <br />
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Unfortunately I forgot my nice Canon Rebel T3i with the zoom lens and was stuck taking pictures with my cell phone the whole time. <br />
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<b>Jordan Lake</b><br />
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We started out at Jordan Lake Recreational Area in Apex. We had a lovely site right on the lake, with coves on two sides.<br />
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We had a blue heron (that the kids insisted on pronouncing here-on just to bug me) that was nesting in the cove. We saw him every day we were there.<br />
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We also saw a bald eagle a few times. He was eating a fish on the shore opposite our campground. Unfortunately it was too far to get a decent picture with my cell phone. :-(<br />
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The weather wasn't overly cooperative but the kids did manage to get in some swimming, including a couple times swimming in actual rain showers. But we also spent a bunch of just playing games at the campground.<br />
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Evidently we were there at the height of frog mating season, and a certain species of tree frog sounds just like a baby screaming. A really nice sound to hear in the middle of the night. There were also a ton of toads hopping around each evening. As always, Vicki was our critter kid and was catching them for a closer look.<br />
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Then came what the kids called, somewhat hyperbolically, THE DISASTER.<br />
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We dealt with quite a bit of rain while we were at Jordan Lake. The first night, it was a light shower and we had some minor leaks in our sleeping tent. This was the first time it ever leaked (and we've camped in thunderstorms before). We pulled off the fly, sprayed the seams with some waterproofing spray and put it back on. <br />
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The next night it leaked a little bit more, so we picked up a tarp to put over the top of the tent. The first night that worked great. The next night we got to see the negative side to that lovely lake view - strong thunderstorms included a strong wind coming right across the lake. A wind that picked up that tarp and pulled the tent stakes right out of the ground. Three in the morning and Daddy was holding up the tent long enough for us to get out and run to our Suburban to spend the rest of the night. <br />
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After looking at the damage in the morning, we debated whether to cut our trip short and head home. A couple of the tent poles were broken, the canopy frame was bent, everything was wet (and I had already spent a few hours at the laundromat this trip!). But we decided to stick it out and headed to the Blue Ridge Parkway to Davidson River.<br />
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<b>Davidson River</b><br />
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Davidson River is in the Pisgah National Forest, part of the Appalachian Mountains. <br />
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With the help of lots of duct tape, we were able to set up camp at our new home-away-from-home. Since we were in the middle of the woods, we figured we shouldn't have to worry about any strong winds. We did tell Squidy that he could sleep in the truck if he felt nervous at any point. </div>
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One of our first stops in Pisgah was Sliding Rock. Sliding Rock is a 60 foot long waterfall with a sloping boulder that can be slid down like a slide. </div>
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Squidy took one look at it from the stairway down and gave a firm NOPE.</div>
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I found out how cold the water was and I gave it a Nope as well. Vicki went down together with Daddy and didn't care for it. The coldness and the drop at the end left her feeling like she couldn't catch her breathe and that seriously freaked her out.<br />
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We went for a visit to Looking Glass Falls, one of the many waterfalls in the area. It was a little bit chilly.<br />
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Our campground is named after the Davidson River that runs along one side of it. The river was EXTREMELY cold but the kids still were brave enough to do some wading and some tubing. While tubing they sang some lovely songs about the "icy river of death" - just a little morbid. Daddy went with them once and I went with them once. Other than your butt hitting rocks at time, it wasn't a bad trip at all. </div>
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We did some hiking and found a cute, little Methodist church in the woods along the river. </div>
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And went to visit the Pisgah Ranger Station. The ranger station had exhibits about local wildlife, maps and information on local hikes and waterfalls, and a store. Squidy bought a fox hat and a little stuffed hat, while Jade and Vicki got wolves.<br />
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Since it was chilly, Squidy decided he wanted something that he could use to cover his mouth when it was cold. Something made of soft, warm material but not a scarf. On one of my trips to the local Walmart, I ended up grabbing a fleece remnant and making him a bandanna.<br />
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And once he had a bandanna, he wanted an eye patch. For himself and his fox. Then Vicki wanted a poncho. And one for her wolf. And Jade wanted a scarf. And one for her wolf. I love that fleece is super-easy to work with - just cut and your done.<br />
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I figured there would be lots of science and nature learning on this trip, but we were also able to throw in some history with our visit to the Cradle of Forestry. The Cradle is an American Heritage Site for the Biltmore Forestry School, the first Forestry School in North America. </div>
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The education center had interactive exhibits about the school, later developments in forestry, and conservation. Outside there were hiking trails that took you among the buildings from the forestry school. </div>
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I was mean, and to make sure the kids actually read some of the informational signs and didn't just race through, I had them take notes about interesting facts. </div>
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Back to science - the hills in this area were known as the Pink Beds, due to the large numbers of rhododendrons. They were easy for us to identify since we have a couple sitting right in front of our house.<br />
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One of the things we asked about at the Ranger Station were simple hikes with waterfalls. We ended up choosing Graveyard Fields as a not too long, not too strenuous hike. It was a beautiful day for hiking, sunny but not too hot.</div>
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We went first to the Lower Falls. These were the stairs we had to walk down to get there, which means we had to walk back UP them to continue on our hike. The falls were worth it.<br />
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We fond this grouping of trees that the kids called the "Narnia tree".<br />
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Lots of little creeks to cross over, and lots of muddy parts in the trail. Vicki still is unable to resist stepping in every body of water or mud she sees. She lost her shoe in one muddy area, then I lost my shoe helping her out of another.</div>
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We made it to the Upper Falls and stopped on a nice flat rock to eat our lunch.</div>
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The troll blocking the bride. ;-D</div>
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On our way back from our hike, we stopped at some of the scenic overlooks along the Blue Ridge Parkway. You definitely want to make sure your brakes work well driving there.</div>
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Back at our campsite, we caught a glimpse of the elusive white squirrel (another time I really wished for my zoom lens!). We had seen a sign about the white squirrels on one of our trips out to Brevard, which was the closest town to the campground. According to local lore, the white squirrels were escapees from a carnival truck that overturned. These squirrels are not albinos since they have black eyes and are sometimes streaked with grey.<br />
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We took a trip to the Pisgah Center for Wildlife Education.<br />
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Outside the center were two swallow nests with babies in them. </div>
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Inside, we watched a video on the Hellbender Salamanders. </div>
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and walked through exhibits about various other wildlife found in this area of North Carolina.<br />
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We fed the trout out at the fish hatchery.</div>
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One of the highlights of our trip was going to be an all day caving and rafting adventure. We got up early in the morning and headed to Tennessee, where we waited at this little outpost for our guides to arrive. And waited. And waited. And tried to call but no one answered. Finally, we reached someone at their main office and found out they had lost our reservation. And wouldn't be able to get anyone their for a few hours. </div>
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We were not happy to say the least. They, of course, were going to refund out deposit (but we still haven't seen it!) and sent a voucher for a rafting trip. </div>
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We were able to book the rafting trip for the next day, lucky for us since we were only in the area for two more days. It was supposed to be a Class 2/3 trip but our guide thought we hit some Class 4.</div>
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Despite some set-backs, we had a great time on our trip in North Carolina. The kids survived two weeks without Wifi, although still had too much time on screens, IMO.Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-70563072640696966462017-05-11T15:04:00.003-04:002017-05-11T15:05:09.379-04:004-H STEM: Wiggly, Squiggly, Slimy WormsOur latest 4-H STEM activity was all about worms. This was a big reach for me because I am borderline phobic about worms. Seriously. I walk around them on the sidewalk, I shudder when I see them. But, it my endless attempts to not infect the kids with my squeamishness (about various things), I pushed through it. Mainly because I thought the kids would get a real kick out of these activities. They definitely did. I was actually surprised that all the kids (except Squidy) were really into it. Only a few of them even felt the need to wear gloves.<br />
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First thing we did was talk about why worms were so important for your garden and lawn. They help aerate the soil, their tunnels help prevent soil erosion by allowing water to seep into the ground easier, they are decomposers that eat dead leaves and other organic materials, their waste is high in nutrients, and they eat some garden pests. <br />
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We then discussed interesting facts about worms. Like the largest one ever found was 22 feet long! (EEEK!), and that they come in all colors including blue and purple.<br />
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We went ahead and made our worm jars first, so that they would be all ready for their inhabitants once we finished our observations. We put some aquarium gravel in the bottom, then layered sand and soil to fill the jar to about 3 inches from the top. <br />
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We put aside our jars, and got out our worms. First the kids observed the external anatomy of the worms using magnifying glasses. We noted how the worms had ridges all the way around them. This is why they are called segmented worms, or annelids. We also noted the wide, smooth section toward the "head" end of the worms - the clitellum, which is responsible for mucus production during reproduction; worms are hermaphrodites – both male and female but two are needed for reproduction.<br />
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We talked a little bit about internal anatomy and how it was not possible to cut a worm in half and wind up with two living organisms. If cut in the certain places, one part of a worm may still survive, as long as the major organs were avoided.<br />
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We then took a close look at the "head" end of our worms to see if we could identify any sensory organs. After we decided we didn't see any, we did some tests to see if worms would react to various stimuli.<br />
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We started with testing if worms showed a preference for wet versus dry. We placed a wet paper towel next to a dry paper towel, then placed our worms half on each. We observed to see if they crawled to one side or the other. We then repeated our experiment with them turned the opposite direction. We also tried starting them entirely on the dry side and entirely on the wet side. Just about everyone's worms showed a clear preference for the wet side.<br />
