Our Family Project

This last Saturday was our homeschool group's science fair.  Andrew decided to make a lava lamp.  He actually made it at the beginning of January, but didn't have his presentation put together until Saturday right before the fair. Jon sat down with Andrew in the morning and helped him to understand why his homemade lava lamp works: the oil not mixing with the water.  So, Andrew brought our kitchen scale and measured water into one water bottle, and the same amount of oil into another water bottle.  He put them on the scale to show that the same measurement of each liquid had a different weight or density.  Andrew's was the first presentation, and he did such a fantastic job!  You never would have thought that he was nervous. Eliza's and Kate's project had to do with what we've been talking about for science.  We've been studying plants this year, and they prepared a presentation about the parts of plants: the roots, stem, leaves, and flo...

In April we participated in our homeschool group's Geography Fair.  We went the easy route because we were throwing together our project at the last minute, and chose to do our project on Chile!  It was easy because that's where Jon served his mission.  So, we had a bunch of little items that showcased the culture there.  Jon and I traced the map on a long sheet of paper, and, okay, we colored it too.  We are such control freaks.  Oh well.  The children drew little pictures/icons of exports, produce, and other things that symbolized specific things we learned about Chile.  We got to the part and everything was set up trunk-or-treat style ... which was so great!  Although, our friends in the car next to us did their report on Argentina ... the sworn enemy of Chile! Then, came the presentation!  This was the fun part.  Eliza, Kate and I got together the day before the fair and wrote a rap for our presentation.  Then, we broke u...

Our art co-op this year has changed a little bit.  Last year one of the families in our art co-op had a daughter in pre-K who went to Kindergarten in the public school this year.  So, that family no longer is part of our art co-op.  But, my friend who we still do art with knew of a family that would be homeschooling again this year after last year's public school experience.  And, there are a a couple of wonderful things about this new arrangement: there are two boys in the new family (yay! Andrew and Adam are not the only boys!), and the mom is an artist (yay! No more craft days, and much more true art instruction)! Because one of the moms is an artist and feels comfortable teaching art all the time, we decided to change things up so we wouldn't be rotating the art instruction.  But, in order to make it a co-op, the other mom and I needed to help out in some way.  So, we decided to add a couple of subjects to our art co-op: cooking and music. ...