We made it! Amazing! I had to curtail a few of the lessons since we missed so much school due to illness/laziness, but all in all I think it was a very fruitful term.
1. Meditation with music from R. Carlos Nakai
2. Journals
3. Current Events - Khy read about how iPods are causing hearing loss while Stormy read about the Iditarod Sled Race.
4. Khy helped me with library preparation. I always love those Saturdays just after term when I can actually go to the library to browse aimlessly, instead of armed with a mile long list full of books I need for class.
5. Nicky read to me the rest of the Dick and Jane collection. He's been reading it on his own at bedtime for the last few nights, and I can REALLY tell he's been practicing. It's so exciting, how far he's come and how proud he is of himself.
6. Spelling Test - review words. Khy and Stormy both got 100%. Nicky practiced typing (he's ahead of the older kids on typing skills, I think that's kind of cool) and then took his phonics test for the letter L.
7. Paper airplane science. Each student made their own paper airplane, and each were given one paperclip to put wherever they chose. Then they took turns flying their airplanes, and we would measure and record the distance. Between each turn (each student got 5 turns) they were allowed to make adjustments to their planes, primarily through the placement of the paperclip. When it was all done we took their measurements and then I showed them how to find their average distance. Nicky and Stormy's averages were in the 8 foot range, and Khy was in the 10 foot range. We talked a long time about what variables were at work, what they could have done to improve their planes, why Khy's seemed to do better than the others. It was a great class.
8. Interviews - Based on the job application for Greek godhood they each filled out yesterday, I brought them in to "interview" for the positions. We had fun.
9. Music - We finally managed to get both Yellow Submarine and Maxwell's Silver Hammer videotaped on my camera and onto the computer, so I should be able to add them to the next Chaos Magazine website. Way cute.

1. Meditation/Journals
2. Review of previous weeks lessons - air, air pressure and weight (which led off into a long bit about gravity and how it works, which led off into a long bit about the geographical names of things for Nicky, who's still a little confused on the whole city/state/country/continent/planet conundrum) and air temperature
3. Experiments including -
- Illustrating layers of air by pouring cooking oil and colored water into a glass jar with a lid, shaking it up, and then observing what happens and discussing why.
- Demonstrating air moving using perfume and the ceiling fan.
- Making pinwheels out of contruction paper, straight pins and pencils.
- Showing that hot air is lighter than cold air and thus moves up above the colder air by blowing bubbles in a warm bedroom, and then blowing bubbles out in the cold garage, and observing the difference.
4. All students wrote up a lab report for one of the experiments from today.
5. Spelling Bingo - Nicky won.
6. Spelling Bee for second place - Stormy won with "beautiful" though Khy was very impressive earlier, spelling neighborhood correctly.
Homework - What Makes an Aircraft Fly worksheet for Khy and Stormy, and spelling homework due tomorrow.
Comments - Our experiment days are always chaotic and include at least one lecture from me about respecting the time I've put in to preparing, and following the rules so that we can continue to do experiments. But all in all they shaped up and it was a good class. Nicky blew me away with some of the connections that he made today.

1. Meditation/Journal
2. Spelling Bingo (Nicky and Stormy won)
3. Experiments on air pressure and temperature:

A. Water in a plastic cup, place cardboard on top of glass holding it tight, flip cup upside down - and let go of the cardboard.
B. Put straight pin through a 1" x 1" square of cardboard, place pin in the hole of a wooden spool and blow on the other side, letting go of cardboard. It will stick to spool as long as you blow against it.
C. Blow up balloons and measure with string. Put in freezer for ten minutes and re-measure.
D. Observe water boiling and the process of evaporation.
E. Compare glass of ice cubes and glass of warm water to observe condensation.
F. (Demonstration) Put half blown-up balloon in boiling pan of water, and observe it's expansion.

4. Defined temperature, contraction, expansion and pressure in science notebooks, and wrote down procedure for one of the experiments.
5. Basic drawing exercise.

