Field Trips!

We have had several opportunities to visit museums lately and definitely have it on our list of things to do more often in the rest of the year!

Thanksgiving weekend we took advantage of free admission weekend and took along Owen and cousin Geni and visited both the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and U of O Museum of Natural History.  The kids were interested for longer than they (and we) thought they might be, although Kayla still didn't feel like she got quite enough time and is looking forward to going back alone.  (Although we agreed it might be better to study a little bit more about the artists and exhibits before returning as it was very exciting to see postcards books in the gift store of some of the artists we had studied and thought it would be even better to have that reaction to some full sized works of art :)

We were busy trying to be respectful and quiet and didn't take any inside pictures, but here are the three museum goers in the courtyard of the art museum.

They then ran off all of that quiet inside energy by chasing squirrels around campus!

The following weekend found us with a couple hours to wander around Bend. After enjoying the Christmas parade and the snow (and watching enough of the Civil War game to feel like we knew what the outcome would be!) we decided to check out the Deschutes Historical Museum.  It's is an old school building with each classroom dedicated to a different part of local history (Native American, Logging, School Room, Medical, Clothing, etc).   Kayla especially enjoyed the school room and reading some of the eighth grade graduation requirements! I think she might have a chance in the grammar section, but some of the others would find us pretty lost!

Next week we are hoping to get a chance to head to The Hallie Ford Museum at Willamette University.  

Lack of Momentum

I'd been feeling like we just can't get into a routine and keep things moving lately. 

Then I looked at the calendar. 

There are 22 weekdays this month.

5 are public school scheduled days off~2 for Thanksgiving, 1 for Veteran's Day, 1 furlough day, 1 grading day

At least 2 were sick days

2 we took off to visit Justin in Hawaii

and today~Snow Day! 

So that leaves us  maybe 12 days of school for the month~mostly broken up into 2-3 day chunks (and 3 of those are Owen's early release days).  Now I'm thinking I should get a gold star if we manage to learn anything this month!

Birdies!

Just yesterday I was sitting at my kitchen window when the cutest bird appeared. Hmm, I said, I wonder what kind of bird that is? So I grabbed a camera and took picture after picture. I uploaded the two best ones, and I am almost positive that it is a Dark Eyed Junco! Then I decided that I wanted to see a lot more birds in our backyard, so I set out some pans of bird food, and some filled with water. I will be photographing as many as possible, but if anyone has cool bird photos I would love to see them (you don't have to know what kind they are.) Please either send them to my email or my mom's. If you don't know either email address then leave a note in the comments and we will get it to you. And if anyone has tips on how to get birds to your backyard I would love to hear them! Happy Birdwatching! 

Love, Kayla <3 

The Amazing Floating Carrot!!!

This carrot not only sinks, but with the help of ocean science (and a LOT of salt) I can make this ordinary carrot float! How cool is that! We are studying the ocean in order to justify our "field trip" to Hawaii. I got to see exactly how much denser salt water is.  Obviously dense enough to make a carrot float.

 

Rain!!!

We got to make our own water cycle by filling a jar with warm water then putting a bag full of ice above, which made the water evaporate (sorry about the photo) and then rain back down, just like the real water cycle!

Love, Kayla

Fun Friday!

Finally had a week where we got enough done on the first four days of the week that we could relax and spend some time having "Fun Friday" today. 

Art this week looked at the Art Nouveau movement. We especially enjoyed the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany. So we started our morning out with a little "stained glass" tribute. 

Free form with the leftover supplies

 While the artist worked, I read to her from Canvas Caravans, by Eleanor Allen.  "Based on the journal of Esther Belle McMillan Hanna, who with her husband, Rev. Joseph A. Hannah, brought the Presbyterian Colony to Oregon in 1852"  (More specifically arriving in what was then called Marysville (now Corvallis!) on October 1, 1853.)
In honor of that, and other Oregon Trail studies this week, we made "Dried Apple Dumplings" from Oregon Trail Cooking.  





Our improvised scale. We had no idea how many of our homemade dried apples would be equal to the 8 ounce package called for in the recipe. So we had to compare it to the 7 ounce package of pasta from the cupboard!






Ready to boil/reconstitute....





