Comments Please!

Hi! I just heard from a reliable source that it is hard to comment on our posts. We played around with the settings and want to know if it is better? If you could post a comment that would be great!  Love, Me!!!

Puppet Science!

After several months of grumpiness and confusion in the science department we finally came to the realization at some point in December that there is still plenty of time ahead to a) end up with a teacher who makes physics fun, exciting and understandable or b) hate physics.  But that there was no reason for us continue on miserably just because some book suggested physics as their eighth grade science step :) We could choose to switch over to the science that Kayla is actually excited about!  Which would be pretty much anything related to animals...so we ordered a book about Mammals and continued watching backyard birds and reading National Geographic articles and watching Nature and Wild! and Oregon Field Guide and even pulled out my old Biology 101 textbook and I now have a much happier scientist on my hands!  (I expected the Biology textbook to go by the wayside quickly, but she is still enthusiastically outlining~full blown Roman Numeral style which she absolutely resisted doing with the history I thought she should try it with earlier in the year~and writing down new vocabulary and reading it. Although she just shakes her head and sighs when I tell her how much she would probably be reading in a night in a college class.)



Sirenians



Cetaceans

Rodentia



Lagomorpha



Insectivora

Last weekend she volunteered to help me man my paper bag puppet table at the community college family fun day and decided to turn it into a science project. So we had a sample puppet to represent every order of mammals: 



Artiodactyla



 



Monotremata









Perissodactyla







Pinnipedia





Chiroptera





Carnivore





Marsupial





Primate



Proboscidea

I'm Back!!!

Hi everybody! Sorry it has been so long since my last post, I have been very busy. I recently switched my science classes from Physics (yuck) to Biology! It has been much more interesting, and even though I am only in the 2nd chapter I am already glad that I have been learning Greek and Latin. All those roots come in handy when I am trying to figure out what all the new vocab words mean. I also started memorizing Collossians, I know the first 6 verses pretty well so far, but it has been really cool because we have a Bible written in Greek, so I can kind of translate it into English. We just finished studying the Civil War in history, and right now are studying how different countries tried to gain independence. In math I am learning how to graph equations (very confusing) and how to write equations using two points on a graph. I have two different logic books I have been using lately. One that teaches the rules of logic, the other discusses common logic mistakes. Right now I am reading a book called the Scarlet Pimpernel  which is about the aristocrats. I am still very interested in birds, and would love to get any cool bird pictures you might have! I have been receiving lots of postcards thanks to postcrossings.com, which is a website where you get to send and receive postcards from all over the world.
Love, Kayla B. <3

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