Work Plans for the Week of September 26: An End to Rocks and the Revolution (But Not to Civics)

Don't tell the older kid, but next semester, I'm going to be upping her schoolwork load.

Twelve has been kind of a magic number for this kid. The kid who used to struggle daily, constantly, with her deep desire not to do anything that anyone else wanted her to do, nor to do anything at all tedious, is now my kid who gets all her schoolwork done every day, quickly, without prompting. She can get an entire day's schoolwork done in two hours or less if she puts her mind to it, and she usually does!

That would be just about an ideal amount of time for a younger kid, but now that the older kid is middle school-aged, I think she can handle more, especially since she's getting her current workload done so easily. The younger kid, on the other hand, is having a hard transition to ten, and the current workload is already more than she's willing to do without fuss. So after our vacation, the kids will come to the new semester with redesigned work plan templates, and they won't be completely identical.

And the older kid's will have more work on it. Don't tell!

Last week's school week went well, especially with that mid-week romp up to the Children's Museum to break it up. We also finished up our shark dissection, Lordy Hallelujah, played at the creek with friends, did interesting things to rocks, and the younger kid made us candy sushi:

The kids learned how to play lacrosse (neither of them liked it, but at least now they know!), they've both just almost got the prime numbers through 100 memorized, and I think this strategy for our American Revolution notebooks is going to work:

Books of the Day for this week include some shout-outs to current and upcoming studies (the younger kid loves the Goddess Girls series, and the older kid likes the I Survived series, which is a little hard-core for the younger kid). Daily work includes probably our last week of having Scratch on the work plans--the older kid has just about made it through Coding Games in Scratch, and the younger kid, who has long abandoned the book in favor of making daily cartoons in Scratch, likes it enough that I think she'll keep it in mind for her screen-time, if she can ever get over her Roblox obsession (and here I thought that I hated Minecraft. There's always something worse!!!). The kids will also be alternating their cursive/journaling with replying to pen pal letters--they need to write at least two replies this week--and are expected to each earn $50 for vacation spending money this week. I make a special list of chores and prices for vacation money-earning, including as options chores and activities like doing extra work in math or composition, and crap like finishing up craft WIPs and helping me go through their fall wardrobes, etc. And finally, the older kid should be finishing Wordly Wise book 6, earning herself a treat (I keep trying to remind the children that treats can also be things like a trip to the indoor trampoline park or the library or an extra hour of screen-time, but they inevitably ALWAYS choose a) doughnuts or b) ice cream. Sigh...).

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: In Math Mammoth this week, the younger kid is learning about ratios and the older kid is finishing percents. I'm pleased about this, because our math enrichment this week will fit both of them very well!

We're finishing up Song School Spanish this week. I have several Spanish curricula to explore for next semester with the younger kid, although fortunately over the weekend I found a couple of Mandarin texts that will work to flesh out the older kid's Mandarin classes. I'd hoped to start her on one of the textbooks this week, but the weekend got away from me and I forgot to include it in my lesson plans. Oh, well!

I'm excited to have finished our rocks and minerals text last week, so that this week we can move into the younger kid-friendly rocks and minerals science kit that I've been looking forward to. We're starting it this week, with the plan that the kids can finish it when we come home from vacation but before we begin our new semester, and I'm really, really, REALLY hoping that it's as user-friendly and adapted for independent work as it looks.

Are you as excited about tonight's presidential debate as I am? We've got a big night planned of me and the older kid racing home from fencing and then all of us eating pizza in front of the TV and cheering/jeering. To that end, the kids will be reading the pages on the debates in Election 2016, and then watching clips of other debates from previous years to help them understand what they'll be looking at and should be watching for tonight.

We've got a lot of chapters in From Colonies to Country to get through this week, but they're all about the Constitution, so it should work to read/listen to them as a unit. On this day, the kids will be working on what they can complete from the Junior Ranger book for the Germantown White House in Philadelphia. Do NOT let me forget to gather up all of these half-completed Junior Ranger books and take them with us on our road trip!

TUESDAY: I LOVE the videos on Brainpop, and so do the kids! I'm surprised at how often I find relevant videos there, especially in the sciences and history. The kids really enjoy the videos, and I like that there's a quiz afterwards to confirm that they've understood the content. On this day, the kids will be watching the Brainpop video on the Constitutional Convention.

In other news, I just had a panic attack upon writing that previous sentence, when doing so reminded me that I had NOT yet reserved our tickets to tour Independence Hall!!! You will be relieved to know that I immediately went to remedy that, there were happily tickets available, and now we're all set. Now you just need to help me convince the rest of my family that we do need to go look at the Liberty Bell again, as well. They claim that we've already seen it; I claim that we're going to be just across the freaking street, People! Come ON!

Step 3 of the Cadette Finding Common Ground badge asks the Girl Scout to analyze a civil debate. Can you think of a more perfect activity to do on the day after the Clinton/Trump debate? The older kid loves politics, so this should be right in her wheelhouse. For the Junior Social Butterfly badge, the younger kid and a sister Scout are planning to host a tea party for the other Girl Scouts in our troop. I'm going to encourage her to press flowers on this day, as the girls decided they wanted to give pressed flower bookmarks out as party favors but flower season is nearly over, but I'm also planning to encourage her to search Pinterest for tea party ideas, so who knows what else she'll come up with?

WEDNESDAY: This American Revolution coloring book is actually a nice review activity for our unit, and will be pleasant for the kids to work on while we listen to our chapters in From Colonies to Country; don't you just love coloring while listening to audiobooks? I don't expect them to finish on this day, but I think that it will actually make a nice activity to work on while on our road trip.

The older kid is almost finished with the Finding Common Ground badge, which I've been really pleased with; it's a great one for a tween, all about how to handle conflict and work and communicate with others--can you think of someone who doesn't need more practice in that? For this activity, she has to study a historical compromise, working out why it was necessary, how it came about, and what would have happened if it hadn't. Since this is our Constitution week, I'll be limiting her to either the 3/5 Compromise or the Connecticut Compromise, either of which will add a lot of interesting insight and context to her understanding of American history.

The younger kid isn't particularly enthusiastic about the Inside Government badge, especially compared to how much the older kid loved that one at her age, but it's loo relevant to not do right now in election season, at the end of our American Revolution study, and on the cusp of our road trip to the nation's capitol. I'll leave how she interprets each step up to her, then, and see what activities she chooses to do.

THURSDAY: I am really stoked about our math enrichment for this week, and I know that the kids are going to be, too! It'll be pretty involved, but the basic concept is to both graph and record the fractions/decimals/percentages/ratios of the various colors of candies in various small bags. It will be a lot of real-world work that should make abundantly clear the relationship between all of those ways of representing amounts, and, well... candy!

