Educational fair

Jonah's project was in electronics, he built a circuit from tin foil, rubberbands, a clothespin and a lightbulb. I thought it was pretty cool. His question at the fair was, "How do you use a simple circuit to send an SOS signal." He'll answer that in the video...

educational fair

We headed to our first homeschool educational fair in February. Isaiah decided the week before the fair that he would like to make a volcano. No problem, I thought, sounds like the perfect project for an 8 year old boy and I have lots of baking soda and vinegar. We googled homemade volcaoes. I suggested making one of paper mache, he really wanted to make one out of clay. So we took off to the store for 10 pounds of flour and 3 pounds of salt and later that day we had...



The clay sort of slid down the bottle we placed in the middle- a consequence of doing it all at once instead of in stages, but we had only 6 days before the fair and it needed time to dry. Isaiah wrote up a nice little informative sheet and we gathered everyone around for our explosion. And it didn't work. :( We searched the church's pantry for more baking soda and vinegar, and it still didn't have enough oomph to overflow the bottle. So we sprinked baking soda all over the volcano and dumped vinegar over that (Isaiah's idea) so at least it had the effect of a volcano. Oh well, live and learn. Next time we'll start earlier and have time for a practice run before the big event. I have to say Isaiah stayed very calm throughout the entire thing and didn't loose his cool over a falled project. For that, I was quite proud of him.

Upcoming events...

look for "J's book review" in an upcoming post. J is about to complete "Core 3" of the homeschool curriculum we use (called Sonlight). This Core is a course in history from the early Spanish conquistidors to the 1850s. He has read dozens of books over the last year and will share his top pick with you soon.

Back in Time

We are studying early America in our homeschool and had the opportunity to send the boys to a day of school in a one room school house. They joined 30 other children for a full day of school, bringing their lunch wrapped in brown paper and tucked into woven baskets. Discipline was very strict. Children stood and sat when the teacher rang a bell and no talking was aloud. Each student read a short biography of a child that was a student of the school when it opened in 1917.

The kids loved it and can't wait to do it again.

First day of school

E started Kindergarten in August, I began 2nd grade and J begins 5th grade! Where you see you see them seated is where they do the majority of their work. J and I in their bedroom and E in the basement at her desk (which is the object of A's envy!)