California Field Trip #8: Bean Hollow State Beach

Everybody has a favorite beach. Bean Hollow State Beach is ours.

 

Work Plans for the Week of December 16: It's Almost Christmas!!!

NOTE: I don't know if you'll actually be able to see the above files--Box apparently updated to a new version in the past week,  and it's acting really glitchy for me; sometimes the files will show correctly, and sometimes they want to require some sort of (non-functioning) interactive feature to make them show. I'm assuming that at some point Box will figure out the glitch, and then the embeds will self-correct.

Anyway... It's the last week before Christmas break!!! We're going to take another week and a half to two weeks off for break (depending on whether the kids drive me nuts after Matt goes back to work on January 2 and I want to put THEM to work, too, or if they play happily with their new stuff and are a pleasure to be around, etc.), so I want to get all our work done in good time this week so that we can enjoy our holiday.

MONDAY: This Christmas craft gig has been going great! So far, the kids have done Christmas cards, ornaments, painted shirts, and letters to Santa, and this week I'm hoping for present making and wrapping and another ornament or two--see how I sneak in that useful stuff that I actually NEED to get done? Mwa-ha-ha!

We've got another non-typical schedule this week in that along with that Christmas craft spot, I'm ditching other requirements (I miss you, Latin and art!) so that the kids can do chemistry every day. One of the books that we read last week for chemistry--Acids and Bases (Why Chemistry Matters)--was AMAZING; totally inspired the kids, and had ideas for tons more expansion activities, so that's what we're doing this week! The pH indicators have been super fun, but I think the kids are really, really going to love mixing stuff in search of reactions on Thursday's schedule, and dissecting a battery...carefully... on Friday's schedule. There are other books in this Why Chemistry Matters series that I've requested from the library. If they're as good as this one, we'll be including them in our science unit, too.

We're still using Communicating Mathematics with Pattern Blocks for Monday's hands-on math, and I was rushed for time last weekend--350 birthday candles to pack and ship, among other chores--so I put it again in Friday's hands-on math spot. I normally try to be very thoughtful about their hands-on enrichment, but I LIKE the ability to just plug something in that's easy to set up and easy to do!

TUESDAY: I've FINALLY got both kids going on First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 3, and we like it so far! Syd's finding the dictation work a real stretch (since we totally skipped Level 2, and therefore she's technically a year too young for this level), but the grammar is spot-on for her, so we'll stick with it, and she'll see herself improving over time. I'm hoping to keep with two lessons a week, and keep the girls together, but if needed, I can keep Will at two lessons a week, and put Syd at one lesson plus one enrichment activity.

Will's been attending a math enrichment class on Tuesdays, while I stay home with Syd, but I think that in the new year I'm going to start sending both of them. I haven't been taking math off of the Tuesday schedule even with the class, but I think that I'll start doing that, too--a shortened schedule AND extra free time for me?!? Tuesday in 2014 is going to be a GOOD day!

WEDNESDAY: Today is usually our free day, but we've decided to take Friday off to go to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and visit Santa, so we're working today, instead. I have no idea if we're going to just do Friday's work today, or Thursday's and part of Friday's--right now, the girls are working on their Christmas present to Matt, so that could be either day's Christmas craft--so I think we'll just wing it!

THURSDAY: Super short work day today, since we're going ice skating with our homeschool group, and then the girls are having a friend over for the rest of the afternoon and evening. If nobody throws a fit over their math packet (I've finally found a place in the curriculum where Will's being challenged, and she does NOT like it that she's no longer breezing through the material!), we should be able to easily get our work completed that morning. If not, I'm betting that their buddy would LOVE to help them mix chemicals and look for observable reactions!

FRIDAY: We didn't get to that papyrus papermaking kit last week, but I'm hoping that we will this week, because I'd like to move on with history in the new year, and that means more mummies and monuments, not cuneiform and papyrus.

And yeah... battery dissection. Don't ask me, because I don't know how this is going to go. I just know that Will's been asking to do it, we've seen a few tutorials, we have a book, we have old batteries, we have goggles and gloves...

... and we live pretty close to a great hospital with a great emergency room?

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Christmas Prep

a tutorial for kid-friendly filled ornaments

and a tutorial for a kid-painted Christmas tree shirt

We've been having a great school week so far, filled with Christmas crafts, math, spelling, and science. I tried to upload our work plans today, but the host that I use is giving me issues, so since I can't turn it off and then back on (A buddy of mine at college had a job supervising the photocopying and microfilm stations at our university library. Whenever people would come to him fussing about how the photocopiers or microfilm readers weren't working, he'd sigh, stand up, walk over to the machine, turn it off, count to ten, turn it back on, huff "There!" at them, walk back to his chair, and sit down), I'm just going to leave it alone for a day and try again tomorrow.

So my thoughts on the chemistry of acids and bases are just going to have to wait, I guess...

California Field Trip #7: Ocean Beach at Sunset

   

I know, right? No words.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Antique Sleds and Vintage Beads

a tutorial for making ornament hangers out of old beaded necklaces

and a tutorial for cleaning and maintaining an old wood and metal sled

The girls do have one plastic sled, as well, and they've learned through experience that the plastic sled is much better for that very first day of snow, when it's all dry and fluffy. Give the snow another day, though, to pack down a little, and the wood and metal sled becomes an unstoppable force of gravity, careening at bullet speed past the kids on their light little sheets of plastic. 

Okay, and one time it definitely careened at bullet speed INTO a kid, and the kid cried and his mom was pissed, and fine, I apologized, but to be fair, every single other kid at the park was sledding *here* and walking back up the hill *there*, and if YOUR kid is going to insist on walking back up the hill here, where everyone is sledding, and not there, where everyone is walking, well...

My kids' sled is heavy and fast.

California Field Trip #6: San Francisco Zoo

Showing double productivity, since this is something else that we're trying to do a lot of this year, we made it to another zoo!

I was thrilled to see that the San Francisco Zoo includes each animal's scientific name on its info board, because the girls and I LOVE taxonomy! I wish that they'd also included the translation, though--I know my Greek and Latin well enough to translate many names (such as old one-horned horny nose there), but not enough to satisfy our curiosity at every exhibit:

The tiger exhibits were especially noteworthy, because we love the tigers--

--the tigers always seem to want to kill us--

--and we followed the news reports several years ago of the tiger who escaped from its exhibit in the San Francisco Zoo several years ago and killed a visitor. The old tiger grotto looked very similar to the one still in place at the Louisville Zoo, but the new one not only has the tigers behind glass, like at the Indianapolis Zoo, but also with a concrete moat that they can play in, but that increases the distance they'd have to jump to get over the glass fence to 19 feet:

Personally, I don't put anything past a predator on the attack, but the extra fencing, and the signs everywhere that now remind people to stay quiet around the animals and not antagonize them, will hopefully keep the tigers safe from US now.

And of COURSE Will somehow found a bug collection to admire:

I shudder to tell you that that's our big spring project.

California Field Trip #5: California State Capitol Building

Well, we're driving right through Sacramento, so we might as well stop and see the capitol building!

Of COURSE there's a redwood growing on the capitol grounds!

Such a balmy capitol building--the Indy one is covered in a foot of snow right now!

Sure, it was just a short field trip--more of a detour, really--but now the kids have a memory to go with their answer to "What is the capital of California?"

P.S. Here's an interactive kids' web site for the capitol building, to add even more context.