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We then tested their reactions to light. We had white lights, our UV lights, and I brought along clear red plastic to see if they reacted differently to the red lights. We used a black piece of paper to shade a small section of the area we were working in to see if the worms would go toward the shade. We tried shining the lights on various parts of the worm ("head" end versus "tail" end) to see how they would react. In general, the worms crawled very quickly away from the white and UV lights, but did not react to the red lights. We discussed a little bit of why that would be true.<br />
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Our final test was to place a small amount of acetone on a Q-tip and wave it near the worms. We were very careful NOT to touch our worms with the acetone since it would be toxic to them. Our worms did not like the smell of acetone and wiggled away from the q-tip.<br />
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After we finished observing our worms, we placed them in the prepared jars. <br />
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We moistened the soil slightly using a spray bottle, placed grass and cut carrots on top of the soil, wrapped the jars in black paper (so the worms would dig tunnels close to the sides) and covered it with a piece of cheesecloth.<br />
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The kids took their worm jars home for a week, then removed the paper to observe any changes in the layers, and to release their worms back into the wild.<br />
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The layers were slightly mixed up. More time might have been good there.<br />
The worms really seemed to like carrots since multiple people noticed there were a lot of carrots missing.<br />
One of the kids had a small extra worm more coming out then went into the jar, and two of the worms were tangled together when released. So, we may have had some reproduction going on. Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-90825282705564708922017-04-25T14:10:00.002-04:002017-04-25T14:10:13.613-04:00Steve Spangler Science Kit #1I was feeling bad about the lack of hands-on science we were doing outside of 4-H. We were reading about science and watching videos about science and doing 4-H STEM twice a month, but it still seemed lacking.<br />
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So, I did a trial membership with the Steve Spangler Science Club. Since getting the materials together is probably the worst aspect of doing science at home, I figured this would help. And it kind of did. Kind of because we've actually had this kit for about three weeks, and I just got the shipping notice that our next kit is on its way, and we still hadn't done it. To give me some credit part of the hold-up was I wanted to finish up our Mesopotamia unit before all my library books ran out of renewals.<br />
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The kits are geared toward ages 7 to 14, so right in line with Squidy and Vicki.<br />
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The great thing about these science kits - they really do come with everything. The only things we needed to add to the contents of our kit were water, scissors and a towel.<br />
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The first experiment was a demonstration of air pressure, cohesion and adhesion of water molecules, and surface tension. First we poured water into our screen covered mason jar. We held the laminated card over the top and flipped it upside down. When we let go, the card defied gravity and continued to hold the water in the jar.<br />
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We then slowly slide the card out from the lid and once again the water stayed in the jar, due to a combination of air pressure and surface tension.<br />
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Then, we tilted the jar just a little too much trying to take pictures and water poured out. Good thing we had that towel.</div>
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Our next activity involved using super-absorbent polymers to turn water into a solid almost instantly.<br />
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We put a small amount of the sodium polyacrylate into one of the included cups, quickly added poured in the water and watched it turn to a solid. We then popped it out of the cup and played with it for a little while.<br />
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We then added a small amount of salt to the solid to watch it turn back into a liquid. The rest of our solid, we're going to let dry out so we can reuse it. We have quite a bit since we had to do this part a few times.<br />
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The final activity that we did involved pulling the stuffing out of a diaper (provided) and shaking out the powder. <br />
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We then added water to the powder to show that it was a super-absorbent polymer. We seem to have had too much water to the amount of powder we gathered because nothing happened. So, we added another scoop of our sodium polyacrylate and watched it turned solid in the plastic bag.<br />
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The back of each of the experiment cards had information about how the various activities worked, as well as additional explorations (varying the temperature of the water, for example).<br />
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The kids had fun doing the activities. They thought "it was cool!". Depending on the topics of our subsequent kits we may use Mystery Science (we currently in a free trial period) or Kids Discover to expand on the science behind the activities.Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-73271386804773800452017-04-21T20:23:00.002-04:002017-04-21T20:27:46.786-04:00Weekly Wrap-up: Mesopotamia, Insects, and EasterYippee! For once, it actually has been just a week since my last update. 😁<br />
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In addition to actually being on time with my weekly wrap-up, we accomplished quite a bit of school this week. We finished <a href="http://dottiesuniverse.blogspot.com/2017/04/ancients-mesopotamia.html" target="_blank">our study of Mesopotamia</a> (click for link) and will be moving on to Ancient Egyptians.<br />
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We took a field trip with some friends to the Bug Museum.<br />
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We celebrated a beautiful Easter Sunday with the kids singing in choir, an egg hunt, and the first of my twice yearly pictures of all three of my kids.<br />
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I've been going through some of my old schooling resources and pulled out one of my Scholastic ebooks that we haven't used yet - <i>Comic Strip Writing Prompts.</i> This book has familiar comic strips (Garfield, Peanuts, Dennis the Menace) with writing prompts about the individual strips. The kids are big fans of Garfield so I thought they would enjoy this as a break from Write On!<br />
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I was right, they are enjoying it. But, it's been hard to get them to write in full sentences and full paragraphs. The prompts are in the form of questions and they both want to just bullet-point answers. In addition, Squidy protested one asking about a conversation between Garfield and Odie. Odie doesn't talk so there wasn't much to write. His explanation? "I stuck with canon". <br />
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We are going to give this another try next week, but first we are going to sit down together and discuss what it means to include the question in your answer, and to write in full paragraphs.<br />
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Squidy has been continuing his Python course through Udemy. He's not completely thrilled with it - it's more business/school oriented and he's having trouble getting the editing software to work. For now, I'm continuing to have him watch the lectures and take notes. I told him he needs to show he can see this through before we'll pay hundreds of dollars for the Minecraft Mod Design and Video Game Programming classes he really wants to take.<br />
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He finished up the factoring chapters in Math Mammoth and has returned to Jousting Armadillos. He is now finding it super-easy and is protesting having to do it again. I may just have him retake the chapter test and as long as he does well, move on.<br />
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He is finding the A level of <i>Vocabulary from Classical Roots</i> a little bit harder than the previous levels. He is having to infer the answers a lot more than in the previous levels.<br />
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Squidy is reading the <i>George's Secret Key</i> series by Stephen and Lucy Hawking this week. We've had the first book for a long time but he wasn't ready for it last time I pulled it out (probably a couple years ago). He really enjoyed it now so we ordered the rest of the books in the series.<br />
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The kids handwriting was starting to deteriorate again, so I started them on daily cursive practice again. I didn't want to buy a program because they both KNOW how to make their letters, they just need to work on neatness. I found a free font called 5th grade cursive, made some of my own lined paper (two solid lines with a dotted line in between. I'll switch them to regular ruled paper soon.), and give them puns to practice each day, along with their names and the date. I keep them nice and short since they are doing it everyday.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiknR7K8HQiGShU5L-EvIdHblbZAF1Q_mS6SlK_WiScnmbg_Ts0EnpsWfCsJBpuxBv5pwXHLUs_4fbHbE_9BhpfDzxwltrHchZbPzuiB7XQca45Jvzj8iGGnFT6HDlR3Ldov_YhvKkqOe8/s1600/cursive.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiknR7K8HQiGShU5L-EvIdHblbZAF1Q_mS6SlK_WiScnmbg_Ts0EnpsWfCsJBpuxBv5pwXHLUs_4fbHbE_9BhpfDzxwltrHchZbPzuiB7XQca45Jvzj8iGGnFT6HDlR3Ldov_YhvKkqOe8/s400/cursive.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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Vicki also had a pretty good week. She's been working through multi-digit multiplication using the enVision Math used by our public schools. The additional presentations, the textbook, and the videos seem to have helped her get a better understanding. We'll probably return to Math Mammoth and move on to division in the next week or two. I think I'll continue to give her one or two multiplication problems each day just to make sure she doesn't forget after struggling for so long.</div>
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In addition to the Comic Strip Writing Prompts, I also pulled out <i>Scholastic Comic Strip Grammar</i>. It's for grades 4th through 8th but starts out very basic with identifying the parts of speech. I am still correcting the grammar in her writing, but I felt she needed to get more explicit instruction as well.<i> </i></div>
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After reading <i>Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, </i>Vicki felt she needed a break before tackling the last book. She spent one day reading her Thea Stiltons and some other old favorites, but was ready to start <i>The Deathly Hallows</i> this week. These are probably the hardest books (content-wise and reading level) that she has attempted. It turns out I didn't have Squidy read the last two books when he started the series last summer, so he was a little indignant that I was letting Vicki read them. I honestly forgot that I had him stop.<br />
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I'm hoping we are finally getting into a good routine with school this year. We aren't going to be wrapping up our year anytime soon. I want to get through at least a couple more topics in our Ancient History study, do some experiments, and 4-H projects. We will also be continuing at least math and reading through the summer, which has been my preference since we started homeschooling.Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-73444678581743342382017-04-21T13:07:00.004-04:002017-04-21T13:07:40.805-04:00Ancients: Mesopotamia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
We are using History Odyssey Level 2 and our study of Mesopotamia included the Sumerians, the Hittites, and the early Babylonians.</div>
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History Odyssey suggests keeping a notebook divided into sections, such as Summaries, Men & Women, Inventions, etc. where you add the information from each section. There are dictation sentences, definitions, and short answer questions. I have the kids do these activities, but we don't add them to a notebook. </div>
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Squidy answers the questions as outlined in History Odyssey, from the Kingfisher Encyclopedia. I make up additional questions for Vicki, from the Usborne Encyclopedia. They both answer the questions on index cards and we add them to our timeline book. I was glad to see that this time (unlike our <a href="http://dottiesuniverse.blogspot.com/2017/02/ancients-plans-and-cave-painting.html" target="_blank">previous unit on first civilizations</a>) there was plenty of room in our timeline book. Our study of Mesopotamia actually stretched out across approximately 2000 years.</div>
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We learned about how the Sumerians were the first to develop a written language, called cuneiform, and gave it a try ourselves. Vicki wrote her name in cuneiform.</div>
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We used air-dry clay and popsicle sticks to create our tablets. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of cuneiform and stick/clay versus our alphabet and pencil/paper. </div>