Khy got overwhelmed with the work and spent about half an hour in his room instead of working. He does this much less than he used to, but it's still frustrating to see him struggling. He definitely needs more coping skills. Working on it.

Activities:
1. Introduced the Aviation and Wright Brothers unit.
2. A "math treasure hunt" (from here) that involved the kids looking up clues about the Wright Brothers along the way.
3. Discussed Wright Tasks, a file folder of projects that the kids will choose from and complete during the course of the unit. There are Math, Geography, Writing, Speeches, Art and Health centered activities, but all of them relate in some way to the Wright Brothers. (This is an idea I found on the internet - somewhere - and built on it.)
4. Reviewed the scientific process.
5. Watched Eyewitness Flight, checked out from the library.
6. Did 3 experiments to prove that air is fluid and takes up space, and one experiment to prove that it has weight. (All from here: pdf file
7. Students filled out lab sheets for one of the experiments we did today.
8. Completed a beginning drawing worksheet.
9. Spelling Bingo. (Stormy won.)

While at times today was hectic, overall it went better than I had expected. The experiments were fun, the kids were sharp and connected with it all, and there wasn't even too much grumbling at the increase in writing.

I am sick as a dog, but officially on winter break. Hurray! For our last day of fall term we finally finished our raft experiment, floating the popsicle stick rafts in the bathtub and seeing how many pennies they could hold before sinking. When the first one took 54 pennies I got a little worried that we'd done TOO well at building the rafts, because the kids were getting a little bored with it. Once it went down, though, it seemed to up the stakes a little and they all got into rooting for their favorites to win. It was a pretty fun exercise.

After that we made scented ornaments for the tree. They were sort of a pain to make, but that could have just been me. Regardless, we had fun, and last night the whole house smelled like apples and cinnamon while they were drying! Very cool.

( Scented ornaments recipe here )

The spelling test went well - Stormy missed none, and Khy only missed one, and I think that was more carelessness than confusion, because he spelled "brain" as "brian." Nicky named 5 "B" words with ease, and would have kept going if I hadn't stopped him.

And I narrowly managed to finish the aviation unit and the Greece/Myths units for next term this last week. I really pushed myself to get it done, maybe a little too much - but now I should be able to relax through Winter break. Hallelujah.

Nicky had a little trouble coming to school today, on account of he was throwing a fit about getting out of bed. So we shook up the schedule a little bit, and started with Khy and Stormy's times tables. I'd sort of dropped the last few - the hardest few - numbers on them and run, so this is the first time I've gotten a glimpse of how they're faring with the 4's, 6's, 7's, 8's and 12's. Not too bad, really. Better than I expected. While ideally I want to see them memorized so they don't even have to think too much about the answers, they're doing an excellent job at mentally figuring out the answers that they don't immediately know. When Nicky joined us we did journals and phase one of our raft project. It's an activity that I found when I was looking for supporting materials for Huck Finn. Using popsicle sticks, you glue them together to make model rafts. You always start with two as supports, and then glue the rest across them. For the first raft you only use two popsicle stick "planks," and then four on the next, six on the next, 8 on the next, and 10 on the last. Then you glue a dixie cup on each one, in the center. We got that much done today (Nicky and I built the biggest raft, using the 10 planks, while Stormy and Khy built two rafts each) and then left them to dry. Tomorrow we'll fill the bath tub up with water and float one raft at a time, adding pennies to the dixie cup, to see how many we can add before the raft sinks. I have a chart for them to fill out, and then we'll graph the results as well.

