Explorer's Club - Police Craft and Park Day

Yesterday was our explorer's club day. We went to the park. Nick had a great time playing with the kids, and I had fun talking with the other moms. It was great to watch the little boys out there travelling the park together. Nick seems to have clicked really well with the kids this year.

We also did a really cute policeman craft. It was a little crazy, I pre-cut the supplies and split them up by the item, but I should have just given each child a bag with his/her supplies. Actually, that's what I had planned to do but I ran out of bags and didn't want to use another box of them, definitely should have bit the bullet though. Anyways, they made little policemen out of toilet paper rolls.


Playing on the BRAND new slide at the park.



Nick and one of his favorite friends with their policemen.

A regular day

No fun and exciting projects today, and no pictures I'm afraid. We did have a fun day though. Here's how our "regular" day went:

We started off with our daily circle time which today included his critical thinking question. Nick was really excited because the page had pictures of food on it... go figure.

Then we did some math. We started with a quick review of ordinal numbers (1st through 5th, he needed more practice on distinguishing things like 2nd from the right), and reviewing how to write Roman Numeral 1 to 5.

Next, we played a math review game to practice greater than, less than, and equal to. Nick does really well on these, but every now and then gets the greater than and less than signs mixed up, so I like to review it occassionally. Our "game" is pretty simple, one person rolls the dice, and then figures out which sign goes between the numbers, reads it, and then passes the dice to the next person. We haven't had to have scores because Nick doesn't care, but if someone wanted to play with scores you could just give points for the numbers rolled if they get the sign right.

After that we did reading. We're now doing a combination of Hooked on Phonics, as well as Explode the Code Online. I've moved him back in Explode the Code because I really felt like he needed more review and it's definitely helping, plus he's having fun with it again, it was moving forward too fast for him, which is funny since it self-adjusts to the child. I think the problem is that he can figure out the words but he needs to get more adept and quicker at it.

Then it was on to Science where we finished making our book about the particles of matter and how tightly they are packed in solids, liquids and gases. This finishes up our section on matter so now I'll have to put his lapbook together. I'll post it when I get it done.

Then Nick read one of the BOB books. We checked them out from the library and I need to take them back this week. I hate to because he's really loving them, I may have to go and get him a set now that he's getting into them.

We ended with History. We read a little blurb on fossils and then watched a movie about how fossils are formed and the different types of fossils. Nick loved it, he watched it 5 times! I hope our other history topics keep his interest as well as fossils. Of course that's why I started him off with this, so he'd get the idea that history is fun, and then I just have to help him keep that, which shouldn't be hard since I have lots of fun stuff to do for Ancient History next year.

Tomorrow we have Explorer's Club craft time. I'm really looking forward to it.

Dinosaur Fossils

We've been studying fossils and today we made our own! Here's how we did it:

Nick selected his dinosaur. (B, the little girl I babysit did this with us too, but I only got one picture of her working on it).



Nick chose his parasaurolphus.



Then we made an imprint in the wet sand.






Mixed up some plaster of paris.



Poured it in.

Let it sit for a few hours.









Pulled the fossils out of the sand.


Rinsed them off, and then took a good look at them. (unfortunately Nick's fossil's tail broke when he set it down, but we should be able to repair it with some good super glue).



We are pretty happy with how they came out. A fun and easy project, although Nick wasn't too happy about having to go in the wet sand to do it, crazy kid that he is :)

INL Science Expo

On Saturday we went over to the annual INL (Idaho National Laboratories) scence expo. It's an annual event and this is the second time we've gone. Some things had changed, but a lot of the events had stayed the same. It was fun though to see the difference in Nick's maturity level as he approached different exhibits. His interests have certainly changed. Here are a few photos from the day.



Here is Nick driving a robot. These are the robots the bomb squad uses to diffuse bombs. He was Mr. Speed Racer while driving, almost ran the robot into a table he was driving it so fast!



This is the robot he was driving.



We made a little rocket and then launched it using air pressure. Nick did this one last year too, it's a lot of fun. His rocket flew pretty good this year. This photo shows him pumping up the launcher.



And now for the launch!



Watching the wave lengths produced by humming into a microphone (you were supposed to try to make your voice match the wave length on the screen but Nick didn't get that part, so he just had fun making the waves jump :)

There were lots of other fun things too, but not much for getting photos of.

