Homeschool Blues

Hat tip to my good friend and fellow homeschooling mom, Angie, for telling me about this video. Love it!

Artsy Craftsy

Oak Meadow provides a lot...a whole lot...of enrichment activities to go along with what we are studying. I'm thrilled to have the activities planned for me. That makes it so easy. Here are a few things we've done recently.

Thing 4 has been studying Native American cultures, so we made corn husk dolls and dream catchers. We invited our sweet friends to do these crafts with us.











Thing 3 has been studying Colonial America, so we made pinch pots and we're in the process of doing a little needlework. The needlework thing has made Thing 3 thankful that he was not born a female in Colonial times.










In our Animal Habitat study, we learned about ways we can improve the habitat for some animals. We made bird feeders.



Whew! I'm about ready for some worksheets!

Fall Break!

Fall Break starts Thursday and goes through Monday. I am doing the Happy Dance!

Most homeschooling moms I know don't take Fall Break or many of the other typical school breaks. I, however, welcome the public school vacations and take them just as if my children were in public school. I do it with little guilt, too. Maybe I'm just a slacker, I don't know, and at this point, I don't really care. I just know that after 8.5 weeks of lots of focused time with my precious angels, I need a break. If that makes me a slacker, then call me a slacker. I've been called worse.

So tomorrow our school work will consist of doing our history crafts for the week and then we break until next Tuesday. The OE Dad insists I deserve the time off (smart man, eh?), and I couldn't agree more.

Science

Oak Meadow Science is very hands-on. The kids and I really appreciate that. Science is so much more meaningful when you can see and touch it.

Here are just a few photos of some of our science activities from the past few weeks.

The kiddos are gathering pond water for our observation of bacteria growth. We put tap water, pool water and pond water in petri dishes with agar to see which would grow the most bacteria. The children's hypothesis was that the pond water would grow more bacteria. They were right, of course. You'll have to take my word for it because I forgot to take pictures of the bacteria growth.

Since I had extra petri dishes and agar, we decided to swab some things around the house to see what kind of bacteria we could grow. We swabbed the toilet seat, the door handle in the bathroom, the coffee maker handle, the computer keyboard, Thing 4's bear that she has slept with (and chewed on) since she was 6 months old (aptly named "Yucky Bear Bear" by her brothers), and Thing 3, who had a bad cold at the time, coughed in one of the dishes. Ick.

Here, the kiddos are looking at Thing 4's blood. She made good use of the nasty scrapes she had on her knees after having a bad fall on her skates.

Science rocks!

A Cool Dam Tour!

Earlier this week, the munchkins and I went on a tour of Pensacola Dam at Grand Lake with some of our awesome Otherwise Educating friends.

Or, as my homeschooling friends and I like to call it, the Dam Tour. (We spend entirely too much time around pre-adolescent and teenaged boys.) We never tired of the (bad) joke. We went on a dam tour, had a cool dam tour guide and took some good dam photos. Our collective mental age is currently somewhere around 11, I think. Ok, truth be told, we really can't blame it on the boys. We just need to get out more.

The OE Dad accompanied us on this field trip and was glad he did. He put this field trip right up there with the tour of the PAC.

The Pensacola Dam is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in the late 1930s so there is a lot of history there.

Cool Art Deco light:

The building used to be a fallout shelter:

There is still a gas mask and "telephone" in the original Otis elevator:

Thing 4 operating the elevator:

We did learn some more technical things about the dam, but I am more interested in history than the generation of electricity, so not a lot of that information stuck with me, but the kiddos remember. I do remember that the dam provides electricity for 24 OK counties and some counties in Missouri and Kansas.



It was definitely worth the drive.