We tore into the CDs as soon as they arrived, and have been enjoying the music memory work CDs for the first quarter. Last week, Daddy started reading Adam and His Kin at bedtime. (Early history, written by a Protestant, but an interesting perspective) And this week I started The Golden Goblet, an Egyptian historical fiction.
Because we had a class at the museum to attend on Mon, our official first day for the 15-16 school year was Tues. Aug 11th. I wish I could say it was all roses and sunshine.... but that wouldn't be accurate. I am pretty sure they forgot every thing they learned in Math last year during our 4 week break; and tears were shed over the shortened time to play with Legos and outside....
Getting started; memory work at breakfast is a GREAT idea! I pop on the CD while we eat. We pause to talk about things at will, and when we finish the current week, we skip around to favorite songs on the disc. The Timeline cards are hanging on the Dining room wall, so they are easy to refer too. (N4, the 4 year old was already pointing out the "Creation" card to Grandma VO.)
After breakfast, they had a little break, then on to Math and Science. I decided to combine the Science from Week 1 and Week 3, so that I would only have to stop at the florist for flowers once.
Week 1 Science Project:
I had such high hopes for Science, but was disappointed that our first experiment was less than stellar... Splitting the stems of the carnations didn't work at all :-( so I just put 3 in each color, and they didn't suck up the dye very well that way either.
The celery was much better! It sucked up a LOT of dye, and we were able to easily identify the Xylem. (Turns out those stringy bits of celery are there for a reason!)
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| L1 was excited to extract an Xylem! |
I copied the lab sheets, but I ended up having to do all the writing for them, and a certain 8 yo preferred to profusely decorate his with a garden instead of the experiment. They all wanted their own, but I am considering either pre-writing info on, or just doing one sheet to share.
Experiment 2: (Week 3 in the book)
Because I didn't have a mother's helper this Tuesday (I plan to mostly do Science on the days she is here to distract the twins) I had to stop and take care of them and N4 a few times, and without direct supervision of the Botanists, it turned into a free for all, with flower parts EVERY WHERE! They were happy to examine and dissect, but didn't seem too interested in instruction.... When they were finished, they decided they needed to save their parts, so I gave a quick lesson on how to press flowers between paper, I think they intend to glue into their nature journals and cover with tape to preserve, after they dry a bit.
Just as I was cleaning up, N4 decided he really wanted to do it after all :-) He was actually the most interested in the individual parts, and enjoyed taping them down to the diagram (I printed from the Botany Lapbook) He was so proud of it, that we had to hang it on the wall in his room.
What I learned:
The more I prepare ahead of time, the better!!!
Less is better, next time no doubling experiments.....
The twins are NOT interested in science ;-)
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