Science

a beloved word around my house.  The boys LOVE it.  Even though some of the curriculum we use has a bit of science with it, there usually is not enough at all.  Today was another day with the colored water, mixing the primary colors to make secondary colors.  Here's some of the fun from today!

figuring out how to use the bulb pipette

primary colors we mixed up in an earlier science lesson

first color mixed ~ green

Top three are purple, green, orange.
There are some brown and black toward the bottom.

They played for awhile mixing colors.  Always a good time seeing how much of one color changes another. 

Free Time

The joys of having "no screen time" is that the boys become more creative in what they do to entertain themselves.  Today led to their stuff animals have a scout cross over.  The puppies were crossing over to the next level (which of course I don't recall now) and all the other stuff animals are families and friends.  Sorry for the grainy look, I took the photos from inside the kitchen with the window and screen down.

School Food

I suppose can be good!  When Thing One was in Public School for K & 1, he loved getting the pizza on Fridays.  There was also the rare occasion, that I'd send him with lunch and he'd still buy lunch anyway.

Anyhoot, last Friday we had a variation of pizza on English Muffins and he even brought it up that public schools had pizza every Friday for lunch and so should we.  That got me asking what they'd want this week for lunch.  So this week, with mostly the kids input the school lunches for the week are:

• Monday - fruit salad
• Tuesday - hot dogs
• Wednesday - peanut butter sandwiches
• Thursday - grilled cheese sandwiches
• Friday - pizza

Today, I used the fruit salad to my advantage as I'm trying to add more fruit into what they'll eat whole and from the "tree" or "vine".  In addition to the bananas and apples they had strawberries and pears.  They weren't so sure about it, but I reminded them that you can't base a decision off of one nibble.  It takes several, real sized bites, over several days.  When introducing new foods or for monitoring kind of fun junkie food, I really like using these plates I found at Target awhile back.  They came in two packs for $1.99 and they have three different sized sections.  I can tell the boys that they can have chips but only "this section" full.  It helps with portion control.

Back to School!

Wow!  2011/12 school year is upon us.  Tomorrow begins our 4th week of the year!  Things are totally different than I had anticipated when we wrapped up last school year.  We've dropped a couple things to make life a bit easier, but at the same time we're notching up a lot of basics to help the boys "make the grade".  Going basics!


Here's what school looks like for us:

• Mystery of History Vol 2 by Bright Ideas
  
• Big Bag of Science
• A Child's Geography Vol 1 By Ann Voskamp
• Literature Unit Studies:  starting in "The Chronicles of Narnia" (everything but the Magicians Nephew which we did last summer), possibly "Farmer Boy" from Little House series, wrap up of a Christmas study we started last year, and FIAR/ByFIAR
• Nature Studies for both
• Math-U-See for both, but at different levels
• Free writing (to get them writing and getting their thoughts on paper, no length required, but just writing from various writing strands)
• Thing One individual work:  Spelling from Queens Homeschooling Supply, Mad libs, magnetic words, grammar and math games on the Ipod
• Thing Two individual work:  Language Lessons for the Very Young 1, by Queens Homeschool Supplies and Sequential Spelling Vol 1, grammar and math games on the Ipod

We'll also be adding in Grace Homeschool Co-op in September where they'll be adding in P.E. & Chess for Thing One and Free Play & Science for Thing Two.

Quite a full school year and extra activities aren't even listed!  Where's a yikes smiley when you need it?

Weather so thick . . .

. . . you can cut it with a butter knife.  This afternoon was true Washington D.C. & surrounding suburbs August weather ~ hazy, hot, and humid.  So this afternoon, when it started raining, there was hope for cooler temperatures.  Although the humidity levels have been reduced, temperatures didn't drop much.  Oh well! 

For no other reason, than shear fun, I recorded the rain through the kitchen window.  Enjoy!

Back to Science!

Boys have been excited for a couple weeks or so ~ you see, we bought a "Big Bag of Science".  They love doing the experiments, learning new things in the world of science, love the mess, and are begging for white lab coats {where do I find those?}

Anyway, yesterday we began with the first experiment ~ fizzing colors.  The gist of the experiment was to learn about chemical reactions with baking soda and citric acid when put into water. 

We started with three test tubes filled with room temperature water, added a yellow tablet to one, red to another, and blue to the third and watched them fix up and dissolve.  Not quite as hands on as the boys would have liked, but there will hopefully be some like that later in the year.  Anyway, we ended up with the test tubes looking like this:

The second experiment will be looking through each of these and then looking through combinations of two and of course all three.  They SHOULD already know the colors that the three primary colors make, but this will be a good review, just in case. 

Now off to feed the minions!  Have a happy weekend everyone!

When life hands you . . . . .

. . .  the wrong box of pudding, {more likely it was mixed in with the vanilla puddings, on the shelf at the store} add it to a smoothie.  Yes, this is a banana cream pudding, but I was already making a banana/strawberry smoothie this morning and wanted to thicken it up some.  This actually worked out really well.  We had enough left over, after three glasses of smoothies, to make 6 pudding/smoothie pops.  Should be another good treat later.

Happy eating!

Another Baby Blanket

Some friend's of ours have a new little girl in their life!  So cute, so tiny, so princess girliness (author license to create a new word)!  It was a joy to knit a blanket for this little one, whose life is a miracle ~ wish you could sit and listen to Crystal talking about it.  Awesome story!  Here's the finished product:

 Here's the blanket!  Mostly brown and pink, a bit of green, and a touch of yellow.

Here's a close up of the brown, showing the border.  I knit

six rows, then switch to knitting first and last 5 stitches with

the middle being a stocking stitch.  Love the way it turned out.

I look forward to being able to give them the finished product.  Only a few weeks after the baby shower.  Hopefully I'll be able to catch up with them at church on Sunday.

Happy Knitting,