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They thought that pencil/paper was definitely easier, although the clay was "cleaner" to start all over again (just ball it up and flatten it out again). Obviously, the clay would last longer. We also discussed how the straight lines of cuneiform were much easier to put into clay than curved letters like S would be. </div>
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We picked our books based on what was available at our local library or through the<a href="http://getepic.com/" target="_blank"> Epic reading app</a>. Our Sumerian selections: </div>
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We read about the Hittites and the Babylonians:</div>
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and the kids read about Mesopotamia on Kids Discover. I had them answer questions from the Teacher's Guide while they went through the units. This way I could be sure they were paying attention. </div>
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We finished up by reading more about the famous Babylonian king, Hammurabi. </div>
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We discussed his code, read some of his laws, and discussed whether we thought they were fair or not. </div>
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Squidy didn't think any of the ones referring to punishing a son were fair. "Not fair, I'm a son. I don't like that one". </div>
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Neither liked where the fines were 10x what was stolen, or where death was the punishment for stealing. "It's fair to be put in a cage if you rob someone, but not fair to be dead". </div>
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The doctor losing a hand if the patient dies: "depends on which hand? the one they use or the other one?". But definitely thought it was not fair if the patient might have died anyway and the doctor didn't do anything wrong.</div>
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The kids then took a crack and making up their own codes. I think in some cases they went in more of a 10 commandments direction.</div>
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We took a look at our DK Art book. It has some really nice pictures of Sumerian artifacts, like the Royal Game of Ur, the Queen's Lyre, and the Standard of Ur; the Hittite Sphinx Gate, and cuneiform tablets. I am planning a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art later in our studies to see the ancient art exhibits, but for now this book is a great resources.</div>
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We finished up by adding stickers to our HO wall timeline. I made up additional stickers for the events mentioned in the curriculum to use as well as the ones that came with the timeline.</div>
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We're going to take a week or two to concentrate on Science (and give time to get books from the library) and then we'll be starting on Egypt!</div>
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<br />Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-75176547276559226422017-04-15T11:27:00.002-04:002017-04-15T11:27:41.227-04:00Quarterly Update: Lots of changesOkay, so it's not QUITE that bad, but it has been too long since I last updated, except for all the project posts I did yesterday anyway. ;-)<br />
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Unfortunately February was not the end of us all getting sick every few weeks. That trend basically continued right through March and into the beginning of April. Once the weather warmed up, we seem to finally have banished the germs from the house. <br />
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The other hold-up was my <i>not that old </i>computer died. Completely. I had been having problems with charging ports, and batteries, and holding a charge that we tried a few things to fix (software upgrades, new parts) but ultimately it was no use. It could not be saved. <br />
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So, new computer, no germs and we are back to school. We have made a few tweaks to our curriculum to address issues that have come up, but things are progressing nicely.<br />
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The first big change was I set up a loose schedule. I've always been more of a routine rather than a schedule person, but with the kids being older and more independent I felt it was time. My main motivation was to have them taking their quiet time/screen free break at the same time so it was also quiet time for ME. Otherwise one would be on quiet time while the other was still needing help. I NEED that break to either relax or get things done. <br />
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I also wanted to build in time for me to help them with any struggles they were having. Both were needing at least a little help each day. I thought a dedicated time would be better than random interruptions.<br />
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It's a very simple schedule: From the time they wake up until 10:30am they do their reading or work on anything they can do independently (they wake up REALLY early these days); from 10:30 to 11:00 is Squidy's time to work with me. He often doesn't have much, just one or two math problems. From 11:00 to 11:30 is Vicki's time to work with me. She'll usually have a couple math problems, and maybe a spelling test. 11:30 to 12:00 is lunch time. Squidy doesn't eat breakfast so an early lunch is necessary. 12:00 to 1:00pm is that coveted quiet time. 1:00 to 3:30pm they finish any schoolwork they didn't get to earlier (they can also do it during quiet time as long as they don't bug me for help). 3:30 is when we usually need to get moving for our extra-curricular activities.<br />
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<b>Vicki </b>has been struggling a little bit with focus, concentration, impulse control, and being easily distracted (yes, we are considering getting her checked for ADHD/ADD). The area where this is most obvious is with math. She is running into the commonly mentioned problem with Math Mammoth in the higher levels - pages too busy and overwhelming. For a while I was circling just a few problems for her to do, which helped but not enough. She seems unable to focus down to an individual problem. <br />
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I decided to pick up an<a href="https://www.amazon.com/EnVision-Math-Common-Core-Grade/dp/0328672629/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1492267713&sr=8-4&keywords=Scott+Foresman+enVision" target="_blank"> enVision Math workbook</a> from Amazon. This is the program our local public school uses and I have access to the online text book AND videos that break-down the lessons. This way when she's struggling, we can get a longer explanation from the textbook and watch the video. So far we've done this for multi-digit multiplication and it seems to have helped. The workbook pages are also a lot less cluttered than those of MM. <br />
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We will continue to use MM but I will probably black-out any problems she doesn't have to do so it cuts down the clutter. We may also do problems a couple at a time on a whiteboard. <br />
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I also have put the first few books from <i>Life of Fred</i> on hold at our local library. These are supposed to be good for kids who aren't real mathy and can use a different viewpoint. I'm not sold on them enough to buy them (especially since she's the only kid I have that would use them), but it looks like the entire set is available at the library, so I'm willing to see if they help her understanding.<br />
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I've decided to pick up more formal grammar again, rather than rely on corrections in their writing. Mainly because they seem to have forgotten everything they knew. <br />
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Squidy is going through the <i>Everything You Need to Ace English Language Arts in One Big Fat Notebook </i>but this is a higher level than where Vicki needs to start. So, I'm having her work through the <i>Scholastic Comic Strip Grammar</i> workbook. It's funny, quirky, but presents accurate information incrementally.<br />
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<img height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51oPoU-QytL._SX373_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="150" /><img height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/615086WADPL._SX383_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="154" /><br />
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Vicki is doing okay with her <i>Skill Sharpeners Math Grade 4.</i> This is mainly a spiral review of things she's already covered in MM. <br />
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<i>Mosdos Press Literature</i> is going well. We are on schedule to finish up the Ruby book in the next couple of months. Unfortunately, the website has been down for a few months now and there is speculation that the company was sold and the series may not longer be available. Books are available through Rainbow Resource, or Amazon but we may have to look for a different literature for next year. <br />
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Vicki has moved on to the 6th grade book in <i>Vocabulary from Classical Roots.</i> We skipped the 5th grade book because it wasn't available on Amazon at the time I needed it. Both kids are strong enough in language arts (except writing, ugh), that I wasn't concerned about skipping ahead.<br />
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She's almost done with the 6th grade <i>Skill Sharpeners Spell & Write</i>. Once she is done with that, we will stop spelling except for corrections in writing.<br />
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<b>Squidy </b>has finally hit some math that he can't do on the first try. We had switched him over to doing just <i>Jousting Armadillos</i> with <i>Math Mammoth</i> on hold to use if he struggled. Well, he struggled with factoring. We took a break from JA to go through the factoring chapter in MM, which has a lot more explanation and examples than JA. He will be redoing the factoring chapter in JA starting next week, so we'll see if the side-trip worked.<br />
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He is also doing well with <i>Mosdos Press Literature, </i>and has moved on to Book A in <i>Vocabulary from Classical Roots.</i> For Grammar he is reading through the <i>Everything You Need to Ace English Language Arts in One Big Fat Notebook </i>and answering the questions at the end of each chapter.<br />
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We finally got around to doing a Brave Writer project last week. Squidy was looking forward to doing the Imaginary Island project since he first heard about it. I really should have jumped on this sooner, because I have never seen him put so much effort into anything that was schoolwork. <a href="http://dottiesuniverse.blogspot.com/2017/04/bravewriter-imaginary-island-project.html" target="_blank">The full write-up for that project can be seen here. </a><br />
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Squidy has been doing a Python programming class on Udemy. This class was offered for $19.95 a month or so ago, so we thought it would be worth letting him try it out. He's not finding it too exciting, mainly because it seems geared toward business solutions rather than gaming, but he is still learning quite a bit. Once he finishes, I may let him use the EdPy program that is available for our Edison robots and play around with that for a while.<br />
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In addition to all of the above the kids are still doing Tai Kwan Do (blue belts at the moment), swimming lessons (both are going to do team this year), yoga, and we're hoping to do lots of hiking/walking now that the weather is nicer.<br />
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We've also started Andy in training lessons, and one of the kids may be using that as a 4-H project.<br />
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Our <a href="http://dottiesuniverse.blogspot.com/2017/04/4-h-roller-coasters-bird-nests-st.html" target="_blank">recent 4-H activities can be seen here</a>. Pretty soon we will be picking out our projects for Fair and getting to work.<br />
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<br />Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-29170340113301759352017-04-13T20:32:00.000-04:002017-04-13T20:32:16.063-04:004-H: Roller Coasters, Bird Nests, St. Patrick's Day, and Slithery SnakesI decided to do one post to catch up on what we've been doing in our 4-H STEM club. <br />
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We learned about microscopes using the two student microscopes we have. First we went over the parts of the microscope, then we did the usual two microscope labs - a letter from the newspaper and an onion skin slide. Both are very easy for kids to do, and the onion skin has the added benefit of showing them plant cells and how important dye is for some specimens. We also looked at some of the prepared slides that came with one of the microscopes.<br />
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We learned about the physics of roller coasters and built our own marble roller coasters using straws, tape, and Legos (for supports). <br />
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We learned about the purpose and types of birds nests, and then built our own. Using primarily natural materials with a few additions (ribbon, string, sticks, leaves, feathers), they had to build a nest in the intersection of two hangers. The nest had to support golf balls when lifted off the table. </div>
