A Science Experiment That Actually Worked!

Now that's blog-worthy!

We came across the following brain teaser and had to try the solution for ourselves.

A man in a restaurant asked a waiter for a juice glass, a dinner plate, water, a match, and a lemon wedge. The man poured enough water onto the plate to cover it.
"If you can get the water on the plate into this glass without touching or moving this plate, I will give you $100," the man said. "You can use the match and lemon to do this."

A few minutes later, the waiter walked away with $100 in his pocket. How did the waiter get the water into the glass?


Solution:  
 First, the waiter stuck the match into the lemon wedge, so that it would stand straight. Then he lit the match, and put it in the middle of the plate with the lemon. Then, he placed the glass upside-down over the match. As the flame used up the oxygen in the glass, it created a small vacuum, which sucked in the water through the space between the glass and the plate. Thus, the waiter got the water into the glass without touching or moving the plate.


This was so cool that we did it three times. Try it! For other brain teasers, check out Briangle.

Homeschooling With Weird Al (Again)

Hello again! It's been a crazy year, and I haven't found much time for blogging, but some things are just to good not to share, so here I am again.

Last year, we incorporated some Weird Al into our Language Arts studies. I know we are a family of total nerds, but we really love Al. Have I mentioned that the man is a goofy musical genius? Anyway, this week the kiddos and I were learning a little about the digestive system and the question arose, "What does the pancreas do?" Weird Al to the rescue again. I have it on good authority that this silly little song about the pancreas is 100% scientifically accurate. My son's high school biology teacher even uses it to teach his students about the pancreas.

Given that my kids retain pretty much anything they hear in a Weird Al tune, if he wrote a home school curriculum in song, I'd buy it.

Homeschool Sloths

It's just that kind of day.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

New School Year, New Fashion Statements

(The iPad camera still stinks, but it is super handy for blogging.)

-Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

And So It Begins

Goodbye, Summer. I'll miss you.

Planning

Here is a great site with free printable homeschool planning forms, calendars, recording keeping forms, etc. It's a little overwhelming at first, but there is a lot of good information there and many great resources.

Donna Young Planners

An overdue post

I have been meaning to post a detailed "Year In Review" post but I just can't seem to get around to it. Here's the Reader's Digest version of what I learned this year.

1.  Oak Meadow is perfect for us. The upper elementary (we were in year 5) is much more involved than I had anticipated, and some weeks we had difficulty covering everything completely, mostly because I didn't use only Oak Meadow. I had too many other things in our schedule.
2. Sometimes less is more. (See #1)
3. Swinging helps Thing 4 concentrate. I started noticing that if she was having difficulty focusing on, say...Math, she would ask if she could go swing. When she came back in, her concentration was better. (Everything is relative.) I've talked to other moms who have kids with attention issues who are especially creative, and they have noticed this, too. Interesting. 
4. MCT Language Arts is fabulous, especially the Caesar's English portion.  (Thanks, Melanie).
5. Life of Fred...also a fabulous curriculum. We use this to supplement Singapore Math. It is great for developing higher level thinking skills. 
6. Singapore Math is perfect for Thing 3, not so much for Thing 4. We are switching to Oak Meadow Math for her next year. 
7. It's great to be able to tailor instruction and expectations to each child's learning style, personality and activity level. (See #3 and #6.)
8. As Latin goes, Lively Latin is a really good curriculum.  It's a nice mix of the basics of Latin combined with history, games, art history and puzzles. The online resource is very good, also. That said, we are dropping Latin next year. (See #2.)
9. Rosetta Stone is a great way to learn a foreign language.
10. It's worth paying for a good art class. 
11. We should have planned more field trips and done less "school". Thing 3 was verging on burn-out by the end of the year. (See #2.)
12. CiCi's pizza is over-priced and under-good. We go there anyway.  
13.  Otherwise Educating is great. Summer is greater.