Friday, May 3, 2013

Tales of a Homeschool Nothing ~ Blood, Water, & Milk otherwise known as A Decade of Change

WOW, What a week! Can't you tell?!?! ^^^^ LOL

Early on in the week, that ^^^^ was NOT the title that was rolling around in my head, but today, yeah, it works.

On a personal note, my sweet Makenzie got baptized Sunday! (see, water)

Wednesday, she fell in a whole at church & cut her pinky toe on a broken pipe. I will leave out all of the grizzly details, but, who knew a toe could bleed so much? It took 4 stitches. I just hope it heals ok because of the location. (see, blood)

Then, Thursday, while our Keepers & Contenders made wire crosses, my graceful child fell on a board & jabbed a nail in her leg. (yep, more blood)

Our Explorers club got to visit a dairy farm Thursday. Even though we live right beside a dairy farm & this is nothing new to my kids, they had so much fun seeing all the cows, the calves, & learning about the milking process. (um, milk)

Now, for the rest of the week that fought desperately to be named......

History has C O N S U M E D our week! You know how I LOVE history, so this week has been so much fun. We finished the 50's and started studying the 60's. This era had so many HUGE things going on. One day, we switched it up & started with history (we usually wait until after lunch). That's all we talked about all day. Its always a good sign when the kids say, "No, I want to hear more!"


We listened to the music before Elvis & talked about what an incredible impact he still has on the musical industry. Then we listened to sooo many different clips from the 60's. Just like everyone else, some they loved, some they couldn't wait for me to change. Austin was awestruck at Jimi Hendrix's rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. All of them enjoyed Elvis & felt the need to dance like him. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Chubby Checker, Johnny Cash, George Jones, & Jerry Lee Lewis were also among the favorites. On the other hand, Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys, Janis Joplin, Patsy Cline, & Bob Dylan were not appreciated for their legendary contributions. I could have spent all week long just studying the musical genius that evolved out of the shadows of war.

We talked about Civil Rights and the similarities between Kennedy & Lincoln. We watched JFK's assassination & JFK Jr's farewell salute. As we were watching a Woodstock video, Austin remembered something that I had said last week & remarked "Weren't you there?". (BWAHAHAHA, um no, I wasn't born yet, but thanks for thinking I'm really old!) As we were graduating high school, a friend & I desperately, but to no avail, wanted to go to the 25th anniversary of Woodstock.

We made a lava lamp with oil, water, & Alka Seltzer.

Another highlight this week, we are reading The Outsiders! They keep begging me to read more. I love revisiting many of the classics I read as a child. Justin is always saying "Stay gold Ponyboy" so I just knew he would be excited too. When I showed him the book, he just looked at me. Long story short - he has never even heard of it, let alone read it. He picked the quote up from a friend. REALLY?! Oh my stars! I couldn't believe it! I guess I need to be educating my husband as well.

We have also been watching Fly Me to the Moon on youtube. Its a little cheesy, but cute.

In science, we have been watching Chris Hadfield from the Canadian Space Agency show us what it is like living on the International Space Station. He turns tedious, everyday activities into fun experiments.

We watched Journey to the Stars by Nasa. Even though I had to reiterate (my kids knew this, but I felt the need to remind them) that the world is not billions of years old & that everything didn't "poof" into existence, it was a fascinating video with lots of fun graphics.

We still need to make our hurricane in a bottle to simulate the crazy weather on Jupiter.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot - we have a new baby! A baby calf, that is! (haha - more milk)



2 comments:

As He Leads is Joy said...

That sounds like an adventure filled week.

Savannah McQueen said...

A lava lamp with oil, water and alka seltzer..that sounds intriguing. I hope you'll share more on that. It seems that you viewed a lot of blood last week. I hope this week is better in that regard. Thanks for linking to HammockTracks and I look forward to your next post.

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