{Science} with A Drop of Water

We have continued with our water studies this term and conducted a few more experiments last week, which (again) were lots of fun! 

We read the sections on "Soap Bubbles" and "Bubble Shapes", then got some materials together for a little experimentation. After watching a youtube video here on making bubble shapes, and after reading Soap Bubble and Bubble Frame experiment notes in the back of the book, we got to work.

We connected straws to play-doh corners at first (to make our cube), but then the play-doh got slimy and didn't keep a firm grip on the straws. After that we decided to use pipe cleaners twisted together at the ends to form a cube. This worked fairly well, although the cube was a little lopsided. However, we did manage to get a shape to form in the middle. It wasn't the 3-D bubble cube like in the book or on the video. It was just a flat square ... but still cool!

We then attempted to bounce bubbles with our gloved hands. The kids had a ton of fun doing this, although I should have taken it outside. At least it wasn't a dirty mess.

After reading about how to rest a bubble on the mouth of a jar in order to drop a pin through it, we couldn't resist trying this out. We wet the pin with bubble solution and dropped it through the bubble. The bubble didn't pop! And quite by accident (as our hands were already so covered with solution) we discovered that even our fingers could pass straight through the bubble without it popping:

How cool is that?!?

After all this experimenting and excitement, Royal mentions how maybe we should start a science journal and write down our findings. ... And after blinking and pinching myself, I said: "Ok, good idea!"

Alice dictated to me her notes, then she copied them from the white board.

This addition to our Year 3 studies has been so much fun!

... and apparently inspiring as well ...

:-)

{Keeping} :: September's Firsts

Quite a month of variety as we head into a season of change. 

I am glad to have gotten so many photos of our Firsts as well.

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1  - spotted a canyon wren on our roof
    - elm seed pods dropping; ants carrying them underground

8  - rouge plants (pigeon berries) now showing red berries

    - identified mystery plant/grass: Plains Lovegrass

    - two red-headed woodpeckers up in an elm tree

9  - sandhill cranes flying south
    - rainy day ... cooler weather (80s)


12 - happened upon some Queen caterpillars ... there is a plentiful patch of milkweed vine

milkweed vine

19 - Monarch chrysalis formed

27 - bloodmoon

It was a cloudy evening.
I was thankful I could just get a glimpse of this spectacle.

28 - Monarch butterfly!

This one is a male.
Apparently the black lines nearest the body give the gender away.
Male's lines are thinner than female's, and they also have a little bulging black dot
along one of the lines nearest the body.

Can you spy it?

29 - Bigpod sesbania blooms down in the riverbed

30 - identified the Red Mulberry in our backyard (there are several)

Interesting how there are two kinds of leaves on the same tree, lobed and entire.

I hope you enjoyed a peek into Firsts in our part of the country.

What natural wonders are you noticing in your area?

The Switchman

Many are the plans in a person’s heart,
    but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

Proverbs 19:21

I begin each school week with high ambitions to accomplish much. Sometimes, things derail, or rather the Switchman puts us on a different track. I think that is what happened to us this week. But I am fairly certain it turned out more fruitful than anything we may otherwise have done.

Our usual Day 1 (Tuesday) was scratched because Daddy had an extra day off and I was still recovering from the weekend's birthday festivities for Alice (now 7!)

Wednesday (this week's Day 1), we managed to get everything done in a timely manner, with just a few minutes to spare before three friends arrived for their first Spanish lesson. Royal and Alice joined in with their friends while Almanzo napped, and we had a fun time of singing and playing and acting out things in the foreign language.

Thursday also went well. It was a shorter day, lesson-wise, so we got everything done. This afternoon, Royal decided he wanted to sew some buttons on his pajama pants to make them look like thermal underwear or something (like in the olden days), so I let him. The plan for his handicraft was to do some leatherwork with his Grandpa this evening while Alice was at volleyball practice... Well apparently Grandpa was watching a show on the Alaskan frontier and so the leatherwork didn't get touched. Royal enjoyed it, of course. (And it just fueled his desire to be a backwoodsman when he grows up).