FRIDAY: Yet another field trip day! We'll be attending our VERY well-loved Children's Farm Festival, which, to be fair, is by now a little young for the kids, but they adore it so much that I have to take them, at least for one more year.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet, Chinese, attending either a ballet performance or a local play (all the fun things are on the same weekend, dang it!), working on the world's most difficult to assemble tree house, and napping. Lots of napping.

What are YOU up to this week?

Work Plans for the Week of September 19: A Revolution, A Field Trip, and Shark Innards

Last week's school week started strong but petered out before the end (mostly thanks to the fact that we added a new item to our list of broken stuff around our house: now it's the oven, washing machine, dryer, my camera AND MY COMPUTER!!!!1!!!!), so I had to move a couple of Friday's activities to today, alas. Fortunately, none of them were from the units that we're busting our butts to finish before our vacation, so it's no biggie.

We did get most of our schoolwork done, though, mixing up a full day at the art museum and outings with friends and the making of treats and lots of play time and reading time with awesome stuff like shark dissection--

--which we're going to be doing more of this week, and building the decanomial square--

--which we're going to be playing more with this week.

Books of the Day include more novels (including Regarding the Fountain, which I am SUPER excited to introduce to the younger kid), more random non-fiction books (Matt found the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weaponry and thought that the older kid might like it. I think he's right!), and several selections on civics, political parties, how the government works, and the like. We're really pushing hard on our civics study, which I'd like to continue through Election Day.

Other daily work includes journaling for the younger kid, cursive copywork for the older kid (she was putting zero effort into her own journaling, so I have to think up a better daily creative writing assignment for her for next semester), progress in Wordly Wise (the older kid is on track to finish Book 6 before we leave for our road trip, but the younger kid is taking a snail's pace through Book 4; I may be more strict with her progress next semester), and work in Scratch (the older kid has mostly abandoned this, but the younger kid is still making a new cartoon almost every day, so I'm going to keep encouraging it at least through this semester).

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: The older kid resumed Mandarin class last weekend. The younger kid may or may not attend with her; at first, she flat-out refused, but since the older kid reported that two of their friends are also in the class this semester, she's now said that she'll "try it" next weekend. Regardless, the younger kid has also said that she wants to continue our Spanish study after we finish Song School Spanish next week, so I'm currently researching options for that.

For now, however, both kids are continuing their work in Song School Spanish, and for this week, at least, the older kid is sharing her Mandarin review with the younger kid.

In Math Mammoth this week, the older kid is continuing in percents, and the younger kid is doing an entire week of fractional problem solving before she moves into ratios next week.

Friday's science is one of the subjects that we simply did not get to on Friday (we got caught in a rainstorm on the way to the library, so that when we got home it felt far more appropriate to put on pajamas and read comic books than it did to finish our school work), so we'll be reading the unit on sedimentary rocks and using a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid to test rock samples today. We also begin our study of the internal anatomy of the shark today with the digestive system.

We had a fabulous family trip to the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park yesterday, including conversing with the world best and most enthusiastic park ranger, so today, while the kids listen to our chapters in History of Us, they can use the brochures and postcards from the site, as well as the information that they learned, to make a page for George Rogers Clark in their American Revolution notebooks. This will ideally be practice for what I'd like them to do with the other sites that we'll be visiting on our road trip.

TUESDAY: We missed our homeschool group's playgroup for our field trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art last week, so the younger kid, at least, is very eager to get back to playgroup this week. The older kid doesn't anticipate playgroup the way that the younger kid does, but she's got her own friends there, and she enjoys herself much more than she'll tell you she does.

History of Us is actually a little light on all of the actual battles of the American Revolution, and I'm not sure, either, how many of the battlefields we'll actually go see on our trip (many of them really are, unfortunately, simply grassy fields in the middle of nowhere), but I at least want the kids to be able to put the battles in geographic and historical context, so they'll be completing this battlefield map/timeline and then memorizing the information.

The younger kid's Inside Government Girl Scout badge is one of the studies that I'd like to get completed by Election Day, while the older kid's Animal Helpers badge is simply one that she started with great enthusiasm and then lost interest in, meaning that she just has a couple more activities for me to encourage her to do. Both badges are good cross-curricular unit studies that the children can work on mostly independently, so yay!

WEDNESDAY: Field trip to the Children's Museum!

THURSDAY: Of course the second that we committed to working a weekly voter registration table, the laptop that I intended to rely on to do this voter registration began to catastrophically fail. I'm hoping I can baby it along to do the work we need to do on this day, and then by next week, I will ideally have a brand-new laptop to zip through the work!

I'm banking on the fact that one day of dissolving rocks with hydrochloric acid will not be enough for my little scientists. Even if it is, I'm betting we can find some other cool stuff to dissolve--for one thing, the older kid did lose a molar recently...

The kids built the decanomial square last week, so on this day I'm hoping to explore some extension activities with them--equation creating, pattern making, cubing, etc.

FRIDAY: After reviewing our From Colonies to Country chapters, the kids will zoom in on the Articles of Confederation with this Brainpop lesson.

Our Friday Spanish books remain a big hit. We're a little tired of Sandra Boynton and Bill Martin, Jr., but I've got some Dr. Seuss that I think will work well as a substitute.

The Bicentennial Patch is another special patch program just for this year, since 2016 is Indiana's Bicentennial. We do all of the activities required for the patch (outdoor activities, healthy living, arts and culture, and history) pretty regularly, but we could probably stand another visit to a state park or IU sporting event.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We're back in the groove of a thousand and one Saturday extracurriculars, so I'll attempt to spare my family yet another Sunday day trip and let them lie on the couch and work on their tree house. Except... there is the local university's fall ballet that we *could* attend, and there's a play coming out this weekend that I'd like to go to with Matt, and it *is* about time to go to the apple orchard...

What are YOU up to this week?

Work Plans for the Week of September 12, 2016: Civics, Art, and General Washington

Yes, it's another four-day school week in a string of four-day school weeks! (And yes, I peeped into my planner and noted that thanks to another training session at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis next week, that will be a four-day school week, too!)

Fortunately, these four-day school weeks do seem to be working well for us. I'm somehow managing to fit all of my weekly work plans into four days instead of five, and we've still had time for play groups (although, to be fair, I DID spend much of my precious mom-time at last week's playgroup planning our first shark dissection for this week...), afternoons at the beach, ice cream with Dad, long walks and short museum visits with friends, and, fine, math and science and history and vocabulary, too.

Books of the Day for this week include some leftover books for my research into next session's Greek mythology study, more novels that I think the kids might like, and a couple of books about sharks. The older kid liked the Mythmaker book on J.R.R. Tolkien so much (thanks for that great recommendation!) that I've given her the one on J.K. Rowling, and the younger kid liked the first Princess Tales book so much that I've given her the second.