Finished product.  Definitely edible.   And we agreed that after a couple months of trail cooking it would be absolutely delicious!



 We finished up the exercises for this week's Latin and Vocabulary units and then decided that the late October sunshine looked too good to pass up, so we walked to a park downtown to gather some leaves for what has become an annual tradition of tracing leaves onto construction paper or making rubbings, cutting them out and taping them in the front window.

To sneak in a little bit of geography, Kayla signed up for http://www.postcrossing.com/ in September.  She sent out her first five postcards to people in Washington, Wisconsin, Georgia and the Netherlands (2) over the course of the last month.  Yesterday's mail finally held the payoff~her first postcard received!  From St. Petersburg, Russia! 



There really isn't any good way to turn Linear-Equations into "fun" but we had some review problems at the end of the chapter she needed to get through, so we packed up our bags and headed back downtown to the coffee shop.  Sitting on a comfy couch, sipping an orange italian soda at least made Algebra look like fun. 

We also read a couple more pages in the story we are working on in Spanish.  We make flash cards as she encounters unfamiliar words, but she is definitely running across more full sentences she can understand with what she knows (and using those take a guess based on context skills). 

It turns out neither of us loves history (sorry Aunt Didi)

And science experiments are fun, but theory and formulas are not (sorry Aunt Mary)

But apparently we really enjoy languages! In addition to Latin and Spanish (and the Latin/Greek based vocabulary program and Grammar) we are now working on Greek as well.  The first couple weeks the main outcome was being able to identify the frat houses as we drove through Corvallis (which is a valuable life skill on its own!), but this week we've been working on sounding out actual words written with the Greek alphabet and have a small stack of Greek words that she can read and know what they mean! 

Kayla has decided to be part of the NaNoWriMo adventure this November so she spent the last of our coffee shop time brainstorming characters and plot ideas.  (She has been taking suggestions from everyone she runs into~so far ideas include: a basilisk named Fluffy, flying ferrets, evil twins, love, princesses, hole in the sidewalk leading to another world and many other crazy ideas!  Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments as obviously nothing is too bizarre to consider!)

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, as our days seem to fly by, packed with so many things to do and so much more we would love to be doing, but we thought you might enjoy a peek at today's Friday Fun!

Gumdrop Science

Thanks to Auntie, we know that the usual model of atoms with electrons spinning around nucleus like the solar system isn't really accurate, so I didn't feel like we had to do that! But I'm pretty sure that it is an educational requirement that any time you study atoms and molecules you are required to make some kind of model using common household items~preferably edible, so we went ahead (without even consulting our science advisor)  and made gum drop models of compounds: 

and salt....

 

Are You Smarter Than a Homeschooler?

I want to know if you are smarter than a homeschooler so I put together one or two questions fom each of our subjects.

Spanish
1.) What does "el conejo blanco" mean?
2.) What does it mean when you add -ito on to the end of a word?

Latin
1.) What does "e pluribus unum" mean? (you should know this)

Science
1.) How many atoms in a mole?

Reading
1.) Who are the four girls in Little Women?

Bible Study
1.) Whose fat swollowed a sword?

Vocab
1.) Give an example of an expletive..

Math
1.) Factor the expression 2r(r-7)+8r-56

Grammer
1.) Fill in the blanks
Present           Past        Past particle
Leave           ______      ___________
Sit               ______      ____________

Logic
1.) In any proposition what are the two concepts which we unite by affirming or seperate by denying?

History
1.) Who was our fourth president and what was his wife's name?
2.) In what war was the white house burned?
3.) What year did the trail of tears start?




