Saturday, November 17, 2012

Co-op

This week we had our science co-op, hosted by Carolyn. As always, her experiments involved a little bit of a mess and a whole lot of fun!

Waiting for Co-op to begin
 We started off with a color dispersion experiment.

 Each cookie sheet was filled with milk. Each child added several drops of food coloring.


 Then they added some dishwashing liquid.
 When the dishwashing liquid was added, the colors shot out in a circular motion!

 They took turns stirring and blowing the liquid for more visual stimulation.

 



The second project involved a combination of water, vinegar, and salt to clean pennies coated with copper oxide (which makes pennies look dull). Apparently, this combination removes copper oxide, making the pennies look new again.










The penny on the left was not cleaned, the penny on the right was.


Then the kids tried to make elephant toothpaste which ended up not working out since we forgot one of the ingredients.
Cait's reaction to the smell of yeast.





We will be trying this project again sometimes later next week. The kids really want to see it foam up!

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Snowed in!

Ok, maybe "snowed in" is a little bit of an exaggeration... Ok, maybe it's a big exaggeration! Either way, both children decided to grow, so we need to get them new winter boots. The kids have also lost their gloves so I need to buy more. Because of this, I convinced them that we shouldn't go out and play in the now slushy yard.Instead we baked chocolate chip cookies and ate them with warm milk.

For some reason they were eager to complete their school work which was fine by me.

I laminated the sheets we use most often for Jayden from our Elementary Daily Notebook, which right now happens to be the "What day is it?" and "What time is it?" worksheets.

Caitlin is seriously soaking things up like a sponge lately. She recognizes 22 letters of the alphabet and can tell you a lot of their sounds! Even though she doesn't know the sounds of all the letters, she is still itching to spell words. So I searched Pinterest to find something that was appropriate for her level and came across The Cookie Sheet Challenge. Using magnetic letters, she built the words according to the letters beside each picture. She built the words rug, bed, net, pin, dog, sun, mop, bug, tub, and cat.
During this time Jayden worked on his Morning Math- Week 5 and Spelling & Grammar workbooks.
 
Caitlin decided she wanted "a hundred more works!" so I printed out some Morning Math & LA Daily worksheets for her which she completed with minimal assistance!


She knows the "h," "b," and hard "c," sounds so she was able to decipher which word went with which picture.
 Jayden worked on a little writing assignment for spelling.
 
We finished up the school day with penmanship for Caitlin. I made her a worksheet with a handwriting worksheet generator.
 And Jayden started a Geography unit.
With the cold weather fast approaching, we have greatly scaled back on our outdoor activities. I don't like having us committed to a lot of activities when bad weather, sickness, and sometimes plan old lazy days keep us indoors. We are down to one science co-op twice a month, another science class that meets monthly, our indoor playground membership, the library, and friends to keep us busy until it starts warming up!

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

My princess is 4!

We recently celebrated Caitlin's 4th birthday. She is growing up so quickly! For her birthday she requested a shopping trip, a new outfit and shoes, food, and a cake. She got everything on her list! Including her odd breakfast request of a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese and jelly with a side of bacon!

She has been so excited about her new boots since she got them last week. I made her wait until her birthday to wear them. To pay me back she woke us up at 6:45am to put them on!

 







Enjoying a birthday phone call

Playing Mouse Match
 






Sleepy girl!    


Thank you to everyone who sent her birthday wishes and helped make her feel special! <3