Other daily work includes journaling for the younger kid, cursive drills for the older kid, work in Scratch for both, and progress in their Wordly Wise.

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: I had a long weekend getting lots of things done, so today's school work is hopefully mostly stuff that the children can do independently. I sent out the assignments for the 2016 Children's Pen Pal Exchange last night (so if you registered, you should have received an email from me!), so much of the kids' work today will consist of catching up on their correspondence, if you will. The older kid has already written her pen pal letter, so she can finish up the last of her birthday thank-you notes while the younger kid writes her pen pal letter, and then they can make envelopes, stuff them, address them, and off they'll go!

Song School Spanish remains an excellent curriculum choice for this session. The older kid is absorbing a lot of vocabulary, thanks, as well, to the Spanish-language books that we read each Friday, and the younger kid is enjoying the study so much that she wants to continue to study Spanish next session (part of the reason is that she does NOT want to continue Mandarin, but I'm probably going to make her continue that, as well).

In Election 2016 on this day, the kids are going to learn about the electoral college. We've discussed it several times already, so I'm hoping that they won't find the concept as obtuse as I found it at the younger kid's age. We'll be watching this TED-Ed video after the reading, and then playing a game in which each child will represent exactly half of the voting populace, will also be assigned half of the states, and then will vote in opposition to each other on something (something that probably involves what the older kid likes to refer to as "sugarnoms," on account of we love our sweets!). They'll record their states' votes on this actual electoral college voting map, and we'll see who wins!

In Math Mammoth, the older kid is breezing through percentages and the younger kid is slogging through advanced multi-digit calculations.

TUESDAY: It's Homeschool Day at the Indianapolis Museum of Art! We're going to see all the sites, take an art lesson, and play bicentennial-themed mini golf.

We're also going to get back home in time for the older kid and I to go to fencing that night!

WEDNESDAY: It might be overreaching to try to finish the three different civics badges that the Girl Scouts offer (Junior Inside Government, Cadette Finding Common Ground, and multi-level I Promised a Girl Scout I Would Vote) before the November election, but on the other hand, I can't imagine a better time for it, since politics is in the air! I had hoped that we could find a local mediator to help the older kid with the mediation activity from her badge, but we're having some communication issues (humph!), so I'll have her complete the activity in which she researches a national conflict, instead.

On our road trip, we'll be visiting Washington Crossing State Park, but on this day, we'll do some guided study on a large-format printout of the Washington Crossing the Delaware painting.

The big event of this day, however, is the beginning of our shark dissection! We'll be studying the shark's external anatomy in great detail, identifying features and observing them through our USB magnifier. I also might take samples and make microscope slides.

Mental note: I really want to buy a more powerful microscope!

THURSDAY: Well, last week's voter registration booth was an eye-opener: as the older kid put it, "It's like we said, 'We're doing voter registration!' and people heard, 'Tell me about your craziest political theories!'" On the ride home afterwards, the kids were consumed with wondering why one guy, in response to my telling him about a hunting/fishing amendment that would be on the ballot, said, "If I don't mind cows being electrocuted, why would I mind hunting?" (he also declined to register to vote).

"Why would he electrocute a cow?", they asked. "Does he think that they electrocute cows in slaughterhouses? I thought that they knocked cows on the head in slaughterhouses! Should we look it up?"

No, I informed them in no uncertain terms. We would NOT be Googling slaughterhouse practices. Our ready referencing does not apply to slaughterhouses.

We all have assigned ourselves the job of figuring out better ways to present our offer of voter registration this week.

Even though this is one of our most exciting weeks in our American Revolution study--all those battles!--I don't have a lot of great ideas for interactive activities to explore them more deeply. What I wouldn't give for an obsessive model-maker to make me a detailed topographic map and a bunch of intricately-painted little soldiers for us to play with!

Barring having thousands of dollars' worth of manipulatives, we'll make do with this interactive map of the Battle of Trenton.

We've played with the decanomial square before, but long enough ago that it's definitely worth revisiting. It's a great way to explore multiplication and square numbers, and hopefully the free play will encourage the kids to think more deeply about multiplication and how it's represented.

FRIDAY: We are close to being done forever with our Draw Write Now set, but every time I pull them off the shelves and think about selling them, I come across a couple of lessons that fit neatly into whatever we happen to be studying at the time. And that's why on this day, when we review History of Us and its chapters on Valley Forge and George Washington, the kids can also learn how to draw him! We'll be visiting Valley Forge on our road trip, but it shockingly does NOT offer a Junior Ranger Program. Weird, right?

We're also going to visit Mount Vernon, so we should be well-steeped in George Washington information by the time we return home.

We've got another unit on sedimentary rocks, before we move on to metamorphic rocks and then to review. LOTS of review, because I'm not sure how much of this text the younger kid is absorbing at all, sigh. Regardless, she'll know a lot about carbonate sedimentary rocks by the end of this day, after subjecting them to a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid, mwa-ha-ha!

We'll also do a little more with shark dissection on this day, whether it's to complete our study of the shark's external anatomy or to finally make a cut and move on to musculature. Or maybe take a sample and subject it to a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid...?

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Oh, my gosh, this weekend! Nutcracker audition. World music festival. Drive-in movie. Hopefully a day at the George Rogers Clark national park. Maybe a nap?

And then another four-day school week next week!

Work Plans for the Week of August 30, 2016: Neurobiology, Prime Numbers, and the Declaration of Independence

We had a fine, fun week last week! We made time for playdates and movies and swimming dates (possibly our last swimming date at the public pool for the season, sigh...), and still got a lot of really interesting, creative, hands-on work done:

Trying to mimic a shark's liver and give these empty juice bottles neutral buoyancy--it took a LOT of problem-solving and experimentation!

I had been worried that this hands-on math activity wasn't "hands-on" enough, but it actually turned out to be really useful for both kids.

Diffusion of liquid watercolors into clear gelatin and the osmosis of various solutions through an egg membrane--we're actually still playing with those eggs!

Our weekend turned out to be just as busy, as not only did the kids and Matt have their "cookie concert" (one of the rewards for selling a ton of cookies was free admission for our entire troop to a Rachel Platten concert!), but we did finally manage to get to Holiday World (another cookie-selling reward), and it was so freaking awesome that we're totally going to go back again next year--so fun to no longer have one kid who won't ride anything scary, but to have two kids who are even more into thrill rides than I am, AND who can go on them independently after The Legend wiped out Dad and The Voyage wiped out Mom.