During snack time we finished a story web that we've been doing for Huck Finn, and I walked them through a book report form on it as well. Then we switched gears and practiced our music. I finally tracked down a site that plays a midi-style version of both Yellow Submarine and Maxwell's Silver Hammer, so the kids can perform sans the Beatles' voices. We're stuck with Elvis on Return to Sender for now, though. We spent the most time on Yellow Submarine, first trying to get it down with different music, and then polishing up the choreography a bit. I've decided they'll be performing it for us on Yule, and I think it's going to be awesome, if I do say so myself. We also practiced a little bit on the other two songs, but they won't be ready until after Winter Break. I did ask for volunteers for a solo bit on Return to Sender, and both Stormy and Nicky tried it and were just adorable. It's going to be hard to decide which one to use. But I have something special planned on Maxwell's Silver Hammer for whichever two don't do a solo on the Elvis, so everyone will get a chance to shine. We are SO doing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody next! :P

I taught the kids a mantra for meditation today. I was afraid they might find it boring, repeating the same thing over and over, but instead they were thrilled. Nicky danced around after, celebrating that he had made the "next level." :P

We delved deeper into the color wheel today, discovering tertiary colors and coloring a handout to reflect it. Nicky colored a picture using tertiary colors, while Khy and Stormy copied down color terms and definitions (hue, tint, saturation) from the dry erase board. I expected major resistance to this, because I still don't have my kids doing much hand writing, but instead they jumped right into it and Khy even commented "I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but this is kind of fun." Definitely his hand muscles have strengthened from last year, when asking him to write just about anything beyond his name would have him complaining of pain.

I pulled up Adobe Photoshop, and for a while we played around with different color settings on that program. They especially liked it when I used a photograph of them and changed the hue so that their skin turned different colors. Nicky is very interested in playing around more with a graphics program, and both Khy and Stormy have expressed an interest in developing their own web pages at some point down the line, so I think I'll have to look into creating some lessons toward that end.

We did a color experiment. Each child was given Dixie cups with food-colored water in them - yellow, blue and red. They were also given empty Dixie cups, straws, and a data sheet to record their findings. From there I just let them go - using the straws as pipettes to transport and measure the colored water, they were allowed to mix in any way that they wanted, as long as they kept track of the formulas they used. The kids had a blast with this, got very creative, and we didn't have any spills. I call it a success.

We wrapped up the day with a spelling test for Khy and Stormy, which they both aced. Now we have another 4 day weekend.

The bad news is that I'm almost out of light and color activities. I was hoping they would last me the entire term (11 weeks) but it looks like it will only stretch through week 6. However, quite by accident today I stumbled on this website, where I have a feeling I'll be able to find enough to fill out the rest of the term.

Happy weekend! I swear I'm not going to know how to get through a full week, this month has me so spoiled.

Wednesdays have become a big favorite with the kids - the unit on color, combining art with science has been a success. Today we started with the video (this has turned out to be movie week - oops) the Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow. After that we spent a long time doing an experiment called "One Color or Two." I don't remember where I got it from, but this is how it goes:

Materials:
plastic cup
paper towels or coffee filters
water based markers
ruler
prediction sheet (three columns with headings for color, prediction and observation.)

Activities and Procedures:
1. Cut coffee filters into 1" wide strips
2. Fold strip over the top of the glass so that the bottom of it touches the bottom of the glass.
3. Remove the paper and color a stripe of green two inches from the bottom end.
4. Fill the glass with an inch of water.
5. Have the students predict what will happen when the paper is placed in the water.
6. Set the strip in the glass with the stripe one inch above the water.
7. Have students watch the water as it moves up the strip. Green will separate into blue and yellow.
8. Have students use other colors and make predictions as to what will happen, and record their observations on sheet.

This experiment worked REALLY well. It was fun, too.

Soon I hope to sit down and come up with a better plan for Nicky. Oh, he's fitting into the classes really well (possibly with the exception of Thursdays) but I don't have a consistent schedule for him as far as making sure he's getting what he needs with reading and math practice. I'd also like to get a better organization for the kids computer lab and independent study time. Maybe a list of goals for them to work on each week, or at least a list of their options so they don't end up defaulting to reading all the time. That will be easier as well once Shane gets the school computers set up. And finally, I'd like it if I could find the discipline to spend a little time every day on lesson plans for the future. I would really like to have some solid stuff in place for winter and spring term, so I don't end up spending my vacation times trying to throw something together at the last minute.