Friday for some reason didn't work out to be as efficient and we ended up having to postpone a couple of lessons (Parables of Nature and A Drop of Water) because we were running behind and needed to get to our first piano lesson by 2:30. Oh, and Almanzo refused to nap today. But I was able to coax him into at least staying in his room to play until I went to get him. (I think we must be transitioning into the age of no-daily-naps soon, sniff-sniff).

The first piano lessons went great and the kids enjoyed them. This is really a God-send and I thank the Lord for sending us our new friends and neighbors. Our kids play well together and we both homeschool. I bought our keyboard from them, and now my friend teaches our kids piano in exchange for me teaching her kids Spanish. Sweet!

Saturday we had early volleyball games. My plan was to return home to do a regular day of school; however, the weather was SO glorious, I just couldn't bear to be inside at the table. I sent the children outside for the remainder of the morning to play and explore until lunch. As it happened, they chanced upon a wonderful patch of milkweed vine with a number of monarch caterpillars! 

I toted the nature journals out there and had a little impromptu nature study, talking about the visual difference between a Queen and a regular Monarch caterpillar. 

Alice's sketch

Isn't this just the cutest sketch ever?!?

We saw 2 Queens and one Monarch. The children wanted to bring one inside to our habitat, but as we already have one, I wanted to leave the others to enjoy their natural surroundings. I suggested we just go check on them every day. After lunch, however, Royal came rushing back to me and said the fire ants had eaten the two Queens! Fantastic. So this evening I wanted to go poking around some more out there to see if I could spy any more. Fortunately I did, and this one (also a Queen) was so tiny! I think I even found a couple of monarch egg sacs deposited underneath one of the milkweed vine leaves.

During Almanzo's nap today we did get a little school done; however, due to our morning adventures and discoveries outside, we fell far short of a full day of book-learning. But really, I am ok with that ... especially when Royal makes his own written entry in his Nature Notebook alongside his drawing and later tells me that Nature is his favorite thing and how glad he is that we don't live in a city.

Royal's sketch and entry

I have been reading a bit of what Heather over at Bent Leather has been writing this week (and in this post particularly) ... and after today's experience outside, I am further encouraged that women, children (amateurs) can take away so much more from the world of science if they are actively curious than they can from whole volumes of scientific material produced by the experts.

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What blessings have you experienced from a week of "failed" plans?

{Keeping} :: August's Firsts

I really enjoy taking photos; however, for some reason August came and went without much evidence to supplement my Calendar of Firsts. I hope to remedy that the month of September.

Anyway, for a run-down of items I included in August, here 'tis:

8 - mourning dove feather collected and identified (with entry into our nature journals as well)

Alice's entry

Royal's entry

   - low ruellia blooms in dry, rocky creekbed: Creekside Trail Route

9 - sumac blooms

10 - prickly pears on cacti
     - western ironweed patch along roadside

12 - lots of crickets chirping

16 - snow on the mountain blooms

19 - rainy and cool! High: 72 degrees. WOW. Rained for 5 hours straight!

28 - Wilson's Warbler spotted at parents' home in central Texas. They are migrating south to the tropics.

30 - lots of Texas Frog-Fruit in the open fields up the hill

{Keeping} :: Spanish Notebook

I have been meaning to do a post on our (or my) Spanish Keeping Notebook for awhile. Now with Celeste's September Keeping Company Invitation, I have the impetus to go ahead and put some words and observations down in a post here.

This is something I desire to do consistently as a record, as well as a future resource for my children. 

First I must say that back when Royal was a wee 5-year-old, I actually started a crude version of a foreign language notebook where we would enter a new vocabulary drawing each day. I wrote the Spanish word at the top of the page:

More recently I began two books, one for each of the older two since they have been doing Spanish together since forever.

