October Wrap-Up

I'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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.   If a substance produces more hydroxide (OH) molecules in solution, it is a base and is alkaline.  If a substance produces more Hydrogen (H) molecules in solution, it is an acid and is acidic. 

We then tested a variety of household substances for pH using two different methods:  cabbage indicator and litmus papers.  We tested citrate, baking soda, alka seltzer, borax (which had to be put into solution first), conditioner, dish detergent, ammonia, vinegar, diet coke, milk, tap water and well water.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

Our most recent class we did some Candy Chromatography in honor of Halloween. 

CSI started with the crime scene set-up. 

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.

During the course of the evening, Mary’s jewels disappeared! 

You are Crime Scene Investigators who are tasked with processing the scene and solving the crime.

Your suspects include everyone who was present that night.

During the first class, they processed the crime scene.  Taking pictures, examining evidence, gathering trace evidence, swabbing "blood", and lifting fingerprints.

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.

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.

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!   

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.  

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.  

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.

Of course, since this is a wrap-up for October, we have lots of Halloween!

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.

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.

Squidy turned his pumpkin into an Elekin.

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.

We did a Mad Science lab at our local Trunk or Treat to advertise our 4-H Club and my science classes.  

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.

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.

September Wrap-Up

We'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.

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.

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.

 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.

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.

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.

We studied some mycology, both in our backyard and on our hikes....

and we did some caving.

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.

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".

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.

Weekly Wrap-up: Mesopotamia, Insects, and Easter

Yippee!  For once, it actually has been just a week since my last update.  😁

In addition to actually being on time with my weekly wrap-up, we accomplished quite a bit of school this week.   We finished our study of Mesopotamia (click for link) and will be moving on to Ancient Egyptians.

We took a field trip with some friends to the Bug Museum.

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.

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 - Comic Strip Writing Prompts.   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!

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".

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.



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.

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.

He is finding the A level of Vocabulary from Classical Roots a little bit harder than the previous levels.  He is having to infer the answers a lot more than in the previous levels.

Squidy is reading the George's Secret Key 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.

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.

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.

In addition to the Comic Strip Writing Prompts, I also pulled out Scholastic Comic Strip Grammar.  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. 

After reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 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 The Deathly Hallows 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.

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.