It’s not every day that you get to teach, talk, cook, clean, and just generally live with the sound of three chainsaws and two circular saws echoing through your home all AT THE SAME TIME. In case you’re wondering, it is REALLY LOUD when a chainsaw cuts through the logs of your home. But surviving insanity is starting to pay off:
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| BEFORE |
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| AFTER |
Let me just say that I find it ironic how much I’ve complained about the noise in our home in the past….
But let me also say how blessed we were with the crew that came to work on the exterior of our house. They were the most polite, well-mannered Northern Tennesseeans and Southern Kentuckians you could ever, EVER meet. It was really very amazing to see a crew like this work – extremely efficient (they did this in just ONE WEEK), strove for excellence in their work (that board doesn’t look just right – let’s take it back down and re-do it), and not a single questionable word was spoken the entire time (even when they accidentally stapled their fingers). It really was incredible!
We managed to escape the NOISE for a while to experience Native American culture….
and for a Community Kidz Choir performance…
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| Notice that Stephen is NOT wearing his red Kidz Choir shirt. But if that’s the only thing we forget at this stage of our lives, I think we’re doing pretty good,actually… |
and a trip to the local museum to learn primarily about the Civil War era…
Because we were without Internet service the entire week, we did not get around to doing any of the on-line activities listed in our Resources page. To make up for it, we’re going to actually go to Louisiana. (How’s that for going overboard?)
We finished the American Revolution Lapbook this week. I have to admit that I learned A TON of stuff from this, which shouldn’t be surprising with my lack of history knowledge.
Stephen also color-coded a map of the Lewis & Clark Expedition and put together some mini-books on the Expedition and the Oregon Trail from Scholastic’s 15 Fun-to-Read American History Mini-Books.
For Review time, we’ve been using card games, like the Capitals I Have Who Has game. In fact, we plan to use flashcards and card games a lot over the next couple of weeks.
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| Practicing Latin vocabulary. |
For science, we continued working on our Inside My Body Lapbook. We also…
Created a model esophagus and digestion poster from Scholastic’s Easy Make & Learn Projects for the Human Body. (Stephen also “caught up” on the five senses by making a paper model of a mouth, skin, and nose.)
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| Lift-the-Flap Digestion Poster |
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| Model Esophagus |
We also conducted some experiments on the human body from the free Classic Elementary Life Science Curriculum. (Specifically, Units 6 & 7)
The Cat’s Meow: Model how fat can be digested by bile. (Page 313 of Parent Edition)
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| The boys loved to see the colors churning and swirling around without even stirring it!. |
Stretching Out Your Dinner: Exploring how the small intestine absorbs nutrients. (Page 316 of Parent Edition.)
A Snotty Little Activity: Make a model of mucus (Page 303 of Parent Edition)
Yes, we made snot on the kitchen stove. But it wasn’t just grossology. We also learned about how the protein makes it so stringy. (I had no idea how awful unflavored gelatin smells, by the way.)
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| David had already thrown in dirt to make… it even yuckier. |
We also back-tracked to do a few of the experiments dealing with the senses and the brain:
Where Did I Put That? (Page 269-270) Explore how the brain can learn and use short-term memory.
Your Mind Can Play Tricks on You… (Page 272-273) Explore how easy it is to hear one thing and think about something else. Stephen did not like this experiment because he couldn’t remember everything. And THAT’S the disadvantage to having a perfectionistic memorizer who thinks he needs to remember absolutely everything….
The Nose Knows (Page 238) Explore how the senses of taste and smell are connected. They would have conducted this experiment all day if their Mom had said yes.
Where O’ Where Could I Be? (Page 260-261) Explore how they can sense their body position (aka, proprioception).
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| Where O Where Could I Be? |
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| David playing shark. |
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| EUREKA!!! THE SHRIMP! |
We did many other things this week, like ride in the “Pork Lift,”
and celebrate a friend’s birthday, and attend a reptile presentation where we learned about African bull frogs and legless lizards. There has to be something said about being flexible and allowing for spontaneous combustion activity. We experienced some serious spontaneity this week….
The next couple of weeks we’ll be lying low, but you can visit our our resources page if you’re looking for ideas.
In the meantime, here’s hoping the chaos will calm…. (At least the chainsaws are gone, right?)