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We marched in an EXTREMELY cold St. Patrick's Day Parade. Our local parade is one of the largest parades in NJ so it's a pretty big deal around here. But it was about 20 degrees that day, and windy. We did have a few members come out to walk with us (in addition to Squidy and Vicki who weren't given a choice in the matter). We all bundled up as much as we could.</div>
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And last but not least, Galactica made another visit to the club. She's much bigger than she was even a year ago. She's about four feet long at this point and probably won't grow too much bigger. The kids were able to look at some pictures with snakes hidden in their natural environment and see if they could find the snakes, they were able to take a close look at snake shed under magnifiers and our microscopes, and they were able to do an interactive quiz I put together on Powerpoint. The quiz can be found on <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1U7RNmNw5jDXyyGKvnb_DuCs6hkJRGjrxoBIsPKRVpHM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Google Docs</a>. And of course, they were able to come meet Galactica, and hold her if they wanted to. </div>
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Galactica was a big hit this year, even among the kids who met her last year. During my presentation at the beginning of our meeting, she clearly showed her arboreal tendencies by climbing all over my head and slithering down over my face. </div>
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Our next meeting isn't until May, so I should have plenty of time to catch up on my other posts and be ready to share our activities in a much more timely fashion. </div>
Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-19125882329244127542017-04-13T19:57:00.001-04:002017-04-13T19:57:34.778-04:004-H Science-Sational Day: Squishy CircuitsGeorge Sr. and I taught another workshop at this year's Science-Sational Day (last year we did a build the best boat project). We played around with electricity using Squishy Circuits.<br />
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As far as I can tell, Squishy Circuits is originally from the <a href="http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/" target="_blank">Playful Learning Lab at the University of St. Thomas</a>. The site provides recipes for conductive and insulating dough, and project ideas for all different levels. In exploring more while prepping to do Squishy Circuits with our 4-H club (<a href="http://dottiesuniverse.blogspot.com/2016/10/weekly-wrap-up-week-7-trilobites.html" target="_blank">last October, can be seen here</a>) I discovered that Play-doh will serve as conductive dough. That's right, regular old Play-doh in the bright yellow can conducts electricity. Mainly because it's basically made of flour, salt and water. Salt water conducts electricity quite well.<br />
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<img alt="Play-Doh 10-Pack of Colors (Amazon Exclusive)" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81DiLRLm2iL._SX522_.jpg" width="200" /><br />
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When we did the project with our 4-H club, I made insulating dough using the recipe at the University of St. Thomas link above. Basically this dough is made from flour, water and sugar. But, at Science-Sational Day we were going to be doing 3 sessions with 15 kids in each session. And the dough would probably not be reusable from session to session. Since the kids were not going to be able to take their projects home (to expensive with the batteries, battery packs and LED lights), we decided to let them explore some other insulating materials.<br />
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We started with a presentation using some of the background materials available at the University of St. Thomas link, giving the kids information on electrical circuits, serial circuits, parallel circuits, and closed/open loops.<br />
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We then gave the kids a variety of materials to explore. We provided paper clips (conducting), Legos (insulating), Play-doh (conducting), popsicle sticks (insulating if dry), straws (insulating), index cards (insulating), Aluminum foil (weak conductor). <br />
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In order for the LED's to light, there must be insulating materials between the conductive clay. Otherwise the electricity will take the "path of least resistance" and travel through the clay, rather than do the work to light the LED.<br />
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George demonstrated the various materials during the presentation.<br />
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The kids were then able to come up with their own projects. All of them were able to get a simple circuit to work. After that, they came up with all kinds of elaborate creations.<br />
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<br />Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-63055592675316386672017-04-13T19:38:00.003-04:002017-04-13T19:38:42.158-04:00BraveWriter Imaginary "Island" ProjectWe finally got around to doing the BraveWriter Imaginary Island project! <br />
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I've been wanting to do more BraveWriter this year but it is just one of the things that was put aside with all the chaos this year. A local friend was going to run a BraveWriter group and I thought that would be the perfect opportunity to make sure we actually did the projects, but it's been postponed due to lack of space. But, during the discussions about the group, Squidy overheard a discussion about the Imaginary Island project. And he LOVED the idea. So I finally set it up.<br />
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This project is from Partnership Writing, which is geared toward 9 to 10 year olds but I thought it would be right up Squidy's alley.<br />
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I didn't stretch out the project for a whole month the way BraveWriter suggests. Last week I had them write some notes during their journal time for a couple days. One day was about the people, history, religion and climate; the next day was about the animals and plants. Then this week I had them type up the information about their civilization (I didn't limit them to an island or continent), and draw a map and flag.<br />
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First we flipped through our Atlas and looked at the various symbols used for industry, the way that mountains and rivers looked, and how big cities were noted. Then they used none of these things when they did their maps. 😂<br />
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Vicki didn't get as into the project as Squidy did. She wrote up a brochure-type list of information. I did send her back with some edits (she capitalized EVERYTHING, and used apostrophe's for plurals) but mainly let her keep the style of writing. She drew an island chain but forgot to do her key.<br />
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Squidy put more work into this project than I've ever seen him put into anything involving school. He wrote 5 pages!! on his culture, including detailed historical events, holidays, plants, and animals. I'm sure allowing them to type their projects made a huge difference in the output. I did send him back with some edits since he also wanted to use an apostrophe to pluralize. He drew a world map, complete with key. </div>
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His animal, plant, and royalty names were found by plugging things into Google Translate and coming up with Finnish words. For example, the kings were named based on their number in Finnish. <br />
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Even though it didn't take us a month to do the project, it probably will be about a month before we do another one. I definitely plan to do more, especially since this was such a big hit.Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-75680063057126783812017-02-18T20:33:00.001-05:002017-02-18T20:33:11.120-05:004-H STEM: Edison RobotsOur latest 4-H activity was playing with programmable robots. There are a variety of robots currently available that use drag-and-drop software to teach kids about coding. After looking into the options, I decided to go with <a href="https://meetedison.com/" target="_blank">Edison robots</a>. <br />
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Edison robots are inexpensive, Lego compatible, programmable robots. After reading a variety of reviews, I decided to go with Edison because they had mainly positive reviews (although not a ton at all since they are relatively new and Australian), were inexpensive (important since I needed at least 6 of them), and because they would work with Amazon Fire tables (also fairly inexpensive). Many of the other programmable robots needed either IPads or laptops for full functionality. I also wanted something that wouldn't be too simple for the kids in my group, many of which were already into electronics and coding.<br />
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The company provides multiple booklets of lesson plans that can be used with Edison. We started with activities that involved programming Edison using barcodes. There were barcodes for obstacle detection, following lines, following a flashlight, staying within borders, robot wrestling, and controlling with a remote control. <br />
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We didn't try the flashlight because our room would be too bright and I didn't want the kids stumbling around in the dark. We did experience some difficulty when we had multiple remote controls going at the same time. I would definitely recommend only having one or two remotes, and separating the robots during programming.<br />
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The kids had the most fun with the line tracking (using black electrical tape and some print-offs from the website) and robot wrestling. <br />
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Our second meeting we used the free drag-and-drop programming software called EdWare. At least some of the kids did. Many of them continued to play with the barcodes and remote controls, and had a lot of fun with that. </div>
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The company provides lessons that will take kids step-by-step through how the different icons work, including a downloadable test program. While EdWare wasn't very complicated, I think it's probably best for kids over 8 or 9 years old who are already familiar with using tablets.</div>
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We definitely could have used more time to work with the program. Our meetings run about an hour of activity time and that wasn't really long enough for the kids to get into the software.</div>
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Edison also has Python based software called EdPy to help kids learn text-based programming. We did not try this out at all (lesson plans are not yet available but should be by June) but I feel like this gives Edison a longer useful lifespan than many of the robots that don't go past simple drag-and-drop software.</div>
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I purchased our Edisons through the manufacturer at the link above. I had a few questions about the EdPy software, about the issues we had with remote controls, and trouble I had testing them out at home (turns out using them directly in a beam of bright sunlight messed up the sensors). I was able to post questions through the Blog, check out the Forums and get answers for my questions fairly quickly.<br />
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There were a couple times one of our Edisons was acting funky (could have been the remote problem) and we popped out the batteries to reset it. The other issue I ran into was in printing the materials. The company is in Australia (shipping was free) so all documents were A5 size and I had to make sure to switch to Letter size when printing.<br />
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The other robots I looked into:<br />
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Dot & Dash - I was actually teaching an afterschool enrichment class using Dot & Dash when I was researching robots. This is one of the ones I thought would be too simple for the kids in my group. Looking at Amazon reviews, D&D are not fully compatible with many tablets except newer generation IPads, which would add to the already expensive $125 price tag. That's just for Dash. To really get much out of these robots, you would need to purchase Dot and an accessory pack (available in a package with Dash for $249).<br />
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Ozobots - I'm currently teaching an afterschool enrichment class using Ozobots, but I wasn't yet teaching it when I was looking to purchase robots. Main negative reviews I saw mentioned needing frequent calibration and difficulty in drawing the lines and codes it can track. I am finding this issue to be true in my class. The lines need to be a certain width and the colored blocks for codes can't be too large or too small or uneven, etc. I also don't think they would work well on screens smaller than a 9" tablet. The apps involved "drawing" lines on screen for Ozo to follow but corners and curves can't be too tight so a smaller screen would definitely limit what could be done. Ozobots are $54.99 each so the price isn't awful. The more expensive Ozobot Evo for $99.99 can be programmed with an Android or iOS phone.<br />
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Lego Mindstorms - really high start-up costsDottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-91868133373414904072017-02-18T19:32:00.003-05:002017-02-18T19:32:40.778-05:00Week 23 and 24 - excuses, excuses, excuses<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I'm late again. This time at least I have an excuse or two. Flu, snow, and my computer has bit the dust (again!). </div>