Nevertheless, after that non-stop weekend, I declared Monday a homeschool holiday... a holiday in which the kids had to help me clean for an hour and the younger kid had to finish up the last of Friday's schoolwork and go to ballet while the older kid and I went to fencing, of course, but a holiday nonetheless. But we were back to work on Tuesday, and back to our full fall schedule.

Books of the Week for the older kid are almost entirely novels that I've seen recommended in one place or another, while the younger kid begins the Princess Tales series, and has a book of reversible poems to try out, and a couple of other random non-fiction books that I'll give to the older kid in turn next week. Daily work consists of more journaling in cursive (the younger kid has really taken to this, but I'll need to consider giving the older kid writing prompts next semester), consistent work in Wordly Wise (the younger kid is in Book 4, and the older kid is in Book 6), and more progress through Coding Games in Scratch (the older kid has been enjoying working through the book, but the younger kid prefers to use her time to make some dang awesome cartoons, if I don't say so myself).

And here's the rest of our week!

TUESDAY: In Math Mammoth, the older kid is still working through fraction calculation and the younger kid is still reviewing multi-stage multiplication and division, so their hands-on math enrichment is something that I think will help with both--prime numbers! I asked them to figure out which numbers from 1-100 were prime, which involved a lot of interesting problem-solving and logical thinking, but I'm also asking them to memorize those primes. This knowledge will make division, multiplication, and factoring and finding least common denominators much easier.

For our shark unit, the kids (and I!) reviewed the MOOC's unit on the shark brain, and then the kids constructed this human brain model and compared the anatomies. Playgroup and Girl Scout stuff with friends and the library and fencing made us run out of time for more learning about the human brain, but I plan to sneakily sneak it in later this week.

We had to double up on Song School Spanish this week, but fortunately the two chapters are related. I was worried that this book would be too baby-ish, but at the rate that we're moving, it's actually perfect. The kids are getting some good vocabulary that they can use as cognates for other Romance languages, and a little bit of conversation practice with me.

WEDNESDAY: In our American Revolution unit, this is the week for the Declaration of Independence! On this day, the kids will be adding pages in their notebooks for Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Hancock, using the mini books from this lapbook. So far this notebook IS working better than last year's World War 2 notebook, and I am tentatively hoping that my plans for the kids to add to their notebooks during our vacation will work out, as well.

The kids seemed to have fun doing a straight-up craft project with me last week, so I thought I'd try it again as a little mid-week break in our rigorous semester. I've had this comped copy of Pattern Play for a while, and it looks to be a quick, easy, and satisfying experience. The older kid needs more scissors practice, anyway--she refuses to use her left-handed scissors in her left hand, even though her right-handed cutting is a tragedy, so I've given up and given her back the right-handed scissors. Her cutting is still a tragedy, but at least she can see where she's cutting now!

Today's comparative shark/human anatomy focus is the eye. The shark's eye has some interesting differences, most of which I'll expect the kids to be able to explain after reviewing the shark eye information in our MOOC and doing the research required to be able to complete this diagram of the human eye (I removed the answer key, so they'll really have to work for it!).

Fortunately, we don't have evening extracurriculars on this day, since the kids and I will be attending the training required to enable us to run a voter registration table at our local food pantry. I'm excited about this opportunity, and it will satisfy some crucial components of a couple of Girl Scout badges and our election unit study.

THURSDAY: Speaking of the elections... the older kid is fascinated by independent and third-party candidates. The kids will be reading the section on these types of candidates in Election 2016, and then researching online to find some of them and see what their stances are. I'm not ashamed to tell you that we'll likely be doing a lot of laughing and poking fun at these brave folks!

We'll review the chapters in From Colonies to Country once again (the older kid generally reads them, but the younger kid and I enjoy listening to them while coloring), and then the kids will see what they can accomplish ahead of time in their Independence Hall Junior Ranger books. I'm about to start planning our specific agenda for our road trip, and I hope that I can score us tickets to tour Independence Hall!

Our rocks and minerals unit isn't going as well as I'd like, and I have to say that I'm looking forward to leaving it behind at the end of this semester and reapproaching it in a different way another time. The text is too difficult for the younger kid, and I'm having trouble distilling it for her and providing interesting hands-on activities that illustrate the important concepts. The older kid is getting a little more out of it, but in the end, I'm just going to have to think of it as an overview of the topic, and try to do a better job with geology next time. For the time being, however, we're going to see it through, which means reading the rest of the chapter, having the older kid complete the assessment, and then taking the time to look deeply at our igneous rock samples. Hopefully, they will then be able to recognize an igneous rock when they see one!

FRIDAY: After one last review of this week's content from From Colonies to Country, the kids will get to play a little, practicing writing with a quill pen--don't let me forget to buy some ink before Friday! We'll also use this time to do a close reading of a reproduction of the Declaration of Independence that we own, and perhaps copy it out a little. Little do the children know that the first several lines of the Declaration of Independence will also become part of their memory work--mwa-ha-ha!

The kids both have some interesting work to do on their Girl Scout badges on this day: the older kid has to come up with creative decision-making strategies for her Finding Common Ground badge (hopefully they will not include trial by fire or dancing with snakes, etc.), and the younger kid has decided that the ultimate expression of her Social Butterfly badge would be to plan a party for her friends, in collaboration with another girl. I'm happy to leave them to it!

Using Ocearch, we have a favorite shark whose movements we track. On this day, the kids will be thinking more about Finley's movements, especially compared to other tiger sharks, and trying to come up with hypotheses to explain them. We probably won't actually get to test them, but you never know!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY/MONDAY: After the running around--fun running around, but running around, nevertheless--that we did last weekend, I am hoping for a quiet long weekend this week. The kids are dying to actually get the ground broken on their long-planned treehouse. There's an indoor trampoline park that just opened and that we tragically have not yet visited. The drive-in's movie line-up is absolutely terrific.

And napping. I feel like we should do a lot of napping this weekend.

Work Plans for the Week of August 15, 2016: Sharks, Intolerable Acts, and Molecular Modeling

NOTE: My vacation posts are on indefinite hiatus, as my external hard drive that contains them (as well as all of the other digital photos that I've ever taken) is currently in a repair shop where someone is attempting to recover its data.

Can I just whine at you for a minute here? I have my health, I have two great kids and a wonderful life partner, we have enough money to support ourselves and still be able to save for amazing vacations, one of which we went on just last month, and yet... I feel like I have suffered an inordinate number of losses this year. I have lost my grandfather. My best friend. And on top of that, several chickens from our flock have been killed this summer. Arrow incubated three adorable chicks, and they each died. We really wanted to adopt Thundercat, the kitten that Matt found in our yard, but he had feline leukemia and so the shelter euthanized him. And now, today, I have possibly lost my personal copy of every digital photo that I have ever taken of my children, my husband, our pets, my grandfather, my best friend, our vacations. All that I possibly have left are the small-scale jpegs of what I've posted on my blog. Small potatoes, I know, because I still have my children, and my husband, many of our pets, my memories of Pappa and Mac, and our vacations, and yet it still seems like a lot. It seems like I have less emotional reserves to deal with every new loss, no matter how minor, no matter how much it's nothing compared to my constant grief over Pappa and Mac.

