American history in marshmallows

I combined three facts to create a special treat for after sit-down school today.

1. We had a box of Corn Chex that no one was likely to eat.

2. Aunt Nini brought these red, white and blue marshmallows for making s'mores and we still had some left.

3. We are studying American history. I'm not sure what this has to do with anything either, other than that I made the treat into a flag.

Egg cartons and muffin tins

Today I put together a surprise for the kids when they wake up, using supplies from my kitchen.

The girls will be working with egg cartons. These hold 30 each and we rescued them after a community breakfast before they were thrown out. (I was too embarassed to ask permission to steal the garbage, so Bob did it for me.)

Addy's egg tray is a multiplication table with 5 columns and 6 rows. She will multiply up to 30 and put the appropriate number of beans in each hole. Daddy brought the beans home from a farmers' field tour.

Dori's egg carton is labeled 1-30 so she can practice her counting. I made sure the 5-10-15-20-25-30 numerals lined up so we can practice skip counting by 5s.

The boys each have a muffin tin. They will do free play, but I'll encourage them to put one item per hole as a fine motor activity. They may throw them on the floor or bang them together. Whatever. A secondary goal is to keep them busy while the girls work.

The tins are filled with goodies Aunt Carol gave us over the years, knowing they might make fun math manipulatives.

First day of school 2011

Our yearly tradition is to have the kids pick out a favorite outfit for their back to school picture. It seems we keep adding bodies to the photos.

Civil War Days

(Mom here.)

Two days in a row we got to travel to the small town of Port Sanilac -- girls in costume -- for excellent historical events that tied in with our American history studies this year. Yesterday was Columbus' ships. Today's trip was to Civil War Days at the Sanilac Historical Museum.

Bob and I most enjoyed the Lincoln-Douglas debate. Both reenactors were very good and drew in crowd interaction. The girls especially liked the Punch and Judy puppet show held in the old schoolhouse on the grounds.

The boys liked crawling and running around. Elias crawled up on a bench to see the Governor of Michigan at the time.

Dori spent a lot of time playing a game of gracies with a little reenactor boy, coached by a Union soldier. Addy is shown trying it. Two sticks are held in an X with a hoop on them. When the arms are opened the hoop shoots out for the other player to catch and send it back. I promised we could make our own set. The soldier recommended an embroidery hoop with 3/8" dowel.

A Civil War event needs a battle. We watched a small one with a handful of reenactors with their muskets and cannons on each side. Before we left the house that morning, Bob quizzed the girls about which side they were on, so they were proud to be little Union girls. While taking the picture below, it seemed to me that if this were a good reenactment my good little Union girls might have kicked that Johnny Reb in the crotch while he laid in front of them reloading his musket.

Going to the replicas of Columbus' ships

Wow, this is really cool. I'm looking at a replica of Columbus' ships, and it fits right in with school.

We got to go on the ships. A crew member took us on a complete tour of the Nina and Pinta. Being a sailor sounds like a rough life.

We are dressed up like ladies of the royal court in 1492. Dori is Queen Isabella. Queen Isabella is the one who gave Columbus the money and permission to go on his expensive trip.

What I've been doing in school

I've been doing a lot of history. I'm learning about the hundreds. We're learning about Vikings, who thought it was going to be the end of the world by 1,000 A.D. We've learned about Charlemagne and Alfred the Great.

Here's a story about Alfred the Great. One time he went to a shepherd man's house and he asked to have dinner there because he saw his wife was cooking. And so he asked her if he could have dinner there and she said yes, if you watch the food while I go get vegetables from the garden. And he didn't watch the food while she was gone so she shooed him out when she didn't realize this was a king she was doing this to.

And in science we've been learning about atoms. We played a trick on my Daddy and Grandpa. We put together water molecules. We made them out of these plastic circles — red is oxygen, white is hydrogen. And so we put together one oxygen and two hydrogens and made a lot of those and put those in a glass and told them to drink it. And I thought it was kind of funny. They really didn't get it, it seemed like, but they laughed pretend.

We've been doing language lessons and we've been learning pronouns. We've been copying poems.

And in math we're learning double-digit numbers.

With reading we've been doing a Pizza Hut thing called Book It, and my goal was to read 40 chapters every month. I'm doing really good. I'm five into week 4 for October.

Science Jim

I did my first online class. It was called Astonishing Atoms. I learned what was smaller than an atom. I learned that if you took the energy out of a golf ball it would probably power the whole earth. I really don't know what I learned; I learned a lot, but pretty much I learned what an atom is.

Atoms are like little building blocks. All the building blocks that you were made out of could have been from the sun, from a tree, from a jumprope — could've been from a woodchuck.

There's matter and energy in the universe. As Einstein said, matter and energy is the same thing. [She's referring to E=mc2.]

Note from Mom: Addy did well with her first online class experience, which supplemented what we were learning about atoms with our NOEO Chemistry I curriculum. She had a couple great questions for the teacher that told me she was really understanding it. I registered for the class through CurrClick.com and it was well taught by Science Jim.