These spiral-bound books I already had on hand, initially to be purposed as a home for Royal's toddler art. After our move back to the States, I lost my "round tuit". ;-P 

As for the set-up, I just found a typical Spanish image to print off and set as the cover art to distinguish it as something special. The children colored their pictures, then I added the letter stickers to spell out "español":

As far as practicality goes, it really has fulfilled that purpose even thus far. I have had so many loose flashcards and papers to deal with. The keeping aspect of this notebook really lives up to its name in this case! Lol :-)

From various web searches and Pinterest posts on foreign language, I have seen the emergence of something called interactive notebooks. I took this idea as something to incorporate into our Keeping and hope it finds use as the children grow to use their books as a source for personal review:

And now with the numerous series we have been learning in our Around the House unit, I have a place to record the series as well as illustrate the vocabulary (with room to add more vocabulary that may belong to each of these rooms of the house):

So there it is!
A work in progress, for sure.

So now I want to see some of yours!

Drop me a line with a link if you've got a post highlighting your special foreign language Keeping.

History Alive: the Alamo!

Last week our family enjoyed a week away from normal. We ventured south a bit to enjoy some time with the grandparents and to make a visit to the Alamo.

This past year's Ambleside Year 3 readings of American Tall Tales has sparked a wonder-filled world of frontier life and awestruck fascination with Davy Crockett.

Let him ... linger pleasantly over the history of a single man, a short period,

until he thinks the thoughts of that man, is at home in the ways of that period.

-Vol 1, p280

As Royal's interests gravitated toward this hero of the 19th century, I began to keep my eyes open for books he may enjoy and found a handful at various thrift stores:

Davy Crockett, Young Pioneer

Davy Crockett, Defender of the Alamo

The Story of Davy Crockett

Susanna of the Alamo

I also ordered Davy Crockett's Own Story, As Written by Himself.

I confess I did this because I was inspired by my son's interest, along with the notion that this book could be an option for Year 10's biography selection.

From my Commonplace:

(I can't help but think that Charlotte Mason would be proud to read this as well!)

What a pity it is that these theaters are not contrived that everybody could go;

but the fact is, backwoodsman that I am, I have heard some things in them that was

a leetle too tough for good women and modest men;

and that's a great pity, because there are thousands of scenes of real life that might be exhibited,

both for amusement and edification, without offending.

p168

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Let a child have the meat he requires in his history readings, 

and in the literature which naturally gathers round this history, 

and the imagination will bestir itself without any help of ours;

the child will live out in detail a thousand scenes of which he only gets the merest hint.

-Vol 1, p295

With all the past year's talk of Crockett and the Alamo, playing at frontier life and singing the Ballad of Davy Crockett, my kids were ripe for a visit to this shrine of Texas history.

Photos are not allowed inside the mission, but it was amazing to view relics once used by so many involved in the Texas Revolution...a Bowie knife, Crockett's rifle, a large wood piece from his Tennessee home's chimney, and his leather wallet (which we sketched to try replicating in the future, as Royal is now beginning to do leatherwork). 

Talking with various museum attendants:

... we learned where Davy Crockett's battle position at the Alamo was and where his body was found afterwards 

... we enjoyed handling a real flintlock rifle and .69 caliber round balls 

... and did you know Phil Collins (he was seriously my favorite rock star growing up!) is an Honorary Texan because of his generous donations of Alamo relics he has collected over the years? He has amassed around 250 articles relating to the Alamo and the Texas Revolution. A select few are already on display at the Alamo, but the rest Mr. Collins has asked specifically that there be a place where the entire collection can be housed together. These plans are in the works now.

For a bit of History in the Headlines, read this article: Phil Collins has always Remembered the Alamo

my little Davy Crockett & Jim Bowie

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The Church of San Fernando,

one of the oldest cathedrals in the USA

and the marker for the official center of the city of San Antonio lies on the floor of the back chapel:

Besides being beautiful on the outside,

the inside is quite lovely as well:

And in the entrance on the left side of the church,

another piece of history:

History is now alive in our minds!

"Education must be an appeal to the spirit if it is to be made interesting."