So here's to hoping for a crackerjack computer repair person who is right this second recovering every single precious digital file in its pristine condition, and to a final few months of the year that contain no more living things or dearly beloved treasures ceasing their existence from my life. Okay?

Okay!

We're back to weekly work plans this week. From the week after the kids got back from vacation through last week, I made them daily work plans, as each week the kids had too many time-consuming activities (a sleepover at the zoo! A two-day volunteer orientation at the Children's Museum!) to make weekly work plans that progressed our various units of study practical. Instead, they kept rolling with their Math Mammoth, I got them used to journaling every day, we began a sharks unit that we'll be continuing through the next seven weeks, we began a Scratch coding unit that we'll also be continuing--

--and, of course, we read a LOT of books:

Here, the older kid is reading about old bestiaries, and I've been sketching the animal descriptions for her: a beaver with a waffle tail, a beaver with a tail flat like a fish, and a dove with contemplative wings.

Time at the table with the kids while they mostly worked independently gave ME time to plan out our next seven weeks. I'd like to finish several units of study before our next big vacation, including our rocks and minerals unit (with a culminating project of identifying at least 30 of our own rocks and minerals from our personal collection), our sharks unit (with a culminating project of an actual shark dissection!), an easy-breezy Spanish language unit, and, of course, our American Revolution unit!

Although Will won't take her first AP or SAT 2 exams until eighth grade, I'm deliberately including that material in our relevant studies.

This week is the first week of this seven-week session. Books of the Day are a hodge-podge this week of novels that I thought the children would enjoy, a funny book on chemistry for the older kid, an interesting book on battlefields, also for her, a book on the history of architecture for the younger kid, a Peter Benchley memoir on the ocean for the older kid... see? A hodge-podge! Other daily work consists of journaling, consistent work in Wordly Wise (the older kid is almost done with Book 6, but the younger kid, who loathes memorizing spelling words, is still in the middle of Book 4. Fortunately, it's not a race!), and consistent work in Coding Games in Scratch, a Scratch programming book that I got from the library and that the kids both really seem to love.

Oh, and we're also super excited that CNN Student News starts back up again this week! Tradition holds that we begin each school day with Carl Azuz, and it seriously makes the transition to schoolwork so much easier. Also, we LOVE it!

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: The older kid is a changed kid these days. It's been months since she pulled a full-on schoolwork rebellion; nowadays, she may not begin her work first thing in the morning, but every school day, she will wander over to the table at some point without prompting, and then buckle down and muscle through everything that I've assigned her. I am SO appreciative of how big of a difference it makes.

Of course, the younger kid now has to be coaxed/encouraged/bullied to get HER work done these days, so maybe schoolwork balkiness is simply something that strikes children of a certain age.

I tell you this because the older kid has already finished her math and history today--in Math Mammoth, she's spiraled back around to fractions for a short time, and in history, we listened to chapters 7-11 of From Colonies to Country, pausing often to discuss them (the older, for instance, always insists on learning England's point of view). Our entire week this week is focused on the build-up to the rebellion, primarily the Intolerable Acts, and I was pleased that the older kid naturally wanted to discuss the differences between the British and colonists' point of view, because today's enrichment activity is the online game Mission US: Colony or Crown. The older kid has played all of the Mission: US games before in her free time, but told me that she wouldn't mind a replay, and in fact, after she finished Colony or Crown, she asked if she could play the other Mission: US games, and I told her that she could, of COURSE.

I mean, gee, Mom, do you mind if I keep learning? What other answer could I possibly give?!?

The younger kid had a late start today, so she's only finished listening to the History of US chapters with us (although she did get a lot of work done on her Tolkien coloring book selection, and she has had a Percy Jackson audiobook glued to her ears for every second that we haven't been listening to History of US). She's finishing up decimals in her own Math Mammoth this week, and then will be ready to begin the 5th grade material next week.

Song School Spanish is pretty baby-ish for my 10-and 12-year-olds, but that means that we can zip through it. All I want them to do is get the vocabulary down, because if they don't continue Mandarin this fall, we'll start Latin, and they'll appreciate the cognate boost from knowing words from another Romance language. I'm a little unusual in that my pedagogical focus isn't necessarily on the children developing authentic accents and good conversation skills--if they continue Mandarin, then sure, and I'll hire tutors as needed to teach them that, but I think that another great foundation for language study is simply studying it, memorizing the vocabulary and understanding the grammar, conversing, yes, but also composing. If they have to work hard to correct their accent later, then so be it, but the possibility of that is certainly no excuse to not learn the language at all right now.

*Steps down off of soapbox.*

Math enrichment this week is something simple, just a sweet little origami heart tutorial, an easy way to review some visual fraction concepts and symmetry terminology. I'll continue weekly math enrichment throughout this seven-week unit, but most of our other subjects are going to be so rigorous that I can't promise that any of the math enrichment activities will be less sweet and simple than this one.

Our sharks unit is truly kid-led, and truly follows their passions. I originally signed up for the four-week sharks MOOC from Cornell just because the kids like animals, and it seemed fitting to study the ocean right before they left for California. By the end of the first day's lesson, however, the older kid had told me that now she wants to be a marine biologist instead of a lawyer, and by the end of the first week the younger kid told me that she wants to work with animals, maybe in a zoo, instead of being a hairdresser and ballerina.

It took us far longer than four weeks to complete the class the first time, with everyone working at her own pace, but now that we're done, we're going to be reviewing it again over the next four weeks, this time with plenty of hands-on enrichment activities to cement the concepts. After that, we'll spend 2-3 weeks on the big promised pay-off for this unit: the dissection of an actual shark specimen! The younger kid isn't so sure about this one, but the older kid is THRILLED.

On this day, we're reviewing the class videos that explain the ocean zones, and the regions that sharks inhabit. Using some online diagrams as a reference, the kids will paint and label a large chart for our wall that combines all of this information, and that can be populated in the future by cut-out pictures of the specific shark species that we study. We'll also, of course, be covering that information in our daily memory work in the car until it's nice and cemented into all of our minds.

