Science

Austin and Samara are studying Astronomy this year.  I just love the Apologia Exploring Creation series.  In the past two years we've done Botany and Anatomy.  I’m enjoying the idea of focusing on one topic for the entire year.  It’s a detailed study and we learn so much.  The hands on activities are fun and simple and really bring the point home.  And they’re a nice break as we go along in the book. 

The kids’ favourite activity so far was when we were working on Unit 2 – the Sun.  It involved chocolate so Denver and Victoria also joined us for this one!  We talked about how hot and bright the sun is and how we can bend the rays of light with a magnifying glass to focus the light on a specific spot.  To show the kids how this works, we took a piece of chocolate on a plate and went outside with a magnifying glass.  Thankfully it was a nice sunny day so the experiment worked great.  The kids took their magnifying glass and place it so that the rays of the sun shone right through it, concentrating the energy of the sun's light onto a specific spot on the chocolate.  

  

 

In no time the chocolate had melted . . . in fact, Austin even burnt his!

 

Austin took it one step further and burned a hole through a leaf.  Fun stuff for a nine-year-old boy!  Don't worry, I made him promise he would never do this without supervision.  LOL!  

Victoria is also doing science this year from the Apologia series but hers is the jr. high General Science.  

She wasn't too overly excited to start it but now that she's into it, I think it's better than she thought it would be.  She's also done a few experiments and her favourite one was about density.  She had to pour equal amounts of vegetable oil, water and corn syrup into a glass - in that order. 

The corn syrup ended up at the bottom, the water on top of that and the oil at the very top.

She then gently dropped in a grape, an ice cube, a rock and a piece of cork.  It was pretty cool to see the liquids all separate and to see where each item settled to and stayed. The rock dropped right to the bottom, the grape floated on top of the corn syrup, the ice cube floated on top of the water and the cork floated on top of the vegetable oil.  

Again, it was another simple activity that made the lesson that much more interesting and memorable.  

Thank you Apologia for great curriculum written from a Christian perspective! 

The Fair

A couple of Fridays ago, we had an opportunity to attend one of the fall fairs in our area.  On this particular Friday, all teachers and students were admitted for free and that even included homeschoolers!  So off we went to the fair and met up with friends.  Unfortunately one of our friends got sick and they had to leave (we missed you MC, Y and S!)  But we had a great time walking around seeing all the different animals, crafts, shows, rides and games.  There was a lot to see and even a lot to learn about.  I appreciated some of the people there taking the time to talk to the kids about the animals and they were great at answering any questions the kids had. 

One of the highlights was holding and petting some of the little baby animals.  There were ducklings, chicks, bunnies, etc.  The kids were taught how to hold them properly and loved snuggling with them.  

Denver wasn't a big fan and didn't want to hold anything until the baby chicks were brought out.  And then he held one and was all smiles.  In fact, when everyone had a turn, he wanted to hold another one!  

Victoria's favourite part of the day was the dog show.  It was neat to see how high those dogs could jump and when we got home, Victoria started working on it with Frodo.  She had him jumping over a broomstick held up by two piles of books in no time.  

And what's a fair without a man juggling fire while walking barefoot on broken glass?

We spent a little bit of money (is that possible??) on the rides.  The kids (and me) each had a turn going down the giant slide which was a hit.  Victoria went down twice as she didn't want to ride the carousel.   

 

Denver didn't want to ride the giant slide.  He was 

determined to ride on the helicopter.  It didn't matter to him that no one else wanted to go on it . . . in fact he was the only kid on the whole ride!   As you can see from his face, he loved it!

We also enjoyed looking at all the crafts and things that kids had entered in the school fair building.  We were inspired to enter our own creations into the fair.  In fact we're working on them right now and we will enter them into another local fair on Thanksgiving weekend.  

Sleep randomness

This post is just a bunch of random pictures taken over the last week or so . . . but they all have to do with sleep. 

When we were at the cottage a few weeks ago, the kids thought it would be fun to switch roommates for the week.  So Victoria and Austin shared a room and Samara and Denver shared a room.   Denver slept on the bottom bunk and Samara slept on a single bed in the same room.  We shoved a dresser in between the two beds to prevent them from falling out.  On the first night, everyone was tuckered right out and fell asleep really quickly.  When Mike and I went to bed, we checked on the kids and this is what we found in Samara and Denver’s room:

We didn't even hear her come out of her bed and into Denver’s.  Isn't it so precious how they’re snuggled right up together?  It was too cute not to take a picture!   

The other night when we asked Denver to go get ready for bed, I heard him calling me a few minutes later.  When I went to tuck him, he was waiting ever so patiently for me.  I love the pose!

The other night Austin was away at a sleepover and so Denver was alone in his bedroom.  He really missed his roommate!  Their beds are just mattresses on the floor right now as we’re doing renos.  Instead of sleeping on his own mattress, I found that he had crawled all the way over onto Austin’s mattress. 

Victoria called me to come and see something the other morning.  She had Frodo all tucked in for a nap . . . in her bed!  

And that's it for the random sleep pics.

New shoes and new skill

This post is also from quite a while ago but I wanted to still get it on the blog.  Samara had been asking me over and over again for new running shoes.  I kept telling her that she didn't need new ones because the ones she had were perfectly fine.  But she insisted that she didn't like the ones she had and she had her eyes on a new pair at the store.  She had them all picked out and asked me about them every time that specific store was mentioned.  So one day she was out shopping with Daddy and guess what she came home with?  Yep . . . new shoes!  

I guess she hadn't been asking the right person all along.  LOL!  Anyway, these particular shoes she wanted so badly were shoes with laces so I told her that she needed to learn to tie them by herself.   Up to this point, she never really had a reason to learn to tie.  In fact, I'm pretty sure with all the velcro and slip on shoes they make now, a person could get through life without ever learning how to tie a shoe.  But she was bound and determined to get these new shoes and now she was bound and determined to learn to tie them.  We tried learning the traditional way but it's actually pretty complicated.  I found it difficult to teach and difficult to learn.   And then I remembered something I had pinned a while ago and went to look it up.  It's called "magic fingers" and it's a different way to teach a child to tie their shoes.  I watched the video a few times over and figured out how to do it.  I showed Samara and in no time she was tying those shoes on her own!  

It's so cool and she surprises anyone that sees her do it.  I took a video of her tying them using the magic fingers method and I will try to post it here.  It's my first time adding a video to the blog so I hope it works! 

Sailing

I've been meaning to post this for a while now and am finally getting around to it now.  Austin and Samara both signed up for sailing this year in June.  Austin had done it two years ago and this year I asked Samara if she would also be interested.  Because of their ages, they were able to go in the same group - and therefore in the same boat most of the time too.  I'm still amazed that my kids have taken sailing . . . they would have never done it or even been exposed to sailing without this opportunity.  

The classes were held for three hours twice a week for the month of June.  They were taught not only how to sail, but everything else that goes along with it.  Each day they had to get their own boat ready, hooking up the sail the proper way and then pack it all up properly at the end of the class.  This was always a lot of work but they got pretty proficient at it by the end of the month.  

Austin and Samara were usually together in the same boat - once in a while the instructors would switch the kids around but they preferred to be together.   And they worked so well together.  The instructors even commented on how well they steered and maneuvered their boat working together and with the wind to go exactly where they needed to be.  It was really cool to see.  Often times buoys were set up as a course and Austin and Samara would whip around them almost without effort.  I loved watching it.  Sometimes if the wind wasn't too strong and the water wasn't too rough, they would sail out into the lake . . . but other times they just sailed down the river.  I only have pictures of them in the river as I could watch from a bridge up above.  

And speaking of rough waters, on the third last class of the session, the waters ended up being quite rough - more rough than it looked from the marina.  Samara ended up getting quite an upset stomach and the instructor had to bring her in to me.  She was pretty sad and decided she NEVER wanted to sail again.  When the rest of the kids came back in, they all looked a little green too - including Austin.  I tried not to talk too much about more sailing but I did want them both to finish up the classes.  It turned out that the next day the kids both had bad colds so we missed the class.  The next time we went was the last one and Samara was determined she wasn't going to get in a boat - and Austin wasn't thrilled about going without her.  I talked her into at least preparing the sailboat with Austin and when it was time to get in, she was pretty determined not to go.  After much discussion and coaxing (from me and the instructors), she got into the boat.  It helped her to know they weren't going far (not into the lake) and that if she started to feel sick at all, she could come right in.  It ended up to be the best class of the whole session.  Austin and Samara really showed what they had learned and when they had competitions with other sailboats, they won every time.  And Samara was so glad she ended up going as she had a really good time.  And I was glad we ended the sailing season on a high note!