Friday, February 24, 2012

Today, no math! N has finished Singapore Math 4A, and S is one (very long) review away from finishing Singapore Math 2A, so we took a welcome break from math today. 

We did experiments 91 and 92 from Janice VanCleave's science book (the science book used for Classical Conversations -- I've been impressed with this book, because the experiments are all interesting, simple, and cheap, and they use ingredients we typically have on hand -- the four requirements that must be met before we will undertake most projects at home :).  

For the first experiment, fill a cup with water and add one teaspoon milk:

Fill a second cup with water and add three tablespoons salt:

Carefully drop a raw egg into each cup:

The egg in the water/milk sinks; the egg in the water/salt floats. The water/milk is less dense than the egg, so the egg sinks; the water/salt is denser than the egg, so the egg floats. Pretty awesome to make our own sink/float activity using the same object, an egg! We asked N some questions about this experiment, and she ordered the density of the three items (the water/milk is the least dense, the egg is next dense, and the water/salt is most dense). Great experiment -- thanks Mrs. vanCleave! 

Next, we filled a cup with 1/2-cup water then carefully poured 1/2-cup rubbing alcohol on top of that.   

We used an eye dropper to add cooking oil underneath the top of the alcohol layer, and we watched the oil form perfect spheres suspended between the alcohol and water. The oil would never form a sphere if it were dropped on a countertop, but because the oil is suspended in the alcohol, it is unencumbered by gravity and instead pulls itself into a shape that takes up the least surface area -- a perfect sphere! (Next time, perhaps we'll add food coloring to the oil and make our own mini-lava lamps. :)

S - making her own tree from the parts of a tree puzzle:

G - brown stair and dusting ("Mama, these are all dusty." "OK, grab a brush and dust them off." :)

Then we used a marble as a control of error (an extension I read about at The Wonder Years long ago). To our delight and surprise, the marble turned the brown stair into a homemade xylophone! :)

We've tried this extension before with metal marbles we had on hand, but we did not notice the musical effect. We recently got new (synthetic?) marbles to use with our golf tee activity (because the metal marbles go to a marble run kit, and I didn't want to steal them out of there for the golf tee activity), and we used those marbles this time. I imagine glass marbles might work well, too.

We used our Discovering Great Artists book--again, a great choice used in the Classical Conversations curriculum--to learn about Wassily Kandinsky. He considered paintings to be music on canvas. We closed our eyes and listened to a Mozart sonata (Sonata #16 in C Major for Piano from this collection my husband got on sale for $0.99 ;), and then we painted what the music sounded like to us:

The girls painted a lot of different things -- here are a few.

N - European landmarks (from this Around the World Toob, which we recently got to bolster our continent boxes) at sunset (From L to R: Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa, l'Arc de Triomphe):

S:

G:

G:

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Thursday was just "one of those days," and we didn't get a lot of schoolwork done...a reality of homeschool life, I guess :)

N - (She has finished her Singapore Math 4A book, so we're reviewing with some tests of what she learned):

S - Singapore Math 2A (she needed to catch up on some workbook exercises):

Of course, we read the Bible, listened to our Classical Conversations audio for the week, and reviewed our Veritas Press History cards for the week like we do every day, but I don't have pictures of all that. 

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

S - peg board: 

S - Writing with Ease, Week 3 (narration and handwriting, which she spontaneously used as a copywork sample as well):

S - Dictation (I read one of the sentences she dictated to me aloud to her, and she has to keep it in her head long enough to write it down): 

S - Singapore Math 2A:

S - spontaneous fun with crayons (crayon people):

G - building toy:

G - reading and writing simple sentences:

G - hundred board:

S - coloring:

S - her own personal tea party (anything to keep her busy!):

N - Writing with Ease, Week 3, narration and handwriting:

N - Writing with Ease, Week 3 (I read a sentence from her narration exercise, and she must remember it and write it down):

N - Singapore Math 4A (this is three pages of the 8-page review in the workbook to go along with the 5-page review in the textbook, which she did yesterday -- have I mentioned that Singapore Math has really, really long reviews?):  

For art, we used the Discovering Great Artists book to learn about Georgia O'Keefe, an American painter who, among other things, painted flowers. We learned that her flower paintings typically featured one blossom that took up the entire canvas. The girls used this flower to try their hand at coloring in the style of Georgia O'Keefe:

G:

S:

N: