Friday, October 30, 2009

Our Pumpkin Carving Experience

Dearest Abby has never been allowed to carve a pumpkin. We have always painted our pumpkins. I refused to let her do Demons or spooky Halloween stuff. We came to a lovely compromise and began our 3 hour project.


First we pinned the template and wet it down. Then we took the exacto knives and carved the lines.



Then we cut the top off~


And scooped the insides out. THIS took her forever! Not the scooping part but the scraping part. I think she removed atleast 2 inches of the insides! Haha



Hali repeats the process with hers.



She thinks this is really great but gross.




After finishing the outline we dusted it with flour so the lines stand out better.



It's brains are all gone~



 Hali pops the top on hers.



Abby's completed pumpkin.

 
Hali and Brianna attacking the pumpkin (pretending to anyway!)



What is it with kids and bunny ears?



Hali's Completed "THE MAN ON THE MOON"



Abby's finished "PURR-FECT KITTY"


Slimy Experiments

We don't Celebrate Halloween, but that's no reason NOT to have some fun! We would  have normally had a fall festival today but we didn't plan ahead so... We're not complaining though. We sat down for a few hours and did some pretty cool experiments. I really thought the girls would enjoy them, so imagine my surprise when the boys had just as much fun!

I am going to be honest here. We tried the water bender experiment and we just didn't have enough static electricity to make it work!
We did however have a couple successful runs with Guck and Oobleck.




Oobleck is not a polymer. Instead, it is a colloid suspension, a substance in which the molecules do not settle. It is a solid and a liquid at the same time.

Here is the simple recipe. Make sure you use newspaper or paper plates to protect your surfaces.
1/2 box of cornstartch
3/4 C. Water
Food coloring
Mix well. This experiment was so SIMPLE yet one of the favorites!


 

 
Nobody believed her when she said it was hard....



From everyone else's angle the oobleck appeared to be a liquid...because it is. Until you pick it up. Then its not.

Here are a couple video's that we took










We then began our Guck experiment. It was quite messy but all of the kids put their own baggies in their own areas and I have seen them take out their Guck and play with it. I wonder what it is about these chemical toys that send mom's flocking to the stores at Christmas time to fill their little ones stocking with them?

If you didn't know, Gak!, Silly Putty, Floam, Smud and Guck are all made up of Polymerized chemicals. Polymers basically consist of long chains of molecules that are flexible and that cross-link every which way. When the right chemicals are mixed, the molecules from the chemicals cross link and create a polymerized liquid.

If you pull a polymer apart slowly, the molecules hold together and stretch. If you pull it apart quickly it snaps because the molecules can't hold together.



  

 

 
I love this face!



 

 

 

 

And now to our video









Thursday, October 29, 2009

Week Fourteen Finished

This has been a very busy and long week in our little world. We are finishing up all of our fall sports and hopefully will be settling down into a home bound season after next week.

We finally finished our fire unit and followed it up with a trip to the station. I will show those in another post. We embarked on high school lapbooking this last week. Honestly they are turning out wonderfully and the boys are learning from them. I will share those when they are completely finished. Nick is doing the Civil War and Aaron is doing the Westward Expansion. Both really big lapbooks with tons of information.


Hali has been working on her di Vinci Lapbook. She is having to draw, color or learn technique in every unit and there are MANY units. Here she is drawing the Louvre where the Mona Lisa is kept.  She is using a post card I picked up while I was there for inspiration.



These are some other items she is using for inspiration. We dug through some of my old photos and pulled out a few of our Missions Team standing in front of the Louvre. All the kids that it was cool, so we spent an hour or so looking through all of my photos. They were amazed at the wealth in some of the palace's.



We don't really celebrate Halloween here. Since we have been doing a unit study on animal that have "night eyes" we decided to make our own spiders. They do most of their work at night and sleep during the day. Here are Abby's.


Isn't it so cute?


We are studying Bats, Owls and Koala's now for science.
 
Aaron is trying to figure out this simple craft.



And then Nick gets in on the action of making holes for the legs.



We had a coloring contest.




 
Can you guess who's was who's? Hint: Nick gave his to his girlfriend.



We HAD to  make some pumpkins since that is what we have been studying. Abby's is the top one and Hali's is the bottom. They used primary shapes to make their characteristics


I love having Abby make this big books. She had read this book a while ago and since the pc's were just laying around we decided to put them to use. We plan to give these to the little girl down the block who just started homeschooling.




 
The last of our fire unit.



"How my family prepares for winter" ... Abby's answers were "firewood, food, clothes and lanterns". Can you tell my children have had too many midwest ice storms?



A few Autumn worksheets.



Abby has fallen for this game. On Sunday of this last week I was downstairs for several hours preparing for the school week while the kids watched transformers with dad. Abby came down after the move and when she saw all the awesome new stuff in her workboxes she yells "Oh! How cool is all this stuff"... She sat down and did workbox's 1-6 while I finished lesson plans and organizing for the week! I LOVE IT WHEN THEY WANT TO LEARN ON THEIR OWN!



Lastly, these little characters were the highlight of our week. Abby just adores these and they have made learning to read much more fun!



I am trying to put Abby's words in these but I am still off on alignment.  Right now we are using the words that came with it.

That about rounds off the week for the new stuff that I took pictures of. Tomorrow we are going to be adding some pumpkin fun to our day and enjoying the apple crisp and apple crumble we made tonight!


Monday, October 26, 2009

Football Friday~ No McDonalds this time

Our last out of State football game was Friday night. We played against Waverly. The boys had alot of fun.

After the game, we all piled into the local Taco Bell. It took over 2 hours to get us all fed and out of there. The boy's sure didn't mind the slow service... A team of girl's college volleyball players showed up right before us.


Aaron all dressed up!



Ethan~ Who is Aaron's twin. He got his growth spurt this last summer and I was always yelling at him at practice because I thought he was my son!



Boys chowing down!



The Junior High boy's joined us for moral support.



 Coach Varney set with the grown ups for a while.



Here is Ethan again, this time without the hat.




 
JB, Nick and Robert



Aaron, JB and Shayne



These boys are downright silly.



This is my favorite picture of the season. These guys are such wonderful friends!