Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

While I was gone to the conference this past weekend , Allan and Dane built an "OGRE" catapult. (Well, their own version of one.) We have been trying all kinds of different experiences where Dane can either "blow things up" or send thing flying in the air. ( Here is a link to one of our catapult projects ) This evening, we opted to try some predicting with the latest model of a catapult. First, we tried to decide how far we thought the sponge bombs would fly. We wrote our predictions down. Then, it was time to.... Ready, Aim... Fire! After we shot all of the bombs, we used a measuring tape to determine how accurate our predictions were. We wrote down the actual distances and then compared them to the original guesses. Who was the closest? How much more/less did you guess? If you have to guess again, what would you say? Did the bombs all go the same distance? Why do you think that is? Do you think you can make the bombs land in the dump truck? Where ...

If you have been following along on our journey, you know that Dane has opted to add Art History to his curriculum this year, and we tend to focus on that every Thursday. (It is abundantly clear that all of the subjects are interwoven, but we tend to start with a focus and add all kinds of other aspects into that focus each day.) Today, we started to look at Frescoes. Many artists throughout time have used a Fresco technique in their work. Our focus today was on the Minoan Frescoes. If you are not familiar with the technique, artists used pigments on wet plaster to create their works of art on a wall. As the plaster dries it soaks up the pigment and the work of art is then part of the wall. Being that this was our first attempt at creating a Fresco, we opted to make ours on a cardboard/plaster canvas instead of on the wall. However, don't be surprised if you see a post in the future where we put this technique to use on the walls!!!! We started with some cardboard piece...

On Monday(Social Science)......... We learned about pirates. We made these really cool pirate swords that we found through this post at Filth Wizardry . (The instructions are actually posted on Alphamom ). On Tuesday (Science) ...... We made a really cool worm farm. You can see the full post of our worm activities here. We also did some chemistry, (Dane wanted to blow things up, so inspired by Teacher Tom , we did...) On Wednesday (Danish Day)........ We played animal hotel. Dane remembers his numbers to ten now: 1-en 2-to 3-tre 4-fire 5-fem 6-seks 7-syv 8-otte 9-ni 10-ti He also remembers a lot of basic sayings, colors, and animals. On Thursday (Art History).......... We learned about the Egyptians, and the art that they made for the dead. One of the books we have been using that has been FANTASTIC is From Cave Paintings to Picasso . We read about King Tut and saw how his sarcophagus was decorated.) We made our own mummy. (This great kit pictured above was our starting point. Unfor...

In our home, we have a somewhat unique situation. Both Allan and I work together from home to run our family home daycare. If you are new to my blog, you will see that most of the posts relate directly to our childcare business. I am going to *try* to get at least one post up a week that deals more about our homeschooling. (Although, in many instances, we work Dane's lessons into the daycare). Allan has been an amazing help when it comes to homeschooling, and helping with whatever needs to be done. He provides our "muscle" when Dane and I have BIG ideas.... Like moving lots of sand from our sandbox to make a HUGE volcano. He's often the man behind the camera (fortunately, we have a couple of them so I can catch him in photos once and awhile!) He is great at making sure to capture great moments on film so that we can remember them and use them in later lessons. In this photo, we were visiting the butterfly house and were able to identify a number of different butter...