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The house has been hard-hit by the flu for the second time since the new year. We got our first decent snowstorm, the kids spent some time outside, and the next day everyone was coughing, sneezing and miserable.</div>
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So, we haven't done a lot of school in the past couple of weeks. We did start Ancient History (finally!), which can be seen <a href="http://dottiesuniverse.blogspot.com/2017/02/ancients-plans-and-cave-painting.html" target="_blank">here</a> and Vicki is reading her way through <i>Harry Potter</i> after a reluctant start. Even the length of book 5 wasn't enough to intimidate her.</div>
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What school we did get done I wasn't able to post about because my computer decided it didn't want to charge anymore. I managed to grab a few photos, but until it comes back from Best Buy (hopefully) fixed, I'm missing all my photo editing software, plus my plans and ideas.</div>
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I'm giving the kids the three day holiday weekend to rest and get over feeling sick, and we are jumping back into school Tuesday morning.Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-69525335501391436292017-02-18T19:21:00.001-05:002017-02-18T19:21:39.880-05:00Ancients: Plans and Cave PaintingWe finally started our study of Ancient History! We are using History Odyssey Level 2, with some modifications/additions, including using both the <i>Kingfisher History Encyclopedia</i> and the <i>Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of World History</i>. I've had the Usborne for years but bought the Kingfisher because it was supposed to be at a higher level. Honestly, so far I'm not seeing it. The reading level seems similar between the two, in fact some entries in the Kingfisher seem to be a lower level. The main difference is that the Kingfisher starts with Early Humans, while the Usborne covers Prehistory.<br />
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We will also be looking for relevant entries in our <i>Art: Over 2500 Works from Cave to Contemporary</i> book. This book is full of wonderful pictures and tons of information on art. Since I'm teaching art as a accompaniment to our history studies, this book is perfect.<br />
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History Odyssey includes assignments to complete dictation sentences, definitions, fact cards, and/or summaries drawn from the Kingfisher Encyclopedia. Each unit I'm going to write up my own dictation sentences (or definitions, summaries, fact cards) from the Usborne Encyclopedia and one kid will do the Kingfisher and one will do the Usborne. All this information will then be put in our Timeline book. <br />
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Our Timeline book is old but mostly empty. It has entries for the family birthdays and events from when we were discussing what is history. I made it way back when we first started homeschooling. I don't remember why I set it up the way I did. I'm sure I read it somewhere, but basically what we are looking at is:<br />
We start at 5 million years ago. <br />
1 million years ago. <br />
200,000 years ago<br />
100,000 years ago <br />
50,000 BC to 5100 BC<br />
5000BC to 4200BC <br />
4200 BC to 500BC - 100 years per page<br />
500 BC to 1000 AD - 50 years per page<br />
1000AD to 1800 AD - 20 years per page<br />
1800 AD to the present - 10 years per page.<br />
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We also have the History Odyssey wall timeline and stickers that we will update as we go along as well. I like the idea of having both. The book will allow us to put more detail in each entry, the wall timeline will show the progress of history better.<br />
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Before the Holiday craziness, we finished up our Evolution/Prehistory study by learning about early man. We started with studying various Creation Myths using <i>In The Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World </i>since it seemed like a good transition from evolution.<br />
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We then revisited the tail end of our evolution study by reviewing the early man sections in the Kingfisher and Usborne. History Odyssey begins with the first civilizations but I wanted more of a transition between prehistory and history.<br />
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I wrote up some simple dictation sentences for the kids to complete while reading from the encyclopedias. There were some minor differences in the times given between the Usborne and Kingfisher. Exact dates are not available when you go that far back. <br />
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I can see already that I may need to use smaller index cards or add extra page flaps.<br />
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In addition to the encyclopedias, the kids completed the Ice Age activities from Kids Discover. We used to receive the print magazines but they don't seem to offer them anymore so I purchased a subscription to the website. In addition to articles with pictures, diagrams and videos, they offer Teacher's Guides that include quizzes and activities to extend the learning.<br />
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and they read a few stories about the time period.</div>
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We also took a virtual tour of the cave paintings at <a href="https://vimeo.com/40849516" target="_blank">Lascaux from this website</a>. <br />
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We finished up by doing some cave painting of our own. I was going to set up a fake cave and have the kids paint the walls inside but we were all getting over various colds/flu (that hit again a week later) so I went simpler. I use brown paper bags (leaf bags from Walmart), tore off sections and crumbled them up to give them some texture. Instead of making our own paints from charcoal and oil, I let them use some of our paints. But only colors that would be possible to find in nature. I originally gave them only brown, yellow and white to match the colors in the cave paintings we viewed, but they managed to talk me into red, green, and orange. I allowed them to use their fingers or a stick as a brush. George did one simple drawing with a stick (a squid of course)....<br />
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while Vicki jumped right in with her hands and did an entire sunset scene.</div>
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As soon as everyone gets over the latest round of colds/flu, we will continue Ancients by starting History Odyssey with First Civilizations and Monuments.<br />
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<br />Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-38909131652918412922017-02-05T14:42:00.000-05:002017-02-05T14:51:17.126-05:004-H STEM: Crime Scene Investigation<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Back in December we did what I think was the funnest activity yet with our 4-H STEM group. We did a crime scene investigation that incorporated some chemistry, some biology, some physics.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Set-up: A crime has been committed. The sugar cookies for the party have been stolen. We will be examining the trace and physical evidence left at the scene to determine our guilty party.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Our suspects:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Beary Cedric AKA Cedric the Bear</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Seen near the scene of the crime with white powder on his paws</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Richard Odod the Dodo</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also seen near the scene with white powder on his hands....er wings</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Oscabolla the horse</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Seen leaving the scene</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also seen near the scene of the crime were Pikachu and an unknown human.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Our first activity was to identify the unknown powders that were found on Cedric and Richard's paws/wings/feet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We tested a variety of white powders: baking soda, baking powder, corn starch, and detergent with different reactants - iodine (reacts with starch), vinegar (a weak acid that will react with bases), and cabbage juice (pH indicator) and recorded the results.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We then processed our reactants with our two unknown powders and compared the reactions to our known substances.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To make it easier, each group was provided with an ice cube tray to separate the samples.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Our results: Cedric had baking soda on his paws, while Richard had cornstarch on his wings. So far the evidence is inconclusive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We then dusted some plates found at the scene for fingerprints. I set up the plates ahead of time by putting lotion on my hands and pressing my fingers against the edge of white ceramic plates.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The kids used cocoa powder and soft brushes to bring out the fingerprints. It was very important to tap lightly with the brushes, not brush back and forth. We then used tape to lift the fingerprints off the plates.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We then used markers (the lab sheet said to use pencil but our pencils didn't work for some reason) to make an impression of our own fingerprints and compared them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Our last activity was using short wave UV lights to look for clues around the scene. We discussed the various things that will show up under the lights, which include blood, saliva, sweat, scorpions, some vitamins, milk, some oils, honey, ketchup and various other organic materials.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I used yellow highlighters and wrote messages on black cardstock so they would only show up under the lights. I placed these in semi-hidden spots around the room.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My signs:</span></div>
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Our guilty parties were: Cedric the Bear and Oscabollo the horse.</div>
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The kids had a great time with this activity and were very excited when they solved the crime.</div>
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Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-9146891259463585722017-02-03T12:45:00.000-05:002017-02-03T12:45:58.571-05:00Weeks 11 through 22: Catching Up<br />
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Happy Thanksgiving.. um ...Merry Christmas...er...Happy New Year....Happy Groundhog Day!<br />
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Okay, I really really got out of my trend of posting every week. I'm hoping to get back into it now that the holidays are over and we are back into our "normal" routine. Despite not posting, we have been doing quite a bit of school in the past few (3??? eek it's been that long!) months. This weekend will bring a plethora of posts on 4-H, Science, and History to bring us up to date.<br />
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But first! What have we accomplished in our core subjects?<br />
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Vicki has been struggling a little bit with multi-digit multiplication. We are taking time every day to work on memorizing her times tables and doing extra practice problems outside of the busy pages from <u>Math Mammoth</u>. We are spending more time sitting together doing her work so I can help her before she gets overwhelmed. We have taken a break from <u>Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math</u> until she has a better handle on multiplication.<br />
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She's enjoying <u>Beast Academy</u>. She is up to the lessons on perimeter and area (so almost done with 3A). We like how BA presents geometry much better than what's in MM so I'm sure we'll do the same thing we did for Squidy - skip the MM geometry chapters (more on that later).<br />
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Vicki is almost finished with <u>Vocabulary from Classical Roots 4</u>. Most of the vocabulary words she has already been familiar with and since book 5 was unavailable from Amazon, she will be starting book 6 soon. I had her take a look at Squidy's book 6 and she was familiar with many of those words already so she shouldn't have any problem with that level.<br />
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She has started <u>Evan Moor Spell & Write Grade 6</u>. When she finishes this book, she will be done with spelling except for corrections in writing.<br />
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I finally convinced Vicki to give the Harry Potter series a try. She was very reluctant at first so I told her she only had to read the first one if she wanted. She ended up loving it and is now on the third book.<br />
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She has also read <u>My Side of the Mountain</u>, <u>Black Beauty</u>, <u>The Mouse and the Motorcycle</u>,<b> </b><u>Charlotte's Web</u>, and a bunch of books for Ancient History - Ice Age. We are working through the Mensa reading lists. Since she is not ready for a lot of the harder books in the 4th-6th grade list (subject wise more than ability) we are doing the higher level books (or those we missed reading) from the K-3rd list and those she is ready for from the 4th - 6th list.<br />
