What have we be doing?

It has been science week at our house this week. Not that this is all we have done but it is what my kids have been all excited about. I know the excitement stems from the many different projects or experiments we have been doing related to rocks. On Monday we read a book about crystals and then followed some directions on how to go about making crystals out of sugar. One recipe called for just sugar and water and another also required some unflavored gelatin. We tried both and are going to see which one makes better crystals. We added some food coloring to make sure we knew which was which. They are supposed to sit undisturbed for 2 weeks but we will see we can wait that long.

The kids loved it when we broke out our magnifying glasses to look closely at salt and sugar to see what shape their crystals are. Sophie and Ian drew pictures of each and labeled them.

We also read a number of book about rocks and minerals this week. I threw in the book Stone Soup just because it had rock in the title and we haven't ever read this story. Ian loved it and asked for it again so I guess it was a hit.
There are more rock books floating around than are pictured here. This is just all could find at the moment.
Today we made some "rocks" of our own. We made some igneous rock out of evaporated milk, chocolate chips and sugar. I wonder what those things mixed together over some heat will create? Our "hot lava" is currently cooling and we will give it a try after dinner. This afternoon we also made some "sedimentary rock". We just followed a recipe for apricot bars and are enjoying our layered treat. I will have to think of a way to cook a metamorphic rock. The different rock science books we have make it using clay but I wanted to make an edible one. So I will have to think a bit about it. Ian and Sophie have really enjoyed the cooking we have been able to do today.

We haven't only been in the kitchen for Science this week. We also made some clay to mold into clay pots and then cook. They were supposed to be for our History lesson about China. In the SOTW acivity guide it says to use air dry clay for this project, but when I pulled it out on Monday it was already dry. So I improvised with a homemade cooked clay that we have used before on other projects. It didn't work quite as well. In the oven the clay sort of flattened out. Our bowls turned out to be more like plates. And when we painted them they really softened up. Henry punched a hole through his with his paintbrush. So they never made it to the lacquer stage. But the kids had fun. Not every project has to turn out I guess. I am not even going to post pictures because I didn't take any. Lets just say they didn't turn out well.
We of course listened to the chapter on the Tang Dynasty in China from SOTW and read a whole bunch of books that either take place in china or

We read this story book called Jonkonnu which is about Winslow Homer and a painting he did called Dressing for the carnival. Winslow Homer is a much more interesting artist than I ever knew before. He saw a lot in his life and did a lot with his work that I wouldn't have realized. Our study this month on him has surely opened my eyes to this great artist. I only knew of a handful of his paintings but hearing some of the stories behind the paintings makes it so much more meaningful.

As well as these subjects we have done our usual Math. Sophie needed extra practice to go along with her workbook pages so I printed out some math drill pages and she has been doing three columns a day. She is getting much better at adding three three-digit numbers. She only taking about a half an hour to do her 3 columns.

We have also done a chapter a day with Grammerland. Each chapter usually ends with an assignment for the children of Schoolroom shire, and we have been doing these each time. We still aren't quite done but I think Sophie is enjoying it and she is certainly getting good at identifying the different parts of speech.

I am sure there is tons more that we have done. And a lot that we could have done but never got around to. But it felt like a good academic week and the kids have had fun.

I am off to enjoy a few more "sedimentary rocks".