TUESDAY: We'll review this week's chapters of From Colonies to Country, then the kids will complete this quick and easy lapbook activity on England's reasons for taxing the colonies, and put that into their American Revolution notebooks. I'm making the kids make their notebooks MUCH more organized than last year's World War 2 notebooks were, and my plan is to make them take the notebooks with us on our trip, and add information from the various sites that we visit to the relevant pages. We'll see how that goes...

Regardless, England's reasons for taxing the colonies will be added to our daily Memory Work.

We're still working on molecular modeling, because that concept is so important to the understanding of mineral formation, in particular, but this is our last week studying our chapter on minerals, so next week we'll be moving on to different geologic processes as we study igneous and sedimentary rocks. I want to make sure that the kids really understand molecular modeling, so we're basically doing the same model twice this week, once on this day with gumdrops and toothpicks, and again on the next day in an online simulator. My goal for the kids is that whenever they're presented with a newly identified specimen, they wonder what it's made of and how its molecules form. And then maybe they'll look it up!

Our town is basically made of rain recently, so it's likely that our homeschool group's playgroup will be cancelled, or will meet somewhere more mellow, like the library. I, personally, wouldn't mind the free time, I suppose--the older kid and I start fencing two evenings a week this week, and although I enjoy fencing, I'm a little bit dreading the time commitment.

WEDNESDAY: The kids by now know the types of taxes that England put on the colonists, and they understand England's reasoning, so to make sure they also understand the reasoning of the colonists, we're going to do one of my favorite history activities: role play! I will be England, the children will be colonists, and there will be Skittles involved (I wanted M&Ms, but the colonists overruled me at the grocery store, sigh...). I'm telling you right now that if the children are not crying in frustration by the end of the game, then Great Britain has not done its job.

We'll explore shark anatomy a LOT more deeply in the coming weeks, but external anatomy, particularly fins, is crucial to positive identification, so it's one of the first things that one should memorize. We'll be covering this in memory work, as well, but I want the kids to feel like they can apply their knowledge; fortunately, I used my staff discount at the Children's Museum to splurge on some Safari, Ltc. shark toys last week, so I'll be tasking the kids with identifying the external anatomy of each shark toy, AND with cross-referencing it with a species guide to evaluate the accuracy of each toy's depiction.

THURSDAY: Explore Rocks and Minerals is a really cool book with lots of fun activities, but it doesn't really go in the direction that I want to go for our unit. It does have one especially good reading selection on minerals, though, so on this day I'm asking the kids to read that selection, then they can choose an activity from the book that tickles their fancy. We might have to do this activity over the weekend, depending on what materials are required, and I won't push them if nothing seems to excite them, but hopefully they'll enjoy the chance to choose and complete something.

By this time, we'll have gone over the same old ground of England taxing the colonies that the kids are likely to be sick of it, but it's such an important concept that I can't help but cover it thoroughly. We'll have one last overview, then, this time in a super-fun Brainpop format.

We likely won't be doing a ton on the order of classification in our sharks unit, but we have studied it before, so since the class covers it this week, I'm taking the opportunity to have the kids review how the order of classification works, and to remind them that Wikipedia, of all places, is an excellent resource for studying it. When we do focus on a specific species, I'll expect the kids to be able to instantly find that species' order of classification for me, and to be able to explain it.

FRIDAY: Finally, we're moving on! Chapter 12 in From Colonies to Country introduces us to a few of the major players in the rebellion. The kids will use these lapbook pages to record the basic info for a couple of key ones, then they'll put them in their notebooks, to be added to later.

Since we're going through simple Spanish vocabulary so quickly, I'm already expecting the kids to be able to read some very simple Spanish books by this day. We'll search out a board book or an early reader with a lot of contextual clues, but the goal is to get the kids USING their knowledge.

This woodworking project might continue into the weekend, but that's okay. One of the stops on our road trip will hopefully be a beach in Maryland that is renowned for its shark tooth fossils, and I'm told that the best way to collect these fossils is to build the sifter that we're going to start building on this day. It's more of a practical life project than a shark biology project, then, but I think that the kids are going to start getting really excited about hunting for fossil shark teeth when we start to make it.

The younger kid actually won't have math on this day, since she should have finished her Math Mammoth year the day before. She'll start the next year's work right away on Monday next week, but on this day she gets a free day and a small celebration of her choosing: doughnuts. We'll likely buy them on our way to the older kid's destination of choosing: a local creek. Both kids need to work with their cameras to finish up Girl Scout badges--Digital Photographer for the younger kid, and Digital Filmmaker for the older kid. The older kid is pickier, so I left the choice up to her about what activity she'd like to film and make a movie out of for her badge and she chose creek stomping, so creek stomping is where we'll be, doughnuts in hand, for most of the day on this day!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Our only activity that's set in stone this weekend is Pony Club for the older kid, and yet it's actually going to be a weekend that's fairly packed with activity. The older kid is likely going to be leading Family Meeting for the first time, so god knows how that will go. Matt holds an art class for the children every weekend, and this weekend he'll also be giving them a lecture on pre-Revolution America. The entire family cleans the entire house on Sundays, so that I don't lose the rest of my sanity in the coming week. We also may break ground on the backyard tree house, if it ever stops raining. And if it stops raining for a good long while, we have tickets to Holiday World that the kids earned from cookie sales this winter!

I REALLY hope we get to Holiday World this weekend.

Homeschool Field Trip: Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial

Bright and early on Father's Day morning, the children and I woke Matt up (some of us by jumping on him as he slept, deeply and unsuspecting of the familiar agony of pouncing little knees and elbows that he was about to endure), gave him presents and cards, and then bundled him up and out the door to parts unknown.

We didn't tell him where we were taking him as we drove him two hours deep into the Indiana wilderness. In fact, we told him that we were taking him to tour a rainbow toilet factory, where we were going to let him pick out the nicest, sparkliest rainbow toilet for his very own--the phenomenon of the rainbow toilet is a family joke of murky provenance. It's best not to inquire too deeply into our collective family psyche.

Finally, just as we were so clearly ensconced into the smack-middle of nowhere that Matt was perhaps starting to believe my jokes that we were maybe planning to dump him by the side of the road and drive away really fast, we reached a place where surely every father in the world super wants to go on his special day:

The Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial.

Oh, wait--that's ME who wanted to go there!

My husband is a very patient, very amiable man.

Back story: as part of our prep for our American Revolution road trip, the kids and I had a lesson on the Lincoln Memorial, because we're driving right through DC so we'll surely stop there and surely see it, so of course we have to study it.

Stay with me here.

As part of that lesson, I learned that the artist who sculpted the Lincoln Memorial had made molds of Lincoln, including a life mask. "Hey!" I thought to myself, "I know where a life mask of Lincoln is!" I used to work at the special collections library on our local university's campus, and I've held that life mask in hands gloved with white cotton more times that I can count. As a matter of fact, that special collections library has quite a large collection of Lincoln artifacts.

