Week 3 with the joyful homeschoolers

This week was a little wacky since the two little ones and myself were all sick with a cold complete with the body aches and all :( But despite me telling the kiddos we could take a day off of school they still wanted to do the "fun" stuff... their words not mine lol

Here are some photos of our week.

We learned that Hudson River was named after Henry Hudson and about his travels. So for a project we used cornmeal, water, and a baking sheet to see how rivers are formed. The first picture is of Doodlebug starting the river (the source) and the second is of him pointing to the mouth of the river.

Since we are learning all about the ocean in science we learned what saltwater leaves behind in tide pools after evaporating. The neighbor boy, Mo, wanted to get in on the action since he didn't have school this day. Here the kids are starting the experiment.

Here is what it looked like the next day.

Here the kids are after I told them that the salt in the ocean doesn't come from God holding a big salt shaker above the water.... ;) it comes from soil, skeletons from sea animals, etc... the faces are from the skeletons of course :) Kids!

Here we are learning about the compass rose. They were being silly in this picture and I love it because it shows their personalities.

Here Pollywog is working on her english lesson. She has been learning about linking verbs and this is a sentence she put together using one of her linking verbs. She is really enjoying english. We have been using First Language Lessons 2.

NOEO science: Molecules

In NOEO this week we have been learning about Molecules and how they move and mix with other molecules. One experiment we did to show this was using food coloring with different temperature waters. The first one is room temp and you can see that the food coloring mixed in with the water molecules. The second is warm water and it mixed in much faster. The third is very cold iced water. It showed how slow molecules move when cold.... frozen molecules don't move. The kids get a kick out of these simple experiments.

Another NOEO experiment was to make salad dressing. I wasn't intending to make it Halloween themed, it just turned out that way so I went with it. So we dug up some garlic from the yard and picked some rosemary from my sad herb garden and went to work learning that molecules move and mix with other molecules. We call this a solution.... soluble + solute = solution or as the kids liked to call it, potion. ;)

First we had to smell the ingredients by themselves. Doodlebug wasn't too thrilled with the smell of garlic. He wanted to make sure I added this pic to the blog lol

Then we chopped ingredients and put olive oil in with the garlic and vinegar in with the rosemary. These are now sitting on a bookshelf waiting to be opened, sniffed, mixed together, and then consumed on salad. EEK!

On Friday we usually have a "fun day" you may have read about this in my past ECC posts. It is a day where we skip all formal school work and just do fun projects. I give the kids a goody bag to take with them to their rooms for quiet time on this day. It will sometimes have a craft or science project of sorts. They LOVE LOVE LOVE It.

Here is Pollywog's goody bag ingredients, her working on it (in her Halloween outfit of course), and her finished project hanging out for the birdies to consume.

Here is Doodlebug's. The car didn't really go very well though and we were both a little disappointed. We may have to rework the directions a bit next time.

If anyone is interested in any of our goody bag projects you can find them on my pinterest board. Most of the time that is where I get my ideas from.

The rest of the pics are just random ones that I couldn't resist posting. Sorry if you get tired of seeing my kids I know I take WAY too many pictures. Such is the life of a proud Mama though :)

 

 

 

Happy homeschooling from the joyful homeschool :) Have a great week!

Sailing to America!!! Week two.

Every sailor needs a good pair of sunglasses... and Inchworm informs us that the sun will hurt your eyes if you are not wearing them because the sun is hot. I however like to see those big brown eyes so I prefer the glasses off.

 

 Here Captain Doodlebug is sailing our ship around the world to dock at various harbors and check out the weather in different areas across the globe.

Pollywog working on spelling. She is whizzing through her words and is a few weeks ahead now.

Doodlebug is using dictation from HOD and is speeding through the units with only one mistake so far. We also have been using Spelling Power since last school year and he is doing very well with it too. Working on spelling words much above his grade level.  

I love that he finds it fun for me to mark his work with my red pen lol .... well as long as its all "A"s I mark

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Here Doodlebug is working on english. This boy is crazy! He actually has fun diagramming sentences. He's rather good at it too. Of course that could be because of the english we are using. Rod and Staff english series is excellent.

This is a picture Pollywog drew after reading the book pictured beside it for bookbasket time

Here is her artwork to illustrate our poem for this week. I love her creativity. One verse of the poem reads "I'd rather fight some mighty wave" So her sailor has two swords and is ready to fight two mighty waves :)

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 Vocab word for the week was gale. It came from the kids history reading. Of course Doodlebug had to add something about bionicles in there. Any chance he gets... :P

Holy, Holy, Holy

Getting in some exercise during Bible memory. Toe touches and push ups. I love Doodlebug's face in the push up one. It was fun to see Inchworm getting involved too.

With pride comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2 The kids thought of the hand motions all on their own for this one and I LOVED watching them do it.

Here the kids are learning about the lunar eclipse. Pollywog was fascinated to know that the moon doesn't actually have it's own light, it just reflects light from the sun.

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Pollywog is very good at math, but that doesn't mean she is always enthusiastic about doing it

In science this week we learned how the shape of a birds beak can help them get their food. The kids had fun using instruments to dig up goodies... especially the M&M's.

For goody bag this Friday Fun Day I had the kids work together for some team work time. They worked as mad scientists making and blowing up concoctions in the yard. ;)

Here is what Inchworm could be found doing while we were schooling this week :) He was so proud of his tower, but any good builder must be prepared to knock it down and start from scratch a time or two.... or three.

My wonderful husband walking baby America for me so I could get some school planning done. I thought it was funny that he couldn't put the book down even to do this lol You know he is reading Greg Isles again when this sort of thing happens.