Week In Review - (well make that 2)

Hey!  Once again I am two weeks behind on our Week in Review post!!  We have been super busy!  We are having a lot of fun in school right now.  We have extended our days to include more science, art and nature study!!  We are doing those fun things in the afternoon now.  It is making our mornings a lot more relaxed because we are not having to try to fit everything in before lunch,  and giving the kids some good structured fun in the afternoons as well so we are not having as much problem with the "I am bored" whining!

So here are some photo highlights of our last two weeks.  Enjoy!


So last week we did an extensive bird study!!  Our MFW curriculum has a lot of bird study stuff, plus Seth's cub scout Wolf handbook has a lot of stuff on birds.  So we thought we would combine the two, and also incorporate putting everything we are doing and learning into a nature journal that we can turn into the zoo for nature points!!  (therefore we are killing 3 "birds" with one stone, LOL!!)

So one day last week we went on a bird walk.  Unfortunately our good binoculars are missing :-( so I took my camera.  But I don't think the zoom of the camera is quite as good as our binoculars were, but we were able to take pictures too.  (but after I got these pictures Daddy decided to loan us one of his cameras with a bigger zoom lens!  YAY!! Thanks Daddy!)

Anyways, here are some pictures from that walk.

A nest we saw along the way.  It was way high up.  We think it was probably a crow's nest - because of the many crows that were in that area. 

 The kids took a break to draw the nest in their journals.

One of those big crows that we saw.

Some song sparrows we saw in the backyard.

Another cool thing about having the camera is that we took some video of bird sounds we heard.  The next day we listened to the videos again and compared them to audio clips of birds that we found on the internet to determine what we were hearing.  We figured out we were listening to a crow at one point and song sparrows at another time!

Also, one of the things in the cub scout handbook was to record how many birds you saw in a week and where you saw them.  So we put our journal in the car and the kids watched for birds while we were out at different places all week.  We spotted 16 different kind of birds!!

We also made bird feeders and set them out (just didn't have the camera out that day) and we cut up some string and yarn and left it out for the birds to grab for nesting material.

Another item in the cub scout handbook was to make a birdhouse so I found a kit on the scout store site and we made it today.  While we were in the shop we went ahead and completed some other items in the handbook that dealt with recognizing different tools and what they are used for, along with knowing how to use a screwdriver and hammer!  

 Seth screwing a screw into a piece of board

 The boys and their birdhouse

Our completed birdhouse.  The kit only called for gluing the pieces.  We are going to get Daddy to help the boys put a few nails in it with the nail gun to make it more secure and then we will paint it and put it out so a bird or birds can have a new home!  :-)

We have started working on The Magic School Bus World of Germs science kit this week as well!  Yesterday I prepared the agar for the petri dishes that we will use next week to watch bacteria grow.  This week we played with yeast to see what it does.   We mixed it with cold water, warm water alone, and warm water and sugar.  

We also mixed some with warm water and sugar in a test tube and put a balloon around the top.  It took a while to get the balloon to expand.  I was sitting in the living room and saw it finally start blowing up but by the time I got the camera into the kitchen the balloon had flew off the test tube.  (I stuck it back on and got the picture below...don't know why...I guess just to document that we did do it  LOL!  But it really did work!)

We also have a piece of moist bread in a test tube in the pantry and one in the refrigerator and we are going to watch them for about a week to watch the mold grow!    So we should have some cool pics of that next week (along with our petri dishes of bacteria - fun fun!)

We also did some nature study!  We did a couple of experiments that I found on Pinterest!  (I just love Pinterest!!)  We made it rain in jar and we also created a cloud in a jar!  Both turned out pretty cool!  (especially the cloud - kids were so excited to see that!!)

 Kids watching it rain in the jar

Kids watching the cloud form in the jar

We pulled out the bananagrams this week!! Aaron used them to spell his words that he is working on learning.

I made another item I found on Pinterest - texture balls for Seth!  Seth is a kinesthetic learner and does better if he has something to fidget with.  So I took about 5 balloons and filled them with flour, rice, beans, playdoh, and gooey gak and tied them off.  He can choose one at a time to fidget with while he is reading or working!  It has so far worked out well!

Seth's texture fidget balls

Seth had a lot of fun in math this week!!  We introduced division this week!!  So two or three days this week I gave him a white board and some of our counting pigs.  I would make the dividing lines on the whiteboard and give him a certain number of piggies and tell him to divide them up in equal groups (for example - take 20 pigs and put them in 4 equal groups).  He had so much fun and it really did help him grasp the concept of division!  

Daddy has been gone a bit lately :-( so we have been saving our read-aloud time for right before bedtime.  We are reading through Farmer Boy.  So we have been reading a couple of chapters each night.  The kids thought it was so funny when Daisy jumped in my lap the other night while I was reading and Seth wanted to get a picture.  So here it is :-)  (it is blurry and I don't know why I look sad but oh well)

Speaking of Daisy, she has brought home another hog skull!!!  The kids were so excited!  I want to know where she is getting these from!!  This one was almost identical to the first one!  In fact the molar growth shows that this was a 4 year old hog too!!  And the front of the skull is missing as well.  But we have learned that their snot is made of all gristle so that is real easy for dogs, other other wild animals, to chew off.

But I guess we will get this one to the zoo too LOL!!  Crazy!!

 Of course pictures do not cover everything that we do!!  We are having a lot of fun in school though and hopefully these pictures give you a glimpse of what our life is like!!  :-)  I wouldn't trade it for anything!

We are so excited that tomorrow is our first day of co-op classes for the spring semester!!  It is going to be a crazy fun day!!  I just hope we can all sleep ok tonight though! LOL!!

Until next time,
Kellie