Answers

Spanish
1.) The white rabbit ( we are reading Alice in Wonderland)
2.) Little

Latin
1) One of many

Science
1.) 6.02 x 10 to the 23 power    
or
602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Reading
1.) Jo, Beth, Meg, and Amy

Bible study
1.) Eglon King of Moab       -Judges 3:22

Vocab
1.) STOP dont say it. Expletive means obscene exclamation


Math
1.) (r-7) 2(r+4)


Grammer
1.) Fill in the blanks
Present           Past        Past particle
Leave              Left        Have left
Sit                  Sat         Have sat

Logic
1.) Subject and Predicate


History
1.) James Maddison and Dolly
2.) The war of 1814
3.) 1838

Outdoor School

I got back from outdoor school on Wednesday.  I was in a cabin with 15 other people including my counselors.  My two counselors camp names were Sulley and Ski. I took four classes while I was there, Photography, Nature Hike, Dutch Ovens, and Sewing.  In my photography class I learned how to make it look like someone is standing on someone elses hand. On my nature hike I learned that there are two types of blackberries but just one of them is native to our area.  I learned that the most reliable way to heat a dutch oven is with briquettes, and in fiber crafts I made P.J. pants out of fleece. I met a lot of new people and learned a lot of goofy songs. :-)

Love Kayla

What Have We Learned?

So....we are two weeks in~still in a happy honeymoon phase! What have we learned so far?
We start each morning out with a cup of tea and the morning readings from:

 It's not intense learning time, but  those 5-10 minutes of picking out tea and finishing the readings ease us nicely into the school day.

MATH:

We spent these first two weeks working through the 26 Lessons of Hands on Equations. It was definitely easier than she needed but it was fun and a painless way to start thinking algebraically while holding a place in our schedule for math.  But I'm excited to begin our much more in-depth Algebra next week:

 from Art of Problem Solving.

GRAMMAR:
 This supposed 5th grade text was a little bit of an eye opener about grammar concepts we both usually use correctly but can't necessarily put into words!   In the first two chapters we have covered: Compound and Simple Subjects and Predicates, Helping Verbs, Verb Phrases, Subject Pronouns, Sentence Types, Diagramming Simple and Compound Sentences, Writing Paragraphs, Comma Splices and Diagramming Sentences Beginning with "There Is/Are".

VOCABULARY:
 Uses Latin and Greek roots to teach English vocabulary.  The first two lessons dealt with numbers and the key roots included:  monos, unus, duo, duplex, bi, tri, tres, quartus, quatour, decem and centum.  Roots that combined with those included: logos, arkos, gramma, polein, lithos, animus, latus, plicare, secare, athlon and gradus.  Words that were new to Kayla (or that she couldn't define clearly) included:  monologue, monolith, monogram, unilateral, bipartisan, triumvirate, quatrain, centenary and decimate.  She was also excited to understand why unanimous, monopoly and centrigrade mean what they do!

PHYSICS:

An area I haven't thought about in probably 17 years! We are both learning as we go (there may be calls to the scientific Auntie in our futures!)  We did a handful of simple experiments to experience the ideas of the first two chapters: speed, acceleration, the acceleration of gravity, vectors/scalars, Newton's Laws, mass vs. weight, terminal speed and some basic equations.

LATIN:

We are alternating Spanish and Latin so we only did Lesson 1: Vocab: amo, porto, laudo, oro, laboro.  First Conjugation: amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant.   But what she was really excited about was learning the Lord's Prayer in Latin. 

SPANISH:  Before our first trip to Mexico, we purchased a language program called Synergy Spanish. Kayla really picked up a lot from it in the months before traveled and is excited to learn more. We had done quite a few of the oral lessons, but not the written. So we went back to Lesson 1 and 2 and worked through the written exercises.  We also grabbed a bunch of children's books while we were in Mexico that have a simple 10 page story followed by activities~so we started in on Peter Pan.  We were excited to find out that between the words that she already knows and knowing the context of the Peter Pan story there were only a few words on each page that she needed to ask about.

HISTORY: The addition of the timeline to our kitchen and hallway walls was by far the most exciting part of history!  But we also read/talked about sections about European Imperialism (1750-1900) and India Under British Rule.  The topics that rose to the top in terms of interest were Queen Victoria and the Victorian Era and Rudyard Kipling....

LOGIC: 
  Basic definitions and introductions to the concepts of logic, simple apprehension, judgement, deductive inference, proposition, syllogism and  mental image. 

READING:  The daily report on this book is basically a barometer of whether it is more or less boring than the day before, with the occasional admission that she enjoyed a passage.  Definitely not her usual pick :)

ART/MUSIC: Daily piano practice,  read about James Whistler and added a couple of Kayla's favorite works to the time line.

