Weekly Wrap-Up: In Which I Give Myself a Strong Lecture

I don't know what it is about this year. I mean, I know we have had a huge transition with our move to the Arctic and all, and honestly because of the move, I've never been more thankful we homeschool. The kids didn't have to walk into a new classroom in a new building with 25 new faces staring at them, and most importantly, I do not have to get up at 5am to shovel snow so we can get the car out to get them to school! On the other hand, I have really had a SERIOUS case of the homeschool blahs. It's not that the kids have been lacking academically; we are following right along with our curriculum, especially our core subjects. It's just that I have lacked my usual creativity and enthusiasm. And worse, I have not engaged the children as deeply as I should in their studies.

So this week was the week I sat myself down and told myself things had to change. These are my children, after all. They are my job right now, my ministry. How can I be so apathetic in my approach?

To combat this apathy, I have tried to say no to the huge amounts of time I spend on the computer, and I am trying to say yes more to the children. In addition, I am trying to bring in some of the fun, more creative activities I used to be so good at discovering and implementing.

The big thing we did this week was really very simple. Since we began a new month, I decided to start Carschooling's History on the Go calendar. If you sign up for the free calendar, you will receive a monthly email which lists by day important events in history. In addition, it includes links to information and activities pertaining to the subject.

We actually rescheduled February 1. The activity that day was Bubble Gum Day, but when I went to the official website, the "holiday" was set for the 4th. We had a busy day scheduled on the 1st anyway (which ended up being snowed out). So on the 2nd of February it's no surprise that we learned about Punxatawney Phil. We read about the history of the holiday, learned facts about groundhogs, and watched a few videos of the Pennsylvania festivities.

February 3 is Norman Rockwell's birthday, so we studied him and examined some of his artwork. We discussed the allure of the artist due to the fact that he focused on everyday people doing everyday things and threw in some humor to boot. The kids then drew their pictures of scenes from everyday life. It was like pulling teeth to get even one of them to share his creation with me. Which is appropriate because Michael's is about teeth. He finally let me see it but didn't want me to have it in my possession for any length of time because he knew I would take a picture of it. Well, why wouldn't I? Look how cute it is!

Friday, the 4th was our Bubble Gum Day. We watched how bubble gum is made, and we got to chew bubble gum. Of course Alex, who has never in her life wanted to even try bubble gum wanted to today. But she has braces. So I let her suck on a piece!

In addition to these activities, I finally brought back the Estimation Jar.

The children must guess how many are in the jar. Then we take out a handful and count them so they get an idea of the quantity of just a sampling. They then have the option of changing their guess. Finally, we count them to determine a winner.



For our last Bubble Gum activity, the kids wrote Didactic Cinquains. A didactic cinquain follows this format:

One word, subject of poem
Two words, adjectives describing title
Three word phrase giving more information
Four words, feelings about the subject
One word, synonym or other reference for the subject

I had the kids write their cinquains and then draw a picture about bubble gum. Then they cut out and pasted their cinquains on to their picture. Here is Alex's:

Gum
Chewy, gooey
Blow big bubbles
Yummy, squishy, sweet, popping
Candy

As far as our other activities go, this week in Chemistry was another treat week. (I promise not every week adds to your waistline!) We studied Nitrogen and Phosphorus. Since Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air we breathe, we did an experiment with egg whites. We noted on our lab sheets what plain old egg whites look like just plopped in a bowl. Then we whipped them up and documented the change. Of course we couldn't let them go to waste, though, so we added lots of sugar, a pinch of salt, and some mini chocolate chips.

Our meringues were delicious.



And as we munched on them, we had this question to consider: What would happen if you mixed egg whites in the vacuum of space?


Hosted by Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
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