Obviously I set up a field trip for our homeschool group to go there and see them.

And also the Oscar:

...and the puzzle collection:

She solved it!

As part of preparing for that field trip, we obviously had to have a lesson just on Lincoln's life, and in preparing for that lesson, I kind of became a little bit obsessed with Lincoln. I blame that on this super good, SUPER dishy biography: Abraham Lincoln: A Life. I dare you to get through the first chapter without needing to read the entire thing.

Seriously, Abraham Lincoln, especially the young Lincoln, is astoundingly fascinating. As a young man, he was apparently known for his dirty jokes and stories. He was even quoted as basically saying, "What's the point of a clean story? BOR-ING!" After his beloved sister died in childbirth, he blamed her husband's entire freaking family for her death, even though they were all like, "Jesus, Lincoln, we took care of her! Shit like this happens all the time!", and he hated that family so much that he actually wrote a homophobic song about one of their cousins.

I'm going to tell you that again.

Lincoln hated some guy so much that he wrote a SONG, a song of SEVERAL VERSES, calling the guy gay. I can only assume that he also sang the song.

How does the song go, you ask? GO. GET. THIS BOOK. There's all kinds of crazy stuff in there.

And that's why I wanted to take myself Matt to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial for Father's Day. None of them will read the book, so I was dying to march them all around and regale them with the stories that I got from it.

Oh, and I wanted Matt to have a lovely Father's Day with his children, of course!

Pretend that one of them isn't frowning. I took a dozen photos here, and this is the best. She's not even actively snarling in this one. Trust me--she was for sure snarling in the next one!

 

The kids and I had already seen some examples of Lincoln's handwriting during our homeschool field trip to the special collections library, but I can always fangirl over one more:

When you read Lincoln's handwriting, a fun game is to look for misspellings, because he wasn't a reliable speller.

 

This, however, is the first example that we'd seen of the handiwork of Abraham's father, Thomas Lincoln:

I thought it looked pretty sweet, but in The Book Thomas Lincoln is reviled as a lazy-ass deadbeat who was a terrible father, and who neglected and abused his children. Also, the book said that he wasn't a great carpenter--sure, he could make your basic stuff, like this giant chest, apparently, but none of the neighbors would use him for anything that they wanted to be especially nice.

He was also a lazy farmer; he'd stake a big claim like all the neighbors, but whereas everyone else farmed above their needs so that they could turn a profit and, you know, BETTER THEIR LIVES, Thomas Lincoln apparently farmed at almost a subsistence level. That's one of the reasons why the family moved around so much--a bad couple of years can really wipe you out when you have no savings.

Also, ALSO?!? When we were watching the memorial's introductory film, and Leonard Nimoy, the film's narrator, stated that both Abraham Lincoln's father and mother encouraged his educational pursuits, I gasped aloud in outrage. Thomas Lincoln most certainly did NOT encourage Abraham's educational pursuits! Why, whenever he'd catch him sitting and reading, he'd chew him out, hit him, and basically try to make him feel like a lazy piece of shit for studying instead of chopping wood. Abraham's step-mother actually had to sneak him books! And that thing about Abraham "leaving school" at a young age?!? That's because Thomas MADE him leave school! He made him drop out and began to rent him out as a day laborer for all kinds of work--chopping wood, farmwork, slaughtering pigs--and he took ALL of Abraham's earnings. Abraham even approached a family friend once and asked for help in running away, because he wasn't legally allowed to leave his family until he was 21. The friend told him it would be better to just stick it out. You might have seen a quote that Lincoln said later in his life--when someone was asking him about slavery, he said something like, "Yeah, I was a slave for a while." That time in his life is what he was talking about, and his words were pretty accurate.

Don't worry, though--I shared this information with the rest of the family in a furious hiss as they were trying to watch the movie.

They are very patient with me, even if some of them are much more interested in giant fireplaces:

It's a short hike from the memorial and museum to the grave of Abraham's biological mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln:

I don't know why I am always forcing my family to pose with graves, but I am:

The kids were completely fascinated with the story of Nancy Lincoln's death from white snakeroot poisoning, and we had an interesting discussion about pasteurization, dairy farming, and the time that I sent Matt to buy us some raw milk at the farmer's market and he came back, looked at the bottle, and then said, "Hey! I just wasted my money! This says that it's pet food!"

And then we discussed what a legislative loophole is!

One of the reasons why I was so excited to go to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial is that it has a living history farm on site, complete with animals, crops, and rangers in period dress:

On the walk there, you pass by the bronzed footprint of the original Lincoln cabin:

After Thomas Lincoln married Sarah Bush Johnston (leaving Abe and his older sister, Sarah, in the company of a slightly older cousin for several months. By the time he returned, the children had assumed he'd died, and they had nearly starved and had hardly any clothes), there were eight people living within this footprint:

 Husband and wife and two daughters slept on the ground floor, and all the boys slept up in the attic:

There was apparently room underneath for the chickens:

The older kid loved these chickens so much that when I suggested that she go ask the ranger what breed they were, she happily complied. They are Wyandottes, and I want some!

 

We spent most of the day hiking around and looking at stuff--

--and then the children joined a certain elite group that they dearly love--

--and we drove back home through the wilderness.

During our ten minutes of daily memory work in the car, I've slowly been working with the kids on memorizing the Gettysburg Address (the older kid had it memorized a few years ago, but lost it. This doesn't bother me, because I know that it'll be easier to re-memorize this time thanks to that). We're only three sentences in, but in this gift shop, I noticed bookmarks with the Gettysburg Address printed on them for sale. I bought one for each of the kids, then surprised them with them in the car and told them that when each kid had memorized the entire speech, she'd earn herself ten dollars.

They happily repeated the Gettysburg Address over and over to themselves the whole way home.

Here are some of the Abraham Lincoln resources that we (mostly me!) enjoyed during this study of his life and times:

Work Plans for the Week of June 13, 2016: Bridges and Back to Work!

Although the older kid and I have been on a half-day schedule, the younger kid has taken a full two weeks off of school to do summer intensive ballet at our local university's studio. 

Now that her ballet intensive session is over, I kind of feel like summer has actually begun. Now we can go strawberry picking and to the lake and camping like all the other families have been doing these past two weeks!

Even with one kid spending half her time in leotard and tights, the past two weeks offered the kids some much-appreciated down-time, with plenty of time to read and relaxed screen-time rules and LOTS of Sculpey play and audiobook listening, and also some sneaky science that I sneaked in. We disassembled a TV, for one thing:

The older kid and I spent an afternoon trying to figure out her dang boomerang--throwing a boomerang is hard, yo! There was rock tumbling, gardening, and still time for hiking. There was a lot more exploding and burning stuff with homemade fuses and fuel:

I turned off the video, because I thought that the show was over, but we'd actually spiked this newspaper ball with some leftover potassium nitrate and sugar mix, and it was quite particularly awesome how moments later, the entire ball burst merrily into flame!