OTHER ACTIVITIES:  Nature Walk with Dad and the dog, signed up for Post Crossings~looking forward to receiving some fun mail (and sneaking in some geography!)

WHAT'S NEXT?  She'll spend the first three days of next week at a "Homeschool Outdoor School" at a local(ish) 4-H camp.   I'm excited both because I loved outdoor school and she has never had a chance to go and because it will give me a chance to evalute and regroup.

Favorites

Hi, it's Kayla. Now that I have survived a week and a half of school I have picked out my two favorite things we have done so far. One we did this morning. After doing our morning devotional I suggested that we learn the books of the bible, so to test what we already know we each made a list of all the books we could remember.  I had about forty books that I didn't know so we will keep doing this every week until we know them all. One of my other favorite things is our timeline, it starts near the back door in the kitchen and goes all the way to Owen's door. It starts at 1800 and goes till present day. We have put birthdays, and important historical events on it. It really helps me figure out when certain things take place. For instance, now I know that Whistler's famous painting was created during the victorian time period. Well I have to get back to work now but I will try to start updating more than one a week... LOVE KAYLA. 
Ps. If you want to be on our timeline you can email or call me, or post a comment with your name and birthyear.

Not-At-Home School

There was more school than home in our day today! We got up early, made ourselves some tea and worked on Algebra until time to take Owen to school.  Kayla did her Logic lesson while I dropped him off. We listened to Latin in the van on the way to the orthodontist appointment (bye-bye braces!).  Hung out in a study room at the public library working on grammar and history for the 3 hours until it was time to go back and pick up the retainer.  Reviewed vocab words in the van on the way home.   She finished up her reading and practiced piano and is relaxing for the few minutes until it's time to head back to Albany for gymnastics.  Yesterday was a nice bubble, but I suspect this is what many days in the 'real world' will feel like!

Goal: "To Learn Something. New!"

I'm sure they won't all be as easy or fun as today, but it was nice to get off to a happy start!  Despite her excitement all summer I was a little bit afraid that after today she'd be ready to go back to "real school" and then I'd have to find some neighborhood kid to use this huge stack of books!  

I'm sure I'll be sharing more about them as we go since curriculum questions seem to be the most common question I've been asked since we announced this crazy plan, but right now we're off to cook dinner (which I've been informed I can now call 'Home Ec' and have a helper) so here are a few of my favorite moments from today~

• Hearing   "Whoa that's confusing. I love it! My brain has to work!" while reading the Logic text.  Followed by, "Can I read something cool to you?"
• Finding vocabulary words she didn't already know~and her plans to use them to confuse her brother and dad when they get home.
• Being able to head out the door for a seven minute walk when we started getting fidgety.

Day One Jello and Vectors

So if you didn't see our last post this is Kayla speaking. Today was day one and it went great. We started with bagels and tea then took first day of school pictures. Then we made a name tag then went on to a devotional. After that we moved on to logic, it was so confusing but it made my brain work so I loved it. I loved this part of a qoute out of one of my logic books "You can be as logical about griffins and basilisks as you can about sheep and pigs." After logic we started on my math lesson about Algebra it was so much fun. Then I learned some Greek and Latin roots during vocabulary. By then I was getting hyper so Mom and I took Cypres for a walk. When we came back we spent a while working on grammar. Then we were getting hungry so we made smoothies then practiced Latin. Probably the best part of today was science. I got to do two experiments. The first one was about Vectors, which is an object moving in a direction. For this experiment we got to use Jello!!!!! For my second experiment we got to send marbles down a ramp and I learned that the size of the marbles doesn't affect the time it takes them to travel down a ramp. After that I learned two new songs on the piano both using a new hand position. Then I sat down to eat lunch and read the book Kidnapped. So, we had a busy day but I loved every minute of it. Another thing I love is being able to study at whichever desk I want these are the places I studied today.

Who Said That?

Since this blog is shared between two people we will use different fonts and colors so you can tell us apart.

This is me, Kayla.

This is me, Patty.

So now you know who said what...

Day Zero

Can't start a school without a name!

All good names need to be acronyms...

So welcome to

School for

Teaching

Unusual

Pupil

In our

Domicile

Or, in other words, S.T.U.P.I.D. It's gonna be quite a year here!