We didn't waste any time getting back to school. We've "vacationed" enough this year. Last year. Whatever.
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| Math Time |
Fiona started "real" math today with our old friend, Saxon. Lula harassed her in the same manner Fiona harassed Ian many years ago...
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| Documentary Time |
Yesterday I decided that the new way we are going to learn will be subject-intensive. That means after math we will study only one subject until we are done. For the next few days or weeks, we will study Geology.
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| Inner and Outer Cores of the Earth |
After watching a few Bill Nye and History channel videos (nap time for mama and babies!), we created our own Layers of the Earth projects. I wasn't planning on doing this project, but I had the ingredients on hand from when I
had planned on doing the project. You know, back in 2013 when I set myself up for failure on a regular basis?
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| Adding the Mantle |
The project is easy enough: take a candy cherry for the inner core, enclose it in a marshmallow for the outer core, pat rice crispy treat around
that for the mantle...
...and then ask the kids what was missing...and see who is smart enough to realize we only had three of the four layers (assessment of learning). I melted chocolate chips for the crust and that was pretty darn messy (the instructor's guide that I'm not using recommends Magic Shell and now I know why). The whole project didn't take very long but was messy, messy, messy. The messy was the good kind of messy; it was the
lick your fingers when you are done kind of messy!
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| The steam from the teapot adds a certain je n'ai quoi! |
We chilled the earth balls in the fridge for a geologic wink while we finished up another video. One of the funny clips in the Bill Nye video was of a kid pulling the crust off his Wonderbread while his mother says, "Richie, eat your crust!" over and over. We had no problem eating our "crust!"
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| Crust Eaten! |
Mark does worry the kids won't actually retain anything from my video-based learning, but I don't think they will forget the names of the layers. I did promise to test them with the tests from my instructor's guide that I'm not using. Whatever they miss, they can read about in our science encyclopedias And Mark can correct it.
...and then ask the kids what was missing...and see who is smart enough to realize we only had three of the four layers (assessment of learning). I melted chocolate chips for the crust and that was pretty darn messy (the instructor's guide that I'm not using recommends Magic Shell and now I know why). The whole project didn't take very long but was messy, messy, messy. The messy was the good kind of messy; it was the lick your fingers when you are done kind of messy!