What DID we do this week?

Our two biggest events this week were group oriented. On Friday, of course, there was the play and talent show at our HAA gathering, and on Monday we met with another homeschooling group for the first time. It's a more local group—smaller, and two of the families we already know from HAA. It's a very informal, relaxed gathering. The kids played games and designed and created paper airplanes while the moms chatted and watched. We are looking forward to romping through local parks with them throughout the summer, as well as gathering in more distant parks with our friends at HAA. What a fun summer we will have!

Calvin finished reading The Water Horse and Mitt the Michigan Mouse and started The Marvelous Land of Oz. On the subject of books, Thursday we went to see a stage production of something he read last month: The Cricket in Times Square. He wrote a journal entry about the event.

There was Lego play in ancient Egypt, complete with Lego pyramid Egyptian god figures. Calvin read, and reread and reread, Senefer: A Young Genius in Old Egypt (out of print, but we got it from the library), and tried a few fun links suggested by Intellego: Images from inside Tut's Tomb (by Discovery News); a video about tombs, and lots of info on King Tut (from National Geographic); and a great interactive site on the pyramids at Giza (from the British Museum). He also played this silly tomb adventure game (from National Museums Scotland), this silly mummy game (from Schools Liaison), and revisited this great interactive mummy making site (from the Children's University of Manchester). Both The British Museum and the Children's University of Manchester sites have great overall presentations on ancient Egypt.

That Anubis, he's such a trickster...

He was reading about Senefer as an elephant walked by...

He did two Math-U-See lesson sets from Gamma, introducing products of 5 and 10, and we also discussed products of 9. We played Totally Tut a few times, some modified versions of Shut the Box, and quizzed each other on odd-ball multiplication problems (the bigger the number, the better—what is 6 million x 9????) while playing in the yard, while walking the dogs, while eating lunch, while driving...I think you get the idea.

I'm bringing back BFSU (Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding). We'd been wandering through it last fall but got away from it over the winter, so this week we reviewed some of the topics we'd covered and I was delighted to find that the understanding is still there. The BFSU book is just a guide for us, a way for me to jump start conversations about science, but really we've been talking about these things all along.

There was piano practice, and line practice, what with the talent show and the play on Friday, both of which went very well. There was dog walking, grocery shopping, swimming lessons, and library volunteering.

As a family we started watching episodes from The Pyramid Code on Netflix. It's a little conspiracy theorist in flavor, but many of the ideas put forward are entirely plausible, or at least imaginable, and the show certainly makes one think.

This week we'll be cleaning up from the book sale, which happened yesterday, and heading over to Holland, Michigan for the Tulip Time festival, at which there are likely to be no tulips this year since the season started a month early. No problem, we don't really go for the tulips so much as for the big lake, the beach, and the quiet, relax time we sneak in while there.

Artistic Friday

Our day started with sunshine, orange juice, coffee for me, and a few notes on Tutankhamun for Calvin. I discovered this sight long after I'd had enough coffee to wake me up and get me started.

We are still working on our mummy cases. This is turning into a two week project, mostly due to our lack of extra time, but we're having a good time with it.

We've been talking lately about categorizing the world from a scientific standpoint, so today we went outside with our sketch pads to find the symmetry in living things, and the lack thereof in non-living natural or human-made things. It was fun from both a scientific and an artistic standpoint.

And the rest of the day was spent at HAA practicing for Calvin's next play (The Wizard of Oz!) and creating oil pastel paintings, then back at home rather carefully organizing the Legos, which are still spread all over the front room because organization takes time, and messes often get worse before they get better. That's one of the fun parts of life.

We're linked up to Saturday's Artist.

Lots of energy

A little science sounded good today. Lately all Calvin has wanted to do is read. Which is great. He finishes one book and moves on to the next one. He has it in his mind that he wants to read all of the Magic Tree House books in order of the series. I've been picking them up for .25 a piece when they come into the sale room at the library, and since there are 45 books in the series, he's had plenty to do as of late. Between books he grabs his backpack and notebook and tears through the house on some mission, pretending to be Jack and Annie. It's fun.

But today a little science sounded good. It's been a while since we visited the BSFU chapters and when we last left off we were talking about energy, so that's where we picked up, talking about the different forms of energy (a simplified version) and how we use them in everyday life. We had checked out a few books from the library that were nice to have, but not stellar, and mostly we had a good time chatting about how to conserve energy. Even better...coincidentally Calvin received a set of Snap Circuits from my aunt and uncle for St. Nicholas Day, and he and Jon have been going to town with it since then, so we spent quite a bit of time with that, too. It's a great set and we're really loving it.

Just one day

We made a list in this morning of things we wanted to accomplish. We make lists a lot of mornings. Today there were so many things on our list that I think we were busy crossing things off from then until dinner, and even then we hadn't finished.

We both started with journal writing, then on to the piano, and finally we colored some Prehistoric Beasts.

Today was the last fall story time at the library and while we were there we searched for some books on early humans and cave painting. We found surprisingly little, but brought home what they had. Thankfully we already had one fantastic book on hand—First Painter, by Kathryn Lasky—that my mom had kindly checked out from her library for us (which we finally got to around bedtime).

Then, as we drove into the garage the sun came out, so we put on our warm things to head out for a walk and some nature collecting. We have been looking at the lessons in BFSU (B-2 and B-3) that deal with classification of things, recognizing the attributes of living things, and identifying the living as belonging to either the plant or animal kingdoms, so a hike with discussions of this kind was on our list.

When we got home we drank tomato soup from mugs and ate cheese and apples slices while we watched the second episode of Nova's Becoming Human. This is a series we stumbled upon thanks to Netflix recommendations and we've really enjoyed it. Lunchtime today was our third viewing :)

After lunch a little more piano, a little math, some geography worksheets, some Legos, some BFSU list making, some more fall leaf decoration making, and even some playing in the snow (snow!). Then finally some dinner making. Well, for me some dinner making, for Calvin some Highlights reading, since his new issue came in the mail today.

And even though we didn't get to everything on our list (more a problem with being over ambitious than with being lazy), we enjoyed what we did do so we'll count that a productive and successful day.

Kitchen counter science—the particulate nature of matter

It was so dark today that we had to have the lights on to read, even at one in the afternoon.

The train has now eaten our piano room.

Calvin started and finished a number of Magic Tree House books, then went on a "Jack and Annie" exploration of the house, complete with backpack and notebook.

And when it seemed like the day was going to slip away, Calvin decided it was time for science.

Kitchen counter science. A mess of household stuff, and more stuff. We dove directly into the fourth lesson in BFSU, and the solids, liquids, and gases kit from the Young Scientist Series. And when we finished we had a mess of homemade slime and a bubbling cauldron of everything that was within reach. And possibly a new understanding of the particulate nature of matter.