Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Tuesday

IT'S RAINING!


I never thought that I'd be so happy to see it rain! It's grey, cold, soggy and wonderful! Unfortunately, it's too late for it to have any effect on our fall leaf colors but at least they're getting a drink.


School work went pretty smoothly today. Only a few bumps in the road. (read: Horizon's Math).


Our current book is still "The Wright Three" and we're really starting to get into it! It's going slowly because it's so well suited for us! After we read each chapter the boys have so many questions and they're curious about everything in the book. It is the sequel (we didn't read the first book) to "Chasing Vermeer". One of the main characters in the book loves to work with Pantomimes. So you know we had to take a day and make our own! The architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright is an integral part of the plot so we've been doing an entire study on the man, his art and his life. We designed our own "art glass one day. Today we found a cool game that is specifically themed to the book. Can you make a geometric shape from pantomimes? So as you can see, we take forever to finish a book!


We learned something really cool about bees today in Botany. Did you ever wonder how flowers get pollinated if they can only use pollen from the same kind of flower? If a bee landed on a clover and then on a rose, it wouldn't do any good right?

Check this out.

Each morning, each individual hive decides what kind of flower it's going to visit that day. One day it might be roses, another day lilies, another day clovers! How cool is that? If that isn't evidence of God's handy work then nothing is!

We also used pages 47 and 48 of this EXTENSIVE free unit study on bees. It's a 3.2 mb PDF.

After that I went to the library. I went sans kids. Big Daddy is home today due to a dental appointment so I took advantage of it and went alone! I needed to renew some books and get a few more on ratios, decimals and dividing fractions.

Anyone know any good resources for helping my oldest learn WHY (he's a why guy!) you have to multiply by the reciprocal to divide by a fraction? I couldn't tell him why yesterday or today so I though I'd get some extra materials.

Ok, my goal for the next few weeks is to get a jump on our portfolio for the end of the year. The March madness that ensued last year was not pleasant and I want to be free to kick my feet up in the spring! I've agreed to train to test students at the end of the year so I'm gonna be busy busy busy!

Tonight we're going to carve pumpkins. More on that next time! I suggested this design and no one thought it was as funny as I did!





2 comments:

Stephanie Appleton said...

That book sounds interesting. That is the best part of homeschooling. You can go at your own pace, and explore and learn as you go. No rush to finish!

~Mary~ 4boys4me said...

Adam is dividing fractions too. He doesn't ask why, though. He just wants to get done. The only reason I can think of is b/c division is the opposite of multiplication. I'm going to drag out my teacher's manual and see if they have a better explanation. I'll email if I find anything useful.