Police Station Field Trip

Today was our first Explorer's Club field trip. We went to the Idaho Falls Police station and it was lots of fun. We had 14 kids with us (age 3-8) and they were wonderful. They had some really interesting questions :)

Here's a picture of most of our group:

Particulate Nature of Matter

Today in Science we were learning that matter is made of particles, so we did a variety of activities to show that you can keep splitting matter into smaller and smaller particles.

Solids:

Clay


Wheat


"Rocks" (this was really a hard mud ball) - This was Nick's favorite!


Liquids:

Water

Gas:
Photos to come as soon as the computer will cooperate.


Gas particles in water.


Gas particles in soda

Fossil Sandwiches

Yesterday in history we were learning that some things become fossils better than others. We made fossil sandwiches using a variety of things that we collected on our last nature day and squished them between pieces of white bread to see what would leave the best "fossil" imprint.

Here are a few pics although its kind of hard to see the imprints.



Squishing the fossil sandwich to simulate the pressure of sediment on top of the things being fossilized.


Removing the natural matter that we "fossilized"


Our "fossils".

All About Me

Answers have been removed for safety

Here's the promised information from the All About Me lapbook that Nick did.



Front cover: Picture of Nick that he colored to supposedly look like him (not sure when he turned green and blue :)



flap 1: pictures of Nick on his first day of Kindergarten homeschooling

Inside of flap 1: Myself, Me and I:
His fingerprints
His eye color
His lock of hair (not yet in book)
His growth: Age : 5 years 2 months
height: 44 3/4 inches (this was when I measured him, but now we think he might actually be closer to 46 based on the fair measurements.
Names and Aliases

Page 1: his birthday cake that he colored and put candles on

flap 2 outside:
My house:
Where do I live? (he put our address)
Who lives in my house? My mom, dad, and me. My pet cat, the dogs.
What pets do I have? Two dogs and a cat
My room is....a space room and it's really fun to play in.
I like my room because... it's the best place in the world.
Chores I do for my family... feed Aphie, set the table, give kisses when people get hurt.

My family picture (a picture he drew of our family)





What Would I Buy if I Had...


An Interview with Me (I put the details of this on an earlier post).

These Are A Few of My Favorite Things:

4 Thing I Would Like to Do When I Grow Up:


My Tickets To Fun: (things he thinks it would be fun to do)


My time (what he does in his free time)

Flap 3 outside:
Picture of Nick with his favorite book (of the day anyways)


Back:
pictures of our homeschool room this year
Nick's weekly schedule

Explorer's Club

Today we had our first meeting of the homeschool group I'm running this year. It's called the explorer's club, and meets once a week. We'll be alternating weeks between field trips and craft time, but this week was just a get to know you play day.
We had 20 kids sign up (plus their moms), with another 2 families on the waiting list. I was a little worried about what we'd do with all of them at our house, but amazingly it didn't seem crazy at all. We did have a few families out for the day, but we still had quite a few kids here.
The kids seemed to get along great, and so did the moms. I'm so excited, it's nice to be around other homeschooling families. Next week we're off for our first field trip!

Tuesday

I got Nick's All About Me book put together on Tuesday. It came out great. I'll try to get the pictures of it up in the next day or so.

We also started history today, we're studying prehistoric times this year, with an emphasis on the time of the dinosaurs so we started doing a little work on that.

Eastern Idaho State Fair

We took labor day off and headed out to the state fair! Woohoo, we had lots of fun. It's amazing how cheap the fair is in comparison to the California fairs. It cost us $5 each to get in, and Nick was free, and then we only had to pay $5 parking. You can actually park for free if you can find a spot on the road, but by the time we got there, people were parking miles away, and we knew from experience that by the time you are done walking that fair, the last thing you want to do is walk a long way back to your car. So, we parked where we always do. Anyways, it was a great day.
We wandered through the booths first, and found someone selling water filtering bottles for super cheap, so we grabbed several to add to our emergency supplies.
Then, we headed over to the animal section. We saw the biggest rabbit I have ever seen. It was a dutch giant I think they said, or a German giant, something along that line. We then watched went over to the cows, but unfortunately they had just finished milking. Still, we showed Nick the machines and explained how it works, before we headed to the sheep.
When we walked into the sheep building, there were two ladies sitting spinning wool. Nick found that quite interesting, and we discussed how they get the wool, what they do to get it ready, how they spin it, and how they dye it. Then we checked out the sheep. We missed the shearing, but we saw lots of bald sheep and some wool that had just been sheared from one of the sheep. That turned out to be a great learning adventure.
Miniature horses were sharing the building with the sheep, so we wandered and took and look at them. Surprisingly, right after the miniature horses were the huge Clydesdales and draft horses (anyone know what the difference is, they look the same to us).
That rounded up the animals. By this point Nick was getting a bit anxious to get to the rides, but we wanted to see the rest of the fair on the way. We headed out and ended up at ag-venture land. This was new this year, although they've had a few of the activities in it before. It was actually one of my favorite parts and Nick really seemed to enjoy it. Ag-venture land was made up of little activities for kids. There were hardly any lines either, it was great. Nick got to try to rope a "steer" (a hay bale with a head on it) while sitting on a "horse" (a bucket with a saddle on it). Then he played in the bean box (think sand box but with beans instead of sand). Next they had a pretend poop scoop station, but he passed that one up :) as well as a couple of other little booths, and headed straight for the corn box (same idea as the bean box, but with dried corn). He played in the corn for quite a while and hten went over to a little music station where they had found item instruments. Lots of fun!
After all of that it was off to the rides. We sprung for a wrist band for Nick so he could go on as many rides as he wanted, and he sure went on a lot. He's still pretty cautious about which ones he'll go on, but he was a bit more adventurous. Except we still can't get the boy to actually sit on a horse on the merry-go-round, instead he insists on sitting on the little "sleigh" (the stationary seats).
By the time we were done we were ready to drop. We picked up some cotton candy for Nick and tried to head home.

To see pictures of our trip to the fair, click here.

Gymnastics and Nature Study

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the camera with us today, so no pictures.

We had a great day though. We started out with gymnastics. This year Nick is in the 5-6 year old class, so he had his first gym class without me being in it. That was kind of nice for me, but he seemed to be having some issues with listening. Of course this seems to be an issue everywhere the last week or so, he's kind of in his own world. We're working on it, so hopefully he'll snap out of it soon. Overall though, he did pretty good at gym, and he adores Miss Tracy, his gym teacher. Most of the kids in the class are the same ones as last year, so that makes it kind of fun too.

After gymnastics, we went to the library. Nick decided to check out a bunch of dinosaur books, which was rather ironic since I plan to start dinos with him next week.

After the library we headed over to Freeman Park. Nick and Bianca (the little girl I'm watching) playing on the playground equipment and then we walked down by the river to do our nature journals. Nick chose to draw a squirrel, and then to draw the river and it's "beach" . We'll add his drawings into his nature journal, it should be fun to watch his drawings change over the next few years.

That's about it for the week. We're off to a good start!

An Interview With Nick

Along with all of our other things today, we worked on Nick's All About Me book. He actually finished all of the parts of it, so now I just need to get it put it all together. Part of what we did for the book today was an interview with Nick. It was pretty fun to see what he answered. A few of them I had to prompt him a little more, you'll probably be able to tell which ones.

I have removed the answers for safety purposes

Air Takes Up Space - Wednesday

Today we did a science demonstration, one of the last of a series we've been doing on the states of matter. We've done solids, liquids, and gases so far. Today was the final gas demonstration. In this one, we filled a water bottle up with vinegar, put baking soda into a balloon and then put the balloon on the water bottle. Nick then gently lifted the balloon making the baking soda fall into the vinegar. This of course caused lots of bubbling and what not, and then it blew the balloon up. Here's a picture of Nick with his bottle and balloon.

Our first regular day - Tuesday

We're on to our normal schedule now. The schedule goes as following (each part takes about 15 minutes, except for reading which is about 20).

M-Th
Circle Time (see last post for details)
Handwriting - right now we're using the Kumon lowercase book
Math - flashcards to practice math facts, and the Shiller Math, right now we're working on book 2, the program has 3 books that cover Pre-K through 3, so I have no idea what grade that is the equivilant of.
Reading - Explode the Code Online, sometimes this is combined with reading a beginning reader book.
Science - Nebel's Building Foundation of Scientific Thinking K-2
History / Social Studies - we aren't using a formal social studies or history curriculum this year. Right now we are doing his me book which we will finish early next week. After that we will be doing a combination of learning about people in our community, and learning about dinosaurs and prehistoric critters.
I usually follow this up with a game or fun activity.

Friday
We don't do our normal homeschool on Friday. Our Friday schedule is:
Gymnastics
Library
Nature field trip and nature journal entry
Story
Little Contendors ( a book with lots of fun projects that build life skills).


Today went smoothly, Nick was ready to be done after Explode the Code, because that part of our schedule is pretty similar to what we did for preschool, but once we got going he had fun doing the other activities.