Homeschool Highlights Week of Oct. 13

Okie doke, so in addition to daily math, the kids kept busy this week doing GeoPuzzles, math and thinking skills games on the computer, and actual reading out of science books.

I was also reminded by a fellow homeschool mom that the fair was accepting entries to the exhibition hall. I had forgotten, but when I mentioned it to the kids, they really wanted to participate, and both of them found something they have previously done to enter. Grace entered her watercolor called "Bird", and Zak entered an ink sketch he titled "Dream."

And guess what? Zak won first place! Though I don't think there were many other entries that shared his medium in his age bracket. I'm bummed that Grace only got a participant ribbon, because I seriously love her painting. We literally took it off our living room wall and brought it, frame and all, to the exhibition hall. But she seems un-phased, and both kids are looking forward to next year when they will have time to work on new and more pieces to enter.

Kit and I soaked some water beads, and she has been playing with them quite happily for the last several days.

She also has been thoroughly enjoying "painting" the chalk board. I give her a wet paintbrush and she gets busy. She has even taking to getting her own paintbrush,  scampering to the bathroom to stand on the stool and run water on the brush, so she can "paint" by herself. Very Mommy approved!

In history we read about the ancient Olmec people from Central America. Pretty much the only testimony to their civilization left standing are these giant sculpted stone heads. Presumed to be leaders and perhaps deified in stone. We looked up pictures of them, and what was most impressive to me was how very individual each one is, making the argument that they represent specific individuals very convincing. So the kids assignment was to drawn one of their own, with a person for scale and lots of details. They did a fantastic job!

The weather was beautiful this week (it's about time!), so we spent a lot of time playing outside. Chicken photo bomb courtesy of Daisy.

Grace found an earthworm Friday, which just so happened to be the absolute perfect creature for her to find this week. Her reading from her science text has been about habitats,  and she had just read about how to make an earthworm habitat. So she lost no time in making one of her own!

Hello, Wormy.

For art this week, we skimmed through a book on portraits, paying attention to the pictures, not the words so much. Then we all sat down to make some of our own. Grace and Kit went in the direction of Abstract, and I was pleasantly surprised at how similar a style Zak and I had in the facial features we painted. That was completely coincidental. 

Kit's on the left. Zak's on the right is called "Walking in the Mud".

Grace's on the right features the face of a sun in the middle, blowing out his rainbow rays. She called it, "The Windy Sun".

Mine,  on the left, is called "The Look" because that is what it made me think of. We are not likely to get hired as portrait artists anytime soon, but we had fun.

Zak came to me on Friday and said that he read out of his book earlier in the week and was there anything else he could do for science? I told him to find an experiment. He wandered off. I was giving Kit a bath after painting when I started hearing a lot of squeaking noises from the other side of the bathroom door. I chalked it up to Zak being bored. Until he came to me and asked to show me his discovery. He said he had experimented, and figured out how to make a notebook whistle. He grabbed a section of pages and slightly adjusted them so they made a bit of a tapered edge. Then he started blowing into them, looking a lot like he was administering CPR sideways to the spiral bound notebook. The ensuing warbles sounded more like duck calls than birdsong, but he was indeed making the notebook whistle. He worked on that for about twenty minutes before coming to show me. Yes, I let him count that as science. Plus he had a blast!

Hope all of you have had a wonderful week. Check out what other homeschoolers were up to at The Weekly Wrap-Up on Wierd Unsocialized Homeschoolers!  And hop on over to The Saturday Evening Family Friendly Free-For-All on Mommy Crusader!

Happy weekend!