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We've made some changes to Squidy's line up. We are putting aside <u>Math Mammoth</u> because he felt it was boring and too repetitive. We will pull out the MM if it looks like he needs the extra practice or explanation when we come across a topic in Jousting Armadillos or Zaccaro Challenge Math. My main concern with this plan is the geometry chapters in 6B. Like many others users, we don't really like the geometry presentation in MM (it's considered the weakest part of the program) but there is information there that will be needed going forward. <br />
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I found a recommendation for <a href="https://chps-tandl.wikispaces.com/file/view/Hands+on+Geometry.pdf" target="_blank">Hands-On Geometry</a>, available as a free download, for 4th to 6th grade. It should give him all the geometry he will need to be ready for High School Geometry in two years. Once he finishes Beast Academy 4C, we are going to switch to Hands-On Geometry. While we really like BA, he's not learning anything new and we're starting to look at what he needs to be ready for Algebra and beyond.<br />
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Squidy is finishing up <u>Vocabulary from Classical Roots 6</u> and will be starting book A next week. <br />
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He is currently reading the Inheritance Series - he has finished <u>Eragon</u> and <u>Eldest</u>, and will be starting <u>Brisngr</u> next week. He has also read <u>The Red Pyramid</u> series (really LOVED that one), and <u>Tuck Everlasting</u> in the past few months.<u></u><br />
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We have started <u>Write On!</u> for our writing curriculum. I wanted something that was gentle, started at the beginning, and increased gradually. Being able to use it with both kids is an added bonus.<br />
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So far they've written acrostic poems, rhyming sentences, descriptive sentences, and riddles.<br />
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One of Vicki's riddles:<br />
If you have too little you die<br />
If you have too much you die<br />
I'm in you and all<br />
What am I? (water - I think she remembers my talk about good chemicals/bad chemicals at 4-H where we discussed Chemical X, which was water)<br />
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One of Squidy's riddles:<br />
I can go out, but I can't go in.<br />
I can wax, but I cannot wane.<br />
When used, I often shine bright.<br />
What am I? (candle)<br />
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Coming soon: Crime Scene Investigations, Ancient History - Ice Age & Cave Painting, Zip Lines, Pendulum Painting, Edison robots, and a field trip to a Bug Museum.<br />
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<a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51i4r6HmwCL._SX385_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-8218274723951995452016-11-13T13:25:00.002-05:002016-11-13T13:25:39.425-05:00Weeks 9 and 10: Minerals, Stories and a Math FixWhoops, I broke my every week posting trend so this is a two week wrap-up. I'm sure as the holidays get closer, that may happen a little more often.<br />
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We had our first 4-H field trip to the Franklin Mineral Museum. We had a great guided tour through their collection, down into the mine replica, the fluorescing mineral display, and then out into the pit to collect our own rocks.<br />
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They had a great display of trilobite fossils, which Vicki loved!</div>
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At our regular meeting, we used a magnifier to take a closer look at some of our minerals, explored my mineral collection (many of the pieces are actually Steph's), discussed how to identify minerals, set up our own little dark room to explore long-wave fluorescing minerals, and cracked open geodes.<br />
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I found a solution to Vicki's struggles with math. She didn't appear to be having trouble with the calculations or set-up of the math problems. She was just getting overwhelmed with the amount of work on a page and that seemed to keep her from knowing where to start. The author of Math Mammoth does not advise assigning every problem. Something I had forgotten and the full page of problems was overwhelming Vicki. So I went through and highlighted a selection of problems for her to do. I picked from different parts of the page, at least a couple word problems if they were available, but probably around half the problems from a single page. IF she did those problems correctly, she would be done. This has worked very well for the past two weeks, so hopefully will continue to be a solution.<br />
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Vicki finished her 5th grade Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell & Write. I did purchase the 6th grade book but may wait until after the holidays to get started. She did write a pretty decent story for one of her last pages in the 5th grade book. She usually writes the shortest entry she could possibly come up with.<br />
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She had to write a story about Andy Ant, a worker ant.<br />
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<i>Andy was in a very dangerous environment, the deep, muck forest. The temperature was steaming. There was no telling what could happen in that humid place. Out of nowhere, a snake leaped at Andy! That snake scared him so much he landed in the water. Luckily he landed on a lilypad. He floated away, never to be seen again.</i><br />
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Vicki is doing great with the skip-counting chapter in Beast Academy. She has also started doing matrix puzzles from our Logic book and has really been enjoying them.<br />
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Vicki read <i>The Mouse and the Motorcycle</i>, <i>Pippi Longstocking</i> and <i>Misty of Chincotegue </i>in the past couple of weeks.<br />
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Squidy is doing ratio/proportion word problems in Math Mammoth 6A. He may need help with setting up one problem out of 7 or 8, but for the most part he finds it fairly easy. For now I'm having him to do all the problems on two pages each day.<br />
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He is almost finished with Beast Academy 4B and we are going to jump right into 4C (which we already have). After that, I'm not sure he'll continue with BA. He likes it but it's probably overkill as we get farther into pre-algebra/algebra with Jousting Armadillos.<br />
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He's finding Jousting Armadillos fairly simple at the moment. The current lessons are covering what is meant by addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The next lesson is exponents, which might be a little more of a challenge.<br />
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Zaccaro Challenge math is more of a ......Challenge ;-) but he's still enjoying it. The current lesson is Algebra word problems. I've been having him do a few problems each day so splitting each Level into a few days. He has been able to do the majority of the Level 1 and Level 2 problems on his own. We've done the Einstein Level problems together. Once he has some help with setting them up, he is usually able to solve them on his own.<br />
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Squidy finished the entire <i>Chronicles of Narnia</i> series in the past couple of weeks. I have all seven books in one volume, which I thought he would find overwhelming but the size of the book didn't bother him. He enjoyed the stories (the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe most) and has taken to randomly saying "For Narnia!!". :-)<br />
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Coming up: We will definitely be starting our Ancients studies this week, we have another 4-H meeting where we will be exploring pendulums and doing some painting, I'm hoping to do a post on how I'm getting better at planning, and I'm hoping to start doing review posts on some of our new materials.<br />
<br />Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-8287829096081958342016-10-29T12:36:00.002-04:002016-10-29T12:36:22.090-04:00Weekly Wrap-Up Week 8: Halloween, Pumpkin Patches and CinquainsLast week was mainly about Halloween but we did manage to get some school done, despite the excitement.<br />
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Vicki is on the last unit of Evan Moor Spell & Write Grade 5. We will move on to the Grade 6 book which is the last in the series and then we are done with Spelling except for corrections in writing. This is by far the subject she is having the least trouble with this year.<br />
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This weeks lesson included writing some Cinquains about food.<br />
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Pizza</div>
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Cheesy, Orange</div>
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Sticky, Stretchy, HOT</div>
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Hot on my tongue</div>
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Pizza</div>
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She has been continuing to struggle with math, writing, and even literature now. She seems to get tired (and very cranky) easily, which leads to being careless. I'm going to encourage her to take a break in the middle of her binder work to do her hour of reading or her hour of screen free. Hopefully this will help. I also may start sitting with her for more of her work.</div>
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Vicki is still working through <i>Little House on the Prairie </i>during her assigned reading time. At bedtime, she's been reading on the Epic books app and has read through 12 of Big Nate books.</div>
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Squidy continued to work on ratios in MM and algebra in Zaccaro. He's doing very well with both, I think partially because both are very logical at this stage.</div>
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For assigned reading this week, he read <i>My Side of the Mountain, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, </i>and started <i>Prince Caspian</i>. His bedtime reading in Epic has moved on from Big Nate to Garfield and Peanuts comics, a couple Timmy Failure, and some Minecraft stories.</div>
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Eventually I will be pulling some of their assigned reading from Epic.</div>
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Last week was, of course, all about Halloween. We finally made our trip out to the Pumpkin Patch to pick out our pumpkins. This year, Vicki wanted to carve her pumpkin while Squidy wanted to paint his like Charmander.<br />
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It was a beautiful, but windy day when we headed out. <br />
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First we hit the corn maze. Squidy took off at a run and played hide and seek the whole time, while Vicki and I "searched" for him at a much more leisurely pace.<br />
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Then, we picked our pumpkins. My rule has always been the kids had to be able to pick up their own pumpkins. :-) Anything bigger is a family pumpkin. Well, Vicki was able to pick up her 21 pound pumpkin all by herself.<br />
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Squidy went much smaller.<br />
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When we got home, Daddy and Vicki got to carving.<br />
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At first, she tried to remove the guts with a spoon, but soon found out it was better to just get right in there with your (gloved) hands.<br />
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Our finished products:<br />
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The kids also colored some wooden haunted houses from Michael's. They came with three colors of paint and a paint brush but there were so many small areas to color, I thought it would work better with gel pens and fine tipped Sharpies.<br />
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We had our first Trunk or Treat on Friday night. This year we decided to decorate a car as a Mad Scientist's Lab since our 4-H Club is the Mad STEM Scientists. It was an EXTREMELY cold night. Halloween is a weird time of year in NJ. Some years it will be in the 70's, other years it's in the 30's. Makes it very hard to plan costumes.<br />
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This year the kids dressed as Pokemon.<br />
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Vicki was a Gardevoir...<br />
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While Squidy was a Quagsire.<br />
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We have another Trunk or Treat down at the lake and, of course, Trick or Treating on Monday.Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-32355966227069342352016-10-22T14:33:00.002-04:002016-10-22T14:33:28.473-04:00Weekly Wrap-up Week 7: Trilobites, Squishy Circuits, AlgebraThanks to some life craziness, we had a short week of school. We still managed to get quite a bit done though, so I'm not too upset. I have to keep reminding myself that we are going back to a year-round schedule, just so we can take the time we need when things get crazy or we have something fun to do.<br />
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We had a meeting of our 4-H club this week. We played with Squishy Circuits. Squishy Circuits is a project from the <a href="http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/" target="_blank">Playful Learning Lab at the University of St. Thomas</a> and allows children of all ages to play around with electronic circuits. </div>
