Week 9 - Peacock poo, a pumpkin carving contest, and a vortex cannon

Here are a few highlights from our week...

Well, we ended up just going on one field trip, but throw in our homeschool co-op group, a contest, and a fun science activity with Dad, and you have a pretty full week :)

On Monday, we went to the Lufkin Zoo. We love that zoo. For one, we got in free, and two, it's never overly crowded. 

They don't have some of the big name animals most zoos have, and it is fairly small, but they do have LOTS of free-roaming peacocks...and where there are a lot of peacocks, there is A WHOLE LOTTA peacock poop. The test was to see who could make it through the entire zoo without stepping in poo. My blue-eyed boy and I failed :( 

White peacock

Hippo Crossing - thanks hon, I love you too ;)

Long lost....cousin?

Guess who else we saw at the zoo...lol!

After that, we visited the Texas Forestry Museum. Too bad all the cool outside stuff was closed for renovations :(

He's not really thrilled about the new look :/

Bubba had a long hard day at work so sister was making him a good home-cooked meal ;)

Art

We only completed one of the art lessons listed in the TM since science was heavy on the cutting and coloring again. I don't want to push my blue-eyed boy too far this week...lol! We skipped art lesson #152. 

Bible
We came to Jesus' death and resurrection. Believe it or not, but we were actually looking forward to making the resurrection cookies. We have always heard about them and always meant to make them, but they just never fit into the schedule.

They were good, but a little too sweet for me...almost like an airy, crispy divinity cookie.

History
We said farewell to Augustus and hello to Emperor Tiberius. I wonder what type of ruler he'll turn out to be?

We finished up the Bronze Bow. We really liked the story, but dislike the kind that leave you hanging or wondering what happens next. Ugh! And this one did a little of that. If it was up to my brown-eyed girl, she said Thacia and Daniel would get married and Leah would be healed and eventually marry the soldier. Yeah, I'd probably end it that way too..lol!


Science

This week was all about the eyes. We watched another Chloe and the Nerb video and did another activity from the Body Book.


Friday was our homeschool co-op. The kids had a blast in their classes with their friends, but the highlight of the day was the pumpkin carving/decorating contest. They did an awesome job on their pumpkins. 

Sonic the Hedgehog

Felix the Cat

My blue-eyed boy even won 3rd place and a $5 gift card to Sonic. My kids had decided beforehand that whichever one won would share with the other. So...guess who all had ice-cream from Sonic after the park?

The final touch to the end of the week was when Dad built a "vortex cannon" with the kids. He explained to them how it worked and they had loads of fun playing with it until the box pretty much pooped out.

Now to gear up and get ready for next week...which is lining up to be even crazier than this week :/

MFW-ECC - Week 9 - Brazil - Free Rainforest & Brazil Lapbooks

Our Week in Review

Art/Music

The song Brown Girl in the Ring was eerily familiar to an episode of the "Wiggles" show my kids used to watch over and over and over. 

The Global Art activity (Carnival Dancers) on page 157 turned out to be a BIG hit. We did things a bit differently though. 1)The wire form the book called for was quite pliable...a little too pliable and the figure kept distroting into a crumpled mess. 2)I could not find the carpet thread the book mentioned, but I did have a ton of the colored wire. 

So, I hot-glued together popsicle sticks in the shape of a person instead. 

Then, we used the pliable colored wire to wrap the popsicle sticks.

A styrofoam head was added and our Carnival Dancers were complete :)  

A was the one one who ventured out to make clothes and hair for her dancer. She and I spent quite a bit of time drawing and cutting out clothing while the boys were at band practice.  

Science

Kiddos took turns reading pages 96-97 in the Living World book and then located and colored the various rain forests around the world on their notebook pages. 


I pretty much read all of pages 45-47 in Properties of Ecosystems. It was all very interesting, and for the most part, on their level this time. We learned about chicle (which is used to make chewing gum) and thought the brand 'Chiclets' gum sounded a lot like that. Well...guess what? That is exactly where the name 'Chiclets' came from ;) 


The kids were fascinated with spider monkeys and Banyan trees, which were mentioned in the reading. So we took some extra time to look up info and pictures about those on the internet in leu of the blue box 'researching rainforest animals' activity. Quite interesting! 


We completed the greenhouse experiment, although, it will still be a little while before we start to see any results.

Kiddos took turns reading pages 98-99 of Living World. After that, we completed our terrarium. The kids had a blast hunting through the woods finding various plants to use...AND...the rain was just what we needed to cool things off :)

Click here to get some great ideas from Family Fun on how to make your own terrarium.

Geography

The flight to South America (namely Brazil) departed at 10am. We almost left behind one of our passengers because she was late boarding the plane. LOL! Passports were stamped and Flags of the World sticker books were updated. We also looked over pages 68-71 in the Classroom Atlas book. 
Once again, the crossword puzzle was a big hit and the kiddos completed that while I read over the interesting facts on pages 13-14 of A Trip Around the World.


The South America part of the geography game was MUCH easier to put together this time around. It was so nice not having to clip and snip all those little square markers :) 

Bible

We are *loving* Nate Saint. So interesting! It is awesome to see how events from Cameron Townsend's story overlap with Nate Saint's story. The kids totally picked up on it too :-D 

Lapbooks

Because we are spending the next 2 weeks learning about rainforests, I thought the kids would have some time to work on a simplified version of this free rainforest lapbook (example below). This week, we printed out various pictures and the kiddos began coloring them. They will work on this over the next 2 weeks, cut them out, and glue them all together. I'll post pictures of the final outcome in 2 weeks :) 

I'm not sure we'll have time to complete the free Brazil lapbook, but here it is (example below) in case you are interested :)

Ahhh, it's nice to have a week every now and again when it feels like you've actually accomplished something and had lots of fun while doing it!

(This post has been linked up at Discover Their Gifts and Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers)