Week 6

Rexie got new glasses this week to help him see more clearly and remind the kids to focus. They've actually done amazingly well this year so far with all the changes and interruptions. Grandpa has been discharged from home PT and OT so we have fewer morning visitors at the house. As much as my dad grumbled about it, I think he actually misses them. Gave his day a bit of routine. He's moving slower again this week as the cortisone injections from the rheumatologist have worn off, but he's still trying.  I am starting to understand that his sleeping all day has a lot to do with pain. I am just not sure what else there is available..... But now on to School:

We are finishing up with the pyramids book for science this week before returning to SITB. We've been observing our "mummies" and bread. The mummies have been more interesting as all the apples in  something have a hard shell around them, and some are growing crystals up the walls of the cups. The bread is pretty much doing nothing.......

Mummy Experiment day 4

A testament to the preservatives in white bread... going on 10 days and no mold in sight on any of the pieces.Not sure if I am impressed with modern science or disgusted.....

So this year with the girls I gave up trying to figure out my own LA stuff. We went with Language Lessons For Today grade 4 and I am loving it. Really can't say enough.  I am also enjoying the MFW phonics in 1st. I was unsure how it would work after not using MFW for K last year, but Hulk seems to be well prepared for it but not so far ahead that I am tempted to skip. I have come to the realization that the girls read to learn so fast that we skipped much of the phonics stuff. Their public school used a sight word,figure it out, sorta phonics approach that got them reading quickly but not writing well. Also they were allowed to write and spell "phonetically", but no one ever corrected the phonics and as parents we were asked not to correct their writing. They didn't want the children afraid to write because they might make a mistake.One on hand I get, but on another, as the person who had to spend 2-3 years fixing the break down in spelling skills, I want to say hogwash...lol. While they could read, it has taken a few years for their spelling skills to  be even close to matching their reading. I can already see Hulk getting it through the dictation and phoneme work.

So I had to finally show Hulk actually doing some MFW 1st grade stuff. He's only using the phonics portion so its a pretty minute part of his day.

 I forgot to thank my mom last week for also finally getting our timeline started. I plan to "z" the line back and forth on the board. We'll add the 1st grade stuff in as we can too.....

And because I don't have enough science experiments taking over my parents house.... project #3 brewing...lol... Pyramids in chemistry!... We are working on growing baking soda crystals that we can observe for shape.

And Wa-la! Few hours later we actually have crystal growth..... the kids were very impressed as we've never had good luck growing crystal before..........

 And then by the next morning we have......

And then we had to go one step further...

  DAY 7- Mummy Experiment results.... the winner was straight table salt, followed by the control. NaCl provided the most drying power and no mold growth. We took a picture of the cool crystals growing on the side of the cup with the table salt. We speculate that these were formed as the water drawn from the apple evaporated. We were most surprised by the Epsom salts. While it drew the water out of the apple, it trapped the water in the salt or below the layer of salt causing pooling, and mold growth.

Here's a look at our final results......