Obviously we also poked at it:

We're back to work with a vengeance this week, knowing that next week we'll be off again thanks to day camp. This going-strong-and-then-taking-a-break type of schedule will continue for most of the summer, and if it works, I'm not opposed to keeping it going in the fall. We'll see.

Books of the Day this week consist mostly of juvenile non-fiction selections on the French and Indian War, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Abraham Lincoln, with a couple of living books to pad them out. The Open-Ended Material of the Week is still Sculpey, because the younger kid, in particular, still spends hours creating with it every day. The younger kid is still working on the secular version of New American Cursive 2, while the older kid now does copywork every day for her cursive assignment. They're both still working through Wordly Wise at their grade levels, and I'm conflicted between carrying on our slow progress that also includes memorizing each word's spelling, part of speech, and definition, or allowing them to continue through the chapters in a more speedy fashion so that they can start the next grade level in the fall. We'll see.

And here's the rest of our week!

MONDAY: In Math Mammoth, the older kid is finishing up her decimals unit and Syd is finishing up geometry and moving into fractions. They're both moving through their current units easily, and it's been a nice break from the extensive hands-on work that is required to get them through some units. Phew!

History, on the other hand, always involves extensive hands-on work! This week in our Revolutionary War unit study we're beginning coverage of the French and Indian War. Over the weekend, we watched part of The War that Made America--the kids didn't love it, but consented to watch with us through the chapter on Fort Necessity, which is what we'll be studying this week. And yes, I've also added Fort Necessity to our big fall road trip--I mean, we drive RIGHT BY IT! AND THEY HAVE A JUNIOR RANGER BADGE!!!

In other news, we will be on this road trip forever.

Our activities for this chapter also come from the curriculum materials on the Fort Necessity National Battlefield's website. On this day, I'm again handing the kids the 1750 map of North America and asking them to label the 13 colonies while we listen to History of US ch. 3, and then we're dialing down to complete a more detailed map of the Forks of the Ohio area. It should make a lot of sense to them, having watched that segment of the documentary.

When they're in California visiting their grandparents, the kids REALLY want to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, so of course we have to do an entire study of bridge engineering! This unit took an annoying amount of work to create, but I think it's going to be really educational, and the kids are going to love it. On this day, we'll discuss the basic components of bridges, the basic problems that a bridge has to solve, and the basic definitions of a beam bridge and an arch bridge, primarily using this book. The kids' challenge will be to construct models of beam and arch bridges using our building blocks.

A shift at our regular volunteer gig, and work begun on Father's Day presents and cards will make up the rest of our school day!

TUESDAY: I usually like to have the kids' hands-on math lesson be more hands-on, if you know what I mean, but the rest of our school week is VERY hands-on, so this lesson will instead be a chance for the kids to play around with the math games in my Educational Links. There are a lot of cool activities there for them to explore.

This chapter in History of US is really dense, so we'll listen to it again on this day, and then do another activity from the Fort Necessity National Battlefield curriculum materials, this one designed to let the children learn more about the Native American people involved in the French and Indian War. 

The truss bridge, or rather beam bridge with trusses, is the focus of our bridge engineering on this day. Trusses are pretty common on bridges, so we'll discuss their merits, check out some pics on Google Images, and then work together to make one of these out of popsicle sticks. I'm thinking that we'll set it up and test its weight by piling something on top of it--cans of vegetables, perhaps? Chickens? Books?

WEDNESDAY: At last--suspension bridges! We'll be talking about suspension bridges--and the Golden Gate Bridge in particular, of course--and then recreating this Scientific American activity of building and comparing beam and suspension bridges built from drinking straws and thread.

The older kid wants to earn her Girl Scout Cadette Trees badge next. Don't tell her, but I'm adding quite a bit to this badge to turn it into more of a botany study. The first activity, though, asks her to think imaginatively about trees, so both kids are going to design an actual tree house that we can actually build in an actual tree on our property. I'm sure it will require plenty of modifications, but my plan is for us to actually build this as the final activity for her badge. I have ALWAYS wanted a tree house!

The younger kid is still working through her Young Writer's Workbook, but the older kid is in the process of actually writing her story. I wasn't sure how I felt about arbitrary word counts, but I can see how it's encouraging her to stay with her story, keep thinking about it and writing it, and add in plenty of details.

THURSDAY: This day's reading in our rocks and minerals unit covers the Mohs Scale of Hardness. Identifying actual rocks and minerals is pretty hard, but I'm hoping that if we go through the process gradually, we'll end up with conclusive IDs for most of the rocks and minerals. I'm encouraging each kid to pick out at least a dozen specimens from their ridiculously huge collection, and we'll do all our work on these, recording results as we go. So for this activity, the kids will attempt to rate each of their specimens on the Mohs Scale, and we'll see what happens!

Did you know that Junior Forest Ranger is also a thing? The book includes a good section on forest fires, which is one of the things that the older kid needs to learn about for her Trees badge, but if your kids fill out the book and mail it in, I guess they also receive a free pin and access to special online activities.

Since by now we'll have covered the main types of bridges, on this day we'll have a challenge: I'm thinking that I'll give each kid 100 popsicle sticks, hot glue, and zip ties, and challenge them to build the longest, sturdiest bridge that they can. They'll have to choose between long and sturdy, of course, but otherwise I'm curious to watch their problem-solving processes.

FRIDAY: As an environmentalism tangent to the Trees badge, I'm having the kids help me review 23 Ways to be an Eco Hero on this day. There's a wide variety of projects available, so hopefully each kid will be able to find something that she can use to end the school week on an extra fun note.

This software developer has, bizarrely, a load of bridge-building simulations. The kids both love sim games, and the older kid especially, so I think that they'll have fun trying these out. They'll be very valuable if they offer lifelike modeling with realistic physics.

We've done a lot of research into the existing presidential candidates, but the kids had so much fun playing around with creating their own pretend presidential candidates that I've decided to use that as our focus for the rest of this elections unit. You know that by now, the remaining candidates are pretty much just going to say the same things over and over, but HitlerTrumpCat? You never know what's going to come out of HIS mouth!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: I'm hoping that we'll get some fun summer stuff done in the afternoons this week--don't swimming and strawberry picking sound like the best ways to spend the day?--but we have to save some fun stuff to do this weekend, too, especially on Father's Day! I'm not going to spoil any surprises, but we HAVE been wanting to go visit the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial...