This Week at the Super Awesome School

Lots of progress in the core subjects, except writing. I'm concerned that we're not doing enough there, which would be fine with the kiddos since they both dislike it. Well, too bad! Next week we'll focus more on that.

This week, the kids did excellent presentations on atoms. They practiced in front of us and then did them for their grandparents. It was interesting to compare their styles. Dude wanted to do a straightforward introduction to atoms and their components. Super chose an element (Boron) and wrote from the perspective of that particular atom. Cool! A++ for both!

Our neolithic bread turned out better than everyone expected. Since we don't happen to have a stone grinding bowl, we used a food processor and coffee grinder for our wheat and barley grains. We didn't have any animal fat lying around, either (except for the canine variety lying in front of the fireplace) so we greased the pizza stone with olive oil. The pasty brown dough looked a bit...unappetizing, but it baked into something similar to a Wheatsworth cracker. It was actually pretty good with a little honey drizzled on top.

We made character posters to illustrate the four types of sentence. Mr. Answer speaks in declarative sentences, The Bandit speaks in exclamations, Mr. Mystery asks only questions, and King Command says everything imperatively! The kiddos really enjoyed this project. I got it from a book called Awesome Hands-On Activities for Teaching Grammar. The title says it all!

This will be our first time to try an Intellego unit study, and so far we have enjoyed it. We're doing Globetrotting With Cinderella. So far we have read and discussed the French version of the Cinderella story and learned a bit about France.

We completed our smelly science experiment. The mild acid (vinegar) caused a chemical change by eating away at the calcium (egg shells.) The eggs were really interesting--the brown ones lost a lot of their color, and all of them were soft, sort of like reptile eggs. It was really cool, I'm glad we did it, and I'm glad it's now out of the house.

I feel very confident that the kids are learning a lot, and more importantly, we are all enjoying our family time together. We had a fun week!