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We did circuits a couple of times last year. First we tried to make flashlights. This didn't go so well. It was very hard working with the bulbs, wires and tape to make good connections. </div>
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We then made scribbling robots (or just jiggling robots). I made a few modifications, like buying battery holders with lead wires, and these worked MUCH better. </div>
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Squishy Circuits was even easier. Because I would have somewhere between 10 and 20 kids for the meeting, instead of making a million batches of the conductive dough I bought Play-doh. Regular old Play-doh is conductive since it is basically flour, water, salt and coloring. I did make the insulating dough out of flour, sugar, and distilled water. I didn't color the insulating dough so it would be easy to distinguish it from the play-doh. </div>
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Now, I originally intended to do this activity at a previous meeting. We were going to use Play-doh, insulating dough, battery packs (left over from our robots) and Christmas lights. It's a good thing I always do a demonstration project before our meetings because it didn't work! </div>
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Didn't my pumpkin look cool? </div>
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My theory was that there was too much resistance in the dough for the Christmas lights to work. The resistivity is why Squishy Circuits works so well with LEDs but connecting them directly to battery packs would cause them to pop. I ordered a variety of LED lights from Amazon and tested out my circuits again. This time they worked great! I did find that they worked MUCH better with four AA batteries, rather than two so I had the kids hook two battery packs together as part of their circuit.</div>
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I made up a lab sheet using the last few pages of the <a href="http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/PDFs/Squishy%20Circuits%20Classroom%20Guide.pdf" target="_blank">classroom guide from St. Thomas</a> that walked the kids through exploring the traits of the conductive and insulating doughs, and then they were able to design their own project.</div>
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We had some great designs with lights everywhere!</div>
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Vicki also did a presentation on Trilobites at our meeting. This was a big deal for her because she generally does not like to talk in front of groups. She used pictures from our visit to the American Museum of Natural History, and had all her facts written on notecards. </div>
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School went pretty well this week. </div>
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Both kids are doing okay with their new writing journals. I am offering some comments and hints on writing in full sentences and paragraph format. </div>
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Vicki wrote a paragraph about Why I Like Fall:</div>
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<i>This is why I like Fall. All the multicolored leaves are pretty. The big leaf piles are great for jumping into and 4-H is back in session! There are so many reasons to like fall. I hope you have a great one.</i></div>
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Vicki moved on to estimating in Math Mammoth, which she is finding much easier.</div>
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The allure of Mosdos is wearing off. She is still enjoying the stories but her answers to the workbook questions, especially those requiring more than a quick answer, are getting a little lazy. The one word answers are bad enough but there's also the occasional "I got nothing". We discussed a few of these answers and I made it clear that she needed to show a little more effort or she would be getting extra assignments.<br />
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She is still working through <i>Little House on the Prairie.</i><br />
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Squidy is doing really well with the algebra section of Zaccaro Challenge Math. So far he's needed help with one or two questions in each section and some of that is just paying attention to the set-up.<br />
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He is working on graphing of equations in Math Mammoth and is finding it pretty easy, and is still LOVING the logic chapters in Beast Academy. He used to do Sudoku problems all the time so that section is super-easy so far.<br />
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He doesn't enjoy Mosdos as much as Vicki does but is putting (slightly) more effort into his answers in the workbook.<br />
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He's having some fun with the writing prompts I'm providing. This week he had to Create an advertisement for a haunted house. (I found many of the prompts on Pinterest.)<br />
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<i>Want to be scared silly in a land of horrors? Come to GHOST DOOM, a ride through a house guaranteed to scare you. With ghosts, ghouls and Middle School Teachers!</i><br />
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Next week we'll be doing some Halloween activities, making costumes, and preparing for the TWO Trunk or Treats we are participating in.<br />
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Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-47684603731669740212016-10-14T22:47:00.000-04:002016-10-14T22:47:10.754-04:00Weekly Wrap-up Week 6: AMNH, Prehistory, and Writing TroublesI still don't quite feel like we have a good routine going, but I feel like we are on our way so I guess that's progress.<div>
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Our big highlight for this week was finishing up our Prehistory/Evolution study with a trip into NYC to the American Museum of Natural History. <a href="http://dottiesuniverse.blogspot.com/2016/10/wrapping-up-prehistoryevolution-field.html" target="_blank">Details on that can be seen here</a> (or you can just scroll to the post right before this one).</div>
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We had a few struggles this week.</div>
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I put aside the Spectrum Writing for both kids, at least for now. Both levels started with different kinds of paragraphs and how to improve paragraphs by adding more detail. Unfortunately it seems both kids need more work on how to write a basic paragraph. I pulled out a couple of composition books, wrote some notes in the beginning about how to write a good sentence and how to write a basic paragraph. Each day I will provide a writing prompt for them to work from. In the past, this type of journal writing was not corrected or graded. These will be reviewed, corrected and discussed with them. Not every prompt will be a paragraph and some will be fun lists or charts.</div>
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Vicki is struggling a little bit with math. Mostly from not paying attention to what's being asked or trying to rush through it. When she misses problems in Math Mammoth, I've been giving her an extra page of similar problems to practice. MM does provide extra practice problems but I've just been writing a few on a blank sheet of paper. She worked on Order of Operations and Bar Graphs this week. Order of operations, she understands the concept fine but every third or fourth problem, she would just ignore it completely. Doing bar graphs she got upset over the size of the grid provided in the workbook. Anything she has trouble with, we work through together. I am wondering if the busy pages of MM are part of the problem. She seems to get overwhelmed just looking at them, and I've seen people complain about 4th grade taking a jump in the amount of text per page. If the problems persist, we may have to look at different options.</div>
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She read the last of our Prehistory books - <u>We</u>, <u>Who Discovered Natural Selection</u>, and <u>Billions of Years, Amazing Changes</u> this week, as well as started on <u>Little House on the Prairie</u> after finishing <u>Redwall</u>.</div>
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Squidy is doing really well with pre-algebra. He sailing through Math Mammoth, is really enjoying Zaccaro Challenge, and likes Jousting Armadillos okay. He's LOVING the Beast Academy logic puzzle sections in 4B the most. </div>
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He finished reading <u>The Secret Garden</u>, as well as the selections for Prehistory, this week. One I had him read but didn't give to Vicki was <u>DK The Human Story</u>. He found it disturbing, especially the parts at the end about manipulating DNA. I thought it might be too much for Vicki. As I was doing some reorganizing this week, I had put all his and Vicki's upcoming reading selections into one basket. He went to get something new to read and chose <u>Mr. Popper's Penguins</u> and <u>The Mouse and the Motorcycle</u>. Both are selections he read a few years ago and were meant to be only on Vicki's list, but I decided to just let him go ahead and reread them to give him a break after some of the heavier books.</div>
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One of the writing prompts for this week was "Write a paragraph telling your favorite things about Fall". His paragraph:</div>
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<i> These are my favorite things about Fall. Actually, to be honest, it's a bland month. It gets colder yet no snow, school starts up again, and plants begin to die. Still, Fall is a pretty....COOL month! *BaDumTss**</i></div>
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Not exactly what I was looking for but it is a paragraph.</div>
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Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-58543930935893975952016-10-14T22:15:00.003-04:002016-10-14T22:15:53.855-04:00Wrapping up Prehistory/Evolution: Field Trip to AMNHWe took a trip into New York City to the American Museum of Natural History to finish off our study of Prehistory/Evolution. We are lucky to live close enough that we can go into the city for a day trip.<div>
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Since this was an "official" school trip, I wanted to make sure the kids paid extra attention to the exhibits (and I was really annoyed the last time we went to a museum and they did nothing but rush through). So, I did some Google-ing and found some resources they could use as we walked around the museum. I pulled some questions from a <a href="https://nycurbanadventures.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/amnh-scavenger-hunt1.pdf" target="_blank">scavenger hunt site</a> (just those about dinosaurs) and also printed out the educational materials available on the AMNH website. They had great materials for the <a href="http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/human-origins-and-cultural-halls/anne-and-bernard-spitzer-hall-of-human-origins/promos/hall-of-human-origins-for-educators" target="_blank">Hall of Human Origins</a> exhibit, and the <a href="http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs-among-us/dau-promos/dinosaurs-among-us-for-educators" target="_blank">Dinosaurs Among Us</a> special exhibit.</div>
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They brought along their storage clipboards to use during the trip. Vicki managed to leave hers behind twice but both times remembered fairly quickly and was able to run back and grab it.</div>
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Squidy added drawings to his answers.<br />
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The questions definitely served their purpose. The kids were much more deliberate about looking at the exhibits and reading the informational signs.<br />
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Trilobites are Vicki's favorites. Ever since I rehung our Charlie's Playhouse timeline, she's been fascinated with them. She did a poster for the 4-H Fair over the summer and will be doing a presentation at an upcoming meeting. <br /><br />Did you know you can actually find stuffed trilobites (and hallucigenia and pteryglotus and dunkleosteus) on Amazon? Christmas Presents!<br />
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The kids weren't really thrilled with the Hall of Human Origins. Vicki found the skeletons and most of the dioramas "creepy". She was still able to answer some of the questions on her worksheet but unfortunately for her, we had to walk through the hall twice since we had to retrace our steps after visiting the meteorite and gems/mineral halls.<br />
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We had afternoon tickets for the Dinosaurs Among Us exhibit. It would have been better if we had done this earlier in the day because by that time they were getting tired and were ready to head home.<br />
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I'm planning to head back again when we start studying habitats, and possibly take a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to visit their Greek, Roman and Egyptian exhibits as we go through Ancient History.</div>
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Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-36935821831117678542016-10-07T20:07:00.002-04:002016-10-07T20:07:58.521-04:00Weekly Wrap-up Week 5: Spanish, Pens, and Whiteboards<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We finally started Spanish this week (Yippee). Even though they have done some Spanish in the past, I'm starting from the very beginning (a very good place to start!) We are using <u>Getting Started with Spanish</u> as our main program. Each day, I write the lesson(s) on a chalkboard, go over the vocabulary with the kids, discuss pronunciation and spelling (especially the unusual things like tildes ~), and they copy everything into their notebooks. I'm hoping the combination of looking, reading and writing will help retention. In addition, they are playing on Duolingo for 10 minutes each day and we will be watching episodes of Spongebob and Pokemon in Spanish on Hulu. <br />
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I have them set up as my "friends" on Duolingo so I can see their progress. I'm still trying to decide if I want to set them up to be friends with each other. On the one hand, the competitiveness may have them working harder. On the other hand, they already compete about EVERYTHING and I'm not sure I want to encourage that with school. <br />
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We had a meeting of our 4-H STEM club this week. The kids did a catapult/trebuchet challenge. We had some amazing designs <a href="http://dottiesuniverse.blogspot.com/2016/10/4-h-stem-what-is-difference-between.html" target="_blank">that can be seen here</a>. <br />
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The kids have been taking swim lessons at our local Y for the past few years, but of course until now I haven't really had the opportunity to be there during their lessons. We don't do lessons over the summer and last spring was a little chaotic. So, I was very interested to see how lessons were going this year, especially for Vicki after her amazing summer on swim team. And I wasn't happy. Both of their classes were very full (9-10 kids), they spent a lot of time waiting for their turn to start laps or waiting for the rest of the group to finish, and there wasn't a lot of instruction. Vicki's class was better than Squidy's, but not by much. <br />
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We decided to try lessons through a local aquatic club. They were less expensive and promised smaller classes. Plus instead of 30 minutes like the Y, they were 60 minute lessons - 30 minutes as a group and 30 minutes of individualized help. The main thing we asked them to work on was Vicki's diving (because this is the main thing holding her back on team), and Squidy's comfort and strokes. It's been two weeks and it's been going really well. They were even able to get Squidy to give diving a try!<br />
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The rest of Vicki's week:<br />
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As I mentioned previously, I decided let Vicki do her spelling test on the whiteboard this week instead of orally. It definitely went much better and she enjoyed it.<br />
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She only had two more units left in the Grade 5 <u>Evan Moor Spell & Write</u>. Once she finishes, we'll start right in with the Grade 6 book. When she finishes that, we are done with spelling except for corrections in other work.<br />
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I let her switch from pencil to pen for all her schoolwork. I originally offered her a pen because she broke the point off her pencil twice in five minutes. Then she couldn't find the sharpener that she had just used. Then the pencil didn't have an eraser (because she basically eats them off). Then she didn't have another pencil. She decided she liked using pen - "I like writing with a pen. It gives it more official meaning." I like that we won't be going through 10 pencils a week.<br />
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Neither of the kids is struggling at all with <u>Vocabulary from Classical Roots</u>. Vicki is doing the 4th grade book and so far all the words have been familiar to her. We are alternating this with <u>Spectrum Writing</u> since neither program will take all year. I'm not sure if we will start the next levels if they finish early or just move on to other activities. I am hoping to incorporate some Brave Writer this year.<br />
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Vicki just started the 4th grade book for <u>Math Mammoth</u> and keeps complaining that it's "soooooo HARD!". She seems to have trouble mainly with the mental math "tricks" and with reading the instructions carefully. When we sit together, she is able to do it without any problem.<br />
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She is still really enjoying the stories in <u>Mosdos Press Ruby</u> but isn't appreciating the workbook assignments quite as much. ;-)<br />
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She spent this week reading <u>Redwall</u>. <br />
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Squidy's week:<br />
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Unlike his sister, Squidy does NOT want to use pen. The idea of making a mistake and not being able to erase it bothers him a LOT. :-)<br />
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He is finding <u>Math Mammoth 6</u> easy so far. It's mainly been a review of the four operations and place value. He made up his own mnemonic for the order of operations - Pete Eats Many Daisies At Supper. <br />
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<u>Zacarro Challenge</u> and <u>Jousting Armadillos</u> have been a little bit more challenging. He's finding <u>Zacarro</u> the easier of the two and actually corrected me on the Venn Diagram questions (I was thinking the "only" was implied, as in "there are <i>only</i> 4 kids who like dogs".<br />
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He has hit the Logic chapter in <u>Beast Academy 4B</u> and LOVES it. He has always loved logic puzzles, so this chapter should go fairly quickly. This is the last chapter in 4B and we'll start right up with 4C. I like working with <u>Beast Academy</u> behind their main program (Math Mammoth) because it's such a different approach, but he also hasn't used it that much in the past couple of years. I'm not sure if we'll continue once he finishes 4D since we may be fully into Algebra at that point.<br />
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He finished reading <u>Caddie Woodlawn</u> ("eh, it was okay"), started and finished <u>Homer Price</u> (took him one day), and started <u>The Secret Garden</u>.<br />
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Next week we are taking a field trip to the American Museum of Natural History in NYC to finish up our Prehistory/Evolution study. By the end of October, I'm hoping to start Ancient History and Microscopy.Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-36798460134177431852016-10-05T15:19:00.001-04:002016-10-05T15:21:17.760-04:004-H STEM: What is the difference between a catapult and a trebuchet anyway?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My original plan for this meeting was Squishy Circuits. Unfortunately, my test-run didn't work. At all. I'm pretty sure I know what the problem is, but fixing the problem requires ordering some items from Amazon. Since I was basically testing out the circuits the day of our meeting, we had to go with Plan B - a catapult engineering challenge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Since it was Plan B, I was rushing around quite a bit trying to gather the materials and make some samples, and forgot to do some of the background research I wanted to do - such as, what's the difference between a catapult and a trebuchet. And of course, one of the kids asked that very question. Way back when Steph was taking physics in high school, I actually knew the answer to that question off the top of my head. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In short, a catapult is any mechanical device, that is not a firearm, that is used to throw a projectile a long distance. A slingshot is a type of catapult. A trebuchet is another type of catapult, specifically one that utilizes a counterweight to create tension that when released, propels a load a large distance. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A trebuchet utilizes gravity, while a catapult may utilize tension. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(source: wikipedia, differencebetween.com, differencebetween.net, physics.stashexchange.com)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I did manage to make up two samples for the group, as well as a labsheet showing different designs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica neue, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">We provided popsicle sticks, plastic spoons, rubber bands, tape, dixie cups, index cards, and a variety of pompoms, spikey balls and ping pong balls to use as projectiles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica neue, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">They had about 45 minutes to build, test, and modify their designs. Some of the designs used the tension in stretched out rubber bands to build up energy, others utilized a push on the swinging arm to launch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Our next meeting is in a couple of weeks and I will definitely have figured out the Squishy Circuits problem by then. ;-)</span><br />
<br />Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3469131147165770385.post-26040157358652643922016-10-02T15:39:00.003-04:002016-10-02T15:39:47.862-04:00Weekly Wrap-Up 4: swim trophy, answer keys, and coughsThis was a bit of a short week because Vicki wasn't feeling well on Monday. Nothing awful, just a sore throat, sneezing and coughing. Allergies are kicking up strong this fall, but she's never shown any particular sign of having hayfever, so we took it easy and skipped swimming and choir. I also let her go light on school since it was "hard to think about anything". ;-)<br />
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Vicki finished <i>The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate</i>. It took her quite a while and she was reluctant to even start but once she finished, she said she really enjoyed it and it was "amazing". Unlike her brother though, she had no desire to read the next book in the series. While she is a strong reader, this book was a little rough for her. She's definitely out of the habit of stretching herself when reading, whether it's length, grade/lexile level, or content. Scholastic and Junior Library Guild give the book a grade level of 5.3/5.4 so not too much above her current grade level, but she's been reading mainly Thea Stilton, Rainbow Fairy, and Garfield comic books lately.<br />
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I will be assigning more books for their hour of required reading and then encouraging them to read their choices at bedtime or during screen free time.<br />
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Both kids have now started their current grades in math. <br />
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We have hit a milestone with Squidy... I am now using the answer keys when checking over his math. It's not that I <b>can't </b>solve the problems, it's that they would take longer than it's worth to figure them all out by hand. I will sit with him to go through the steps if he gets any wrong.<br />
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This week the lake had the swim team dinner and awards meeting. Vicki was unable to attend because Daddy took them to visit his parents, but I went because I was running for a board position. I didn't get the position, but Vicki got a trophy! She won Most Improved Girl (she had taken 11 seconds off her time for 25 yard free-style) and also received a 4th place ribbon for the relay she swam as a 9 year old. Considering we had to underage girls running that relay (only the 2nd time Vicki swam 50 yards instead of 25 yards), that's not too shabby.<br />
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We still haven't started our content subjects, other than some reading and it's all my fault. I've been sleeping very poorly lately, which means I get up late, which means we don't start school until after lunch (the kids eat early), and then with all the extra-curricular activities, we just aren't accomplishing as much as I would like. So, I'm taking some steps to remedy the situation.<br />
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The biggest problem is that I was setting up their schoolwork for the day AFTER I woke up in the morning. I'm still getting up by 9 am, but I'm not what anyone would describe as a morning person, so I need my tea (CAFFEINE!!) to be functional. This meant that the kids weren't able to start school until 10, 10:30 am, when 11 am is lunch time. <br />
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My solution was to set up a modification of the crate system that was really popular a year or so ago. There was no way I was setting up 36 weekly folders for our entire year, but I did set up packets with all the work for a day for about 4 weeks. I even wrote these lessons into their planners. Each morning (I'm really going to try for the day before) all I have to do is pull out the next packet, check which books they need (since the Mosdos textbooks and assigned reading won't fit), and circle the current day in their planners with a yellow highlighter. When I check each days work, I'll cross out that day with a yellow highlighter to show it was completed. Hopefully this will keep them from being confused by all the stuff being written in already. Honestly, they are barely using their planners unless I tell them to look, so I don't see it being a problem. :-/ <br />
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Despite them barely using them, I'm going to continue with the planners. It serves as a record for me of what they've done (I don't have any mandatory reporting so any records are only for me), and I'm hoping the habit will take hold one of these days.<br />
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<br />Dottiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11497